3 ms·

Is inner voice the same thing as inner speech? I’m interpreting “inner voice” to be a kind of pseudo-personality similar to what people mean by conscience, whil

Is inner voice the same thing as inner speech? I’m interpreting “inner voice” to be a kind of pseudo-personality similar to what people mean by conscience, while inner speech is simply the mental version of speech. I can understand someone not having an inner voice, but I can’t see how writing is possible without inner speech. Otherwise, how can you have thoughts prior to writing them down? Also note that the article is titled inner speech, not inner voice.

ithkuil 3y ago
Luckily the text editor has been invented giving you the possibility of endlessly editing your sentence until it makes some sense. Only half joking. I'm always impressed by those ancient people who could write long letters by hand in beautiful orthography, composing complex texts and make them just flow linearly. I'm sure here and there there would be a rewriting step involved but that can't have been always the case; there was surely practical pressure to get the output right at first try. Perhaps this skill could be trained but perhaps it also leverages the ability to tap into your inner voice and inner speech
- mmasu 3y ago
  i think it’s a matter of training/habit. Also, back then (educated) people used memory a lot more efficiently; this might have played a role too… i.e. compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down.
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    > compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down yeah; doesn't that basically mean you have to have "inner speech"?
- SuperHeavy256 3y ago
  Perhaps only the letters which were 'really good' were preserved by historians, and most of the average human writing was not as preserved .
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JaumeGreen 3y ago
I can have thoughts without inner speech or text. Why? Probably it helps that I'm multilingual, I can use several languages (3) more or less indistinctively. So when I have something to talk about I have the idea in my head, then I have to translate it to written or oral medium. Sometimes it's faulty and I use a different language for certain words, because they convey a more nuanced meaning that better corresponds to my idea, and I have a hard time finding the right word or phrase in the language I need to express myself with. Inside my head I sometimes have inner speech, sometimes I just have a vivid imagination, sometimes it's concepts, and sometimes it's a mix of it all. For example, my first two paragraphs were translation from concepts, while the first line of this one came more from inner speech (half in Catalan, half in English), and this phrase has started as a mix of concept and inner speech. Not using inner speech as my main medium also means that sometimes I find hard to understand puns that derive from pronunciation, if they come in the written form. When I read I don't imagine the sounds in my head, so I don't "hear" the words and the puns are missed.
boxed 3y ago
> I can understand someone not having an inner voice, but I can’t see how writing is possible without inner speech. Otherwise, how can you have thoughts prior to writing them down? The conscious experience of inner voice/speece/eye/nose/whatever is not really saying something about how the rest of the brain functions. Almost everything anyone does is indeed not projected in inner mind before being executed. The subjective experience is a post-hoc narrative of what the mind did, not really a part of the planning process itself. Think about running in a dense forest for example. There's no way to plan with inner mind where to direct your eye muscles first and then having received the visual input, plan with inner mind where to put your feet on the ground to not trip on a rock or root.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I'm talking more about "thinking before you speak." As in, it seems to me that without some form of inner speech, it would be impossible to plan anything before vocalizing it, as you'd need to start talking/writing in order to actually think.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Why do you think that?
    - keiferski 3y ago
      How could one "think about what they're going to say" without some level of prior inner speech or conceptualization? It may not be precisely the same as spoken speech, but it would still be a kind of speech.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Why do you assume conceptualization requires verbalization?
        keiferski 3y ago
vidarh 3y ago
I definitely have both inner speech and inner voice in the ways you're using them, but when I write I don't verbalize things and then write down what I verbalize. Consider that you've created an infinite regress problem. One might just as well as how inner speech is possible without preceding inner speech - clearly it must be possible for speech, whether inner, outer, oral or written to be formed from a non-verbal antecedent some way or other. If you accept that, then there's no particular reason to think that it must be inherently necessary for writing to have a verbal antecedent rather than "hooking right into" the same non-verbal antecedent.

ithkuil 3y ago

Luckily the text editor has been invented giving you the possibility of endlessly editing your sentence until it makes some sense. Only half joking. I'm always impressed by those ancient people who could write long letters by hand in beautiful orthography, composing complex texts and make them just flow linearly. I'm sure here and there there would be a rewriting step involved but that can't have been always the case; there was surely practical pressure to get the output right at first try. Perhaps this skill could be trained but perhaps it also leverages the ability to tap into your inner voice and inner speech

mmasu 3y ago
i think it’s a matter of training/habit. Also, back then (educated) people used memory a lot more efficiently; this might have played a role too… i.e. compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  > compose and edit the whole text in your mind before writing it down yeah; doesn't that basically mean you have to have "inner speech"?
SuperHeavy256 3y ago
Perhaps only the letters which were 'really good' were preserved by historians, and most of the average human writing was not as preserved .

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

JaumeGreen 3y ago

I can have thoughts without inner speech or text. Why? Probably it helps that I'm multilingual, I can use several languages (3) more or less indistinctively. So when I have something to talk about I have the idea in my head, then I have to translate it to written or oral medium. Sometimes it's faulty and I use a different language for certain words, because they convey a more nuanced meaning that better corresponds to my idea, and I have a hard time finding the right word or phrase in the language I need to express myself with. Inside my head I sometimes have inner speech, sometimes I just have a vivid imagination, sometimes it's concepts, and sometimes it's a mix of it all. For example, my first two paragraphs were translation from concepts, while the first line of this one came more from inner speech (half in Catalan, half in English), and this phrase has started as a mix of concept and inner speech. Not using inner speech as my main medium also means that sometimes I find hard to understand puns that derive from pronunciation, if they come in the written form. When I read I don't imagine the sounds in my head, so I don't "hear" the words and the puns are missed.

boxed 3y ago

> I can understand someone not having an inner voice, but I can’t see how writing is possible without inner speech. Otherwise, how can you have thoughts prior to writing them down? The conscious experience of inner voice/speece/eye/nose/whatever is not really saying something about how the rest of the brain functions. Almost everything anyone does is indeed not projected in inner mind before being executed. The subjective experience is a post-hoc narrative of what the mind did, not really a part of the planning process itself. Think about running in a dense forest for example. There's no way to plan with inner mind where to direct your eye muscles first and then having received the visual input, plan with inner mind where to put your feet on the ground to not trip on a rock or root.

keiferski 3y ago
I'm talking more about "thinking before you speak." As in, it seems to me that without some form of inner speech, it would be impossible to plan anything before vocalizing it, as you'd need to start talking/writing in order to actually think.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Why do you think that?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    How could one "think about what they're going to say" without some level of prior inner speech or conceptualization? It may not be precisely the same as spoken speech, but it would still be a kind of speech.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Why do you assume conceptualization requires verbalization?
      - keiferski 3y ago

vidarh 3y ago

I definitely have both inner speech and inner voice in the ways you're using them, but when I write I don't verbalize things and then write down what I verbalize. Consider that you've created an infinite regress problem. One might just as well as how inner speech is possible without preceding inner speech - clearly it must be possible for speech, whether inner, outer, oral or written to be formed from a non-verbal antecedent some way or other. If you accept that, then there's no particular reason to think that it must be inherently necessary for writing to have a verbal antecedent rather than "hooking right into" the same non-verbal antecedent.