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What exactly is "internal monologue"? It's heavily debated in the comments. I don't understand though, because when you learn to read you're mouthing words, and

by apsurd 2y ago

What exactly is "internal monologue"? It's heavily debated in the comments. I don't understand though, because when you learn to read you're mouthing words, and over your lifetime it's actually very hard to not mouth words when you read. It makes me think that internal monologue is precisely an artifact of language itself. In this way, this debate and surprise over people "not having it" is not really profound. All people internalize language, that's the only way that not-mimicked language synthesis can happen. This is different from parrots parroting back what they hear for example. Anyway, I'm curious about this debate over internal monologue. Perhaps it's really that people don't retrospect. That's different. They don't adopt viewpoints outside of their own. Is this really a physical limitation vs a choice? Am I just ignorant about the state of this science?

taway789aaa6 2y ago
> over your lifetime it's actually very hard to not mouth words when you read My reading is all in my head. I don't know when I made the transition to not mouthing things out, but it would have been pretty early on.
- apsurd 2y ago
  oh that's what i mean though, mouthing, in your head, same thing as in "it's somewhere" that's internal to you. That's why i can't understand how everyone doesn't have an internal monologue.
akvadrako 2y ago
We can't know what other people experience in their head, only how they describe it. To me inner dialogue is whenever we express a thought to ourselves using language. Like I think "now would be a good time to make coffee". When someone says they don't have an inner monologue I'm very skeptical. I imagine how it would work is either they only picture such a thing (getting up to get coffee) or its just like a high dimensional emotion of hunger and movement. Which I suppose is how it must work for animals. But how this can work for more complex and abstract things like analytical philosophy is beyond me. For advanced math I can imagine just seeing equations.

by apsurd 2y ago

taway789aaa6 2y ago

> over your lifetime it's actually very hard to not mouth words when you read My reading is all in my head. I don't know when I made the transition to not mouthing things out, but it would have been pretty early on.

apsurd 2y ago
oh that's what i mean though, mouthing, in your head, same thing as in "it's somewhere" that's internal to you. That's why i can't understand how everyone doesn't have an internal monologue.

akvadrako 2y ago

We can't know what other people experience in their head, only how they describe it. To me inner dialogue is whenever we express a thought to ourselves using language. Like I think "now would be a good time to make coffee". When someone says they don't have an inner monologue I'm very skeptical. I imagine how it would work is either they only picture such a thing (getting up to get coffee) or its just like a high dimensional emotion of hunger and movement. Which I suppose is how it must work for animals. But how this can work for more complex and abstract things like analytical philosophy is beyond me. For advanced math I can imagine just seeing equations.