6 ms·

The existence of an "inner monologue" isn't really a falsifiable claim. Some people claim to have one while other people claim not to, but we can't test the tru

The existence of an "inner monologue" isn't really a falsifiable claim. Some people claim to have one while other people claim not to, but we can't test the truth of these claims.

glitchc 2y ago
In this particular case, is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? This is not a case of where if I say "weak" or "strong", most people pick strong because no one wants to be weak, even if the context is unknown (nuclear force for example).
- GeoAtreides 2y ago
  > is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? because if we give them a problem to solve in their head and just give us the answer, they will. By problem I mean planning a trip, a meal, how to pay the mortgage, etc. It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. Even if some people claim theirs is 'in images'.
  - glitchc 2y ago
    Perhaps there's confusion in how we are using the word monologue. I took it to mean a conversation, a dialogue where the problem is perhaps solved using a dialectic method, or simply a conversation. Since one can solve a problem by following some memorized steps, no conversation required, this is perhaps not a good test, or we mean different things when we say "monologue."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rprospero 2y ago
    > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue I once had a teacher claim that people who claimed to have aphantasia were lying, because those people have read books and it is impossible to read a book without picture the scene in your mind's eye. Are you citing the same source that she was?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      I wish I had such a teacher, because I'd learn the term "aphantasia", instead of worrying all my youth that I'm doing reading wrong, as I could never picture anything I was reading in my mind (and as a result, I found scenery descriptions to be mind dumbingly boring).
  - staticman2 2y ago
    >> It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue That's quite the claim.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. How can science make this claim if it can't prove (or disprove) the existence of an internal monologue?
    - IlliOnato 2y ago
      Well, I remember Richard Feynman came up with an interesting experiment. He found he could not count objects when he read aloud some text at the same time. He had to name the numbers, and it was impossible if he was already engaging his speech. He thought this was universal, but doing this experiment with friends, he discovered a guy who could count while reading aloud. So when Feynman asked him, how he does this, turned out that the guy instead of "pronouncing" numbers was "seeing" colored numbers in his imagination, so his speech was not involved. I supposed this experiment can be modified and generalized, and at least to shed some light on this problem.
  - photon_lines 2y ago
    'It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue.' - Sorry, but I disagree with this. I have no 'internal voice' or monologue - whenever I see a problem, my brain actually and fully models it using images. I believe 25% of the population doesn't have the internal monologue which you're referring to and this has been tested and confirmed. I highly recommend listening to this Lex Friedman podcast episode to get a full grasp on the complexities of modelling language and general modelling present in the human brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Jd9GI6XqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Jd9GI6XqE
    - GeoAtreides 2y ago
      Sure, I do mention thinking in images in my original comment and count it as some type of internal monologue. I personally do not believe it's all images, as that would preclude using highly abstract concepts. But I might be wrong, and it might be 100% images. That being said, it does count as an internal monologue.
    - lupire 2y ago
      Can you draw a picture of an example of what you see when you think about something?
      - photon_lines 2y ago
        Sure - with the Alice example, when I saw the problem I came up with a really simple visual example of Alice having 3 sisters and 4 brothers. When I visualized it I saw Alice standing next to 3 other women (her sisters) and her 4 brothers standing close by. When I imagined asking her brother how many sisters he has, I could see that Alice was standing there next to 3 other women and thus came up with the answer of 4. Does this make sense?
        magicalhippo 2y ago
        This could account for why some people are much better at say geometry than algebra. I'm the opposite. I rarely visualize things I read, be it geometry or poetry. I can read a detailed description of a person or an item in a novel, and I don't really "see" anything. But I have an active inner monologue. I "hear" myself saying the words when reading or writing, I "talk" to myself when solving problems or just thinking about stuff. Especially when programming I'm reasoning by discussing the problem with myself, the only difference being that I usually don't open my mouth and vocalize the discussion. Though sometimes when I'm alone I do just that.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. Of course it isn't impossible, and this is backed by what we know about paleoanthropology and other instances of cognition in animals - humans were making stone tools millions of years ago, which takes planning in the form of imagining what you want the tool to look like and how you will do it and what it will be used for. It's exceedingly likely we had this ability long before complex speech evolved. Apes also use and make tools, which would require planning, and I don't think they have an internal monologue going on. birds from the corvid family can do some pretty advanced problem solving that requires planning. Cetaceans might be an exception, because they appear to have some form of language, but this is a pretty wild claim not really backed by any kind of science as we understand it today.
    - GeoAtreides 2y ago
      Animals can not manipulate abstract concepts nor can they do long-term plans. No crow can plan an international trip spanning a couple of weeks and two change-overs. And some people definitely can't do it start to end, but they can at least plan the first 5-7 steps. Also, maybe inner monologue is not a binary have/have not, but maybe it is on a continuum.
      - glitchc 2y ago
        Not sure. Migratory birds seem to manage this just fine. Not only do they make multiple stops to eat and rest, they also navigate around bad weather and still make it to their intended destination (at least most of the time).
        GeoAtreides 2y ago
        > Migratory birds seem to manage this just fine Instincts.
      - JohnMakin 2y ago
        Yes, no one is disputing that animals are not as intelligent and lack the same capacity for planning that humans do, but the post you're replying to is disputing the fact that planning is done solely through internal narrative/monologue, which is easily disprovable by pointing to the examples I did. There are many more in nature.
- IlliOnato 2y ago
  > "why we simply can't take their word for it"? As someone who was involved in spiritual practice of "stopping internal dialogue" for years, I can tell you that one learns that that dialogue (or monologue, pretty much the same thing) is quite subtle and complex, essentially multi-layered. Typically, when you think that you "think about nothing at all" it's just the most surface layer that has stopped, and more subtle talking to yourself is still going on. It takes training just to become able to notice and recognize it. After all, it's just such a constant and monotone hum at the back of one's mind, one learns to completely ignore it. So no, I would not take a word of people who were not trained to notice their internal monologue that they haven't any :-)
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > In this particular case, is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? My concern is that if we take their word for it, we're actually buying into two assumptions which (AFAIK) are both unproven: 1. That "Internal Monologues" (not consciously forced by attention) exist in the first place, as opposed to being false-memories generated after-the-fact by our brain to explain/document a non-language process that just occurred. (Similar to how our conscious brains pretend that we were in control of certain fast reflexes.) 2. Some people truly don't have them, as opposed to just not being aware of them.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    Not only are they unproven, but are ultimately not provable at all. Some people will say yes, some people will say no. Probably we can take their word for it, but in the simplest case they could just lie (in either direction) and we would have no way to tell. In short, maybe these inner monologues exist and maybe they don't, but science can't comment on that. That said, it is clearly something we are interested in, but it will need to be addressed in some other way (i.e. religion, ideology, etc.).
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > but are ultimately not provable at all No, they are potentially falsifiable as we get better at scanning, identifying, intervening in brain activity. Just off the top of my head here, suppose we create a table puzzle problem that (in itself) doesn't require language to understand, like ones we make for certain animals. Have human subjects (silently) solve it. Afterwards, quiz the solvers about their internal monologue--or lack thereof--dividing them into two groups and noting the words used. Now change to a second puzzle of similar style and same overall difficult. Stun/anesthetize the language-centers of subjects, to deny access to any of the monologue-words (validating this intervention will involve other research), and then test them on the second problem. * If performance is constant for both groups, that suggests the monologue is illusory or at least not needed for this kind/scope of problem. * If performance drops for both groups, that suggests the no-monologue people might just not be as aware of a linguistic process that's actually happening. * If performance drops for monologue-subjects, that suggests it's a real and important difference in modes of logical thought. * If some other combination happens, you have an mysterious and exciting new line of research.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Because we can't be sure whether two people interpret what "inner monologue" means and whether they think it describes a phenomenon that actually isn't different between them and other people. For example, I can think of interpretations of "I picture objects that I'm thinking about" that range from me not experiencing the phenomenon to me indeed experiencing the phenomenon. To say that you're not experiencing something that other people are experiencing in their head is a solipsistic notion where you hypothesize an experience that you imagine others are having and then discard it for being different than yours.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    And here I thought this was solved decades ago - I need to find the source, but I read about an old study where people describe their experience, and the answers were all over the "range from me not experiencing the phenomenon to me indeed experiencing the phenomenon". Then again, it's trivially reproducible - people self-report all variants of inner monologue, including lack of it, whenever a question about it pops up on-line. Same is the case with imagination - aphantasia is a thing (I would know, I have it).
    - hombre_fatal 2y ago
      I'm responding to "why can't we just take their word for it?" That you and I can come up with different ways to describe our subjective experience in conversation doesn't mean that we have a different subjective experience. Especially not when relayed by a species that's frequently convinced it has a trending mental disorder from TikTok.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        We can keep talking about it, and assuming we're both honest, we'll arrive at the answer to whether or not our subjective experiences differ. To fail at that would require us to have so little in common that we wouldn't be able to communicate at all. Which is obviously not the case, neither for us, nor for almost every possible pair of humans currently alive.
Terr_ 2y ago
> The existence of an "inner monologue" isn't really a falsifiable claim. Another possibility is that inner-monologues (ones not forced by conscious effort) do exist, but are just a kind of false-memory, something one part of our brain generates after-the-fact to explain/document the outcome of another non-language part. Kind of like how certain reflex-actions can occur before certain decision-making area of the brain light up, yet humans will believe that they sensed the event and made a thinking choice.
aeternum 2y ago
Feynman came up with a potential test by tracking the things he could and couldn't do while counting seconds (via internal monologue). He found he generally count not talk while counting. He then had others try and found that one of his mathematician friends was able to talk just fine while counting because it turned out he was counting visually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y

The existence of an "inner monologue" isn't really a falsifiable claim. Some people claim to have one while other people claim not to, but we can't test the truth of these claims.

glitchc 2y ago

In this particular case, is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? This is not a case of where if I say "weak" or "strong", most people pick strong because no one wants to be weak, even if the context is unknown (nuclear force for example).

GeoAtreides 2y ago
> is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? because if we give them a problem to solve in their head and just give us the answer, they will. By problem I mean planning a trip, a meal, how to pay the mortgage, etc. It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. Even if some people claim theirs is 'in images'.
- glitchc 2y ago
  Perhaps there's confusion in how we are using the word monologue. I took it to mean a conversation, a dialogue where the problem is perhaps solved using a dialectic method, or simply a conversation. Since one can solve a problem by following some memorized steps, no conversation required, this is perhaps not a good test, or we mean different things when we say "monologue."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rprospero 2y ago
  > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue I once had a teacher claim that people who claimed to have aphantasia were lying, because those people have read books and it is impossible to read a book without picture the scene in your mind's eye. Are you citing the same source that she was?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    I wish I had such a teacher, because I'd learn the term "aphantasia", instead of worrying all my youth that I'm doing reading wrong, as I could never picture anything I was reading in my mind (and as a result, I found scenery descriptions to be mind dumbingly boring).
- staticman2 2y ago
  >> It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue That's quite the claim.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. How can science make this claim if it can't prove (or disprove) the existence of an internal monologue?
  - IlliOnato 2y ago
    Well, I remember Richard Feynman came up with an interesting experiment. He found he could not count objects when he read aloud some text at the same time. He had to name the numbers, and it was impossible if he was already engaging his speech. He thought this was universal, but doing this experiment with friends, he discovered a guy who could count while reading aloud. So when Feynman asked him, how he does this, turned out that the guy instead of "pronouncing" numbers was "seeing" colored numbers in his imagination, so his speech was not involved. I supposed this experiment can be modified and generalized, and at least to shed some light on this problem.
- photon_lines 2y ago
  'It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue.' - Sorry, but I disagree with this. I have no 'internal voice' or monologue - whenever I see a problem, my brain actually and fully models it using images. I believe 25% of the population doesn't have the internal monologue which you're referring to and this has been tested and confirmed. I highly recommend listening to this Lex Friedman podcast episode to get a full grasp on the complexities of modelling language and general modelling present in the human brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Jd9GI6XqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Jd9GI6XqE
  - GeoAtreides 2y ago
    Sure, I do mention thinking in images in my original comment and count it as some type of internal monologue. I personally do not believe it's all images, as that would preclude using highly abstract concepts. But I might be wrong, and it might be 100% images. That being said, it does count as an internal monologue.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Can you draw a picture of an example of what you see when you think about something?
    - photon_lines 2y ago
      Sure - with the Alice example, when I saw the problem I came up with a really simple visual example of Alice having 3 sisters and 4 brothers. When I visualized it I saw Alice standing next to 3 other women (her sisters) and her 4 brothers standing close by. When I imagined asking her brother how many sisters he has, I could see that Alice was standing there next to 3 other women and thus came up with the answer of 4. Does this make sense?
      - magicalhippo 2y ago
        This could account for why some people are much better at say geometry than algebra. I'm the opposite. I rarely visualize things I read, be it geometry or poetry. I can read a detailed description of a person or an item in a novel, and I don't really "see" anything. But I have an active inner monologue. I "hear" myself saying the words when reading or writing, I "talk" to myself when solving problems or just thinking about stuff. Especially when programming I'm reasoning by discussing the problem with myself, the only difference being that I usually don't open my mouth and vocalize the discussion. Though sometimes when I'm alone I do just that.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  > It's impossible to plan without an internal monologue. Of course it isn't impossible, and this is backed by what we know about paleoanthropology and other instances of cognition in animals - humans were making stone tools millions of years ago, which takes planning in the form of imagining what you want the tool to look like and how you will do it and what it will be used for. It's exceedingly likely we had this ability long before complex speech evolved. Apes also use and make tools, which would require planning, and I don't think they have an internal monologue going on. birds from the corvid family can do some pretty advanced problem solving that requires planning. Cetaceans might be an exception, because they appear to have some form of language, but this is a pretty wild claim not really backed by any kind of science as we understand it today.
  - GeoAtreides 2y ago
    Animals can not manipulate abstract concepts nor can they do long-term plans. No crow can plan an international trip spanning a couple of weeks and two change-overs. And some people definitely can't do it start to end, but they can at least plan the first 5-7 steps. Also, maybe inner monologue is not a binary have/have not, but maybe it is on a continuum.
    - glitchc 2y ago
      Not sure. Migratory birds seem to manage this just fine. Not only do they make multiple stops to eat and rest, they also navigate around bad weather and still make it to their intended destination (at least most of the time).
      - GeoAtreides 2y ago
        > Migratory birds seem to manage this just fine Instincts.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      Yes, no one is disputing that animals are not as intelligent and lack the same capacity for planning that humans do, but the post you're replying to is disputing the fact that planning is done solely through internal narrative/monologue, which is easily disprovable by pointing to the examples I did. There are many more in nature.
IlliOnato 2y ago
> "why we simply can't take their word for it"? As someone who was involved in spiritual practice of "stopping internal dialogue" for years, I can tell you that one learns that that dialogue (or monologue, pretty much the same thing) is quite subtle and complex, essentially multi-layered. Typically, when you think that you "think about nothing at all" it's just the most surface layer that has stopped, and more subtle talking to yourself is still going on. It takes training just to become able to notice and recognize it. After all, it's just such a constant and monotone hum at the back of one's mind, one learns to completely ignore it. So no, I would not take a word of people who were not trained to notice their internal monologue that they haven't any :-)
Terr_ 2y ago
> In this particular case, is there any reason why we simply can't take their word for it? My concern is that if we take their word for it, we're actually buying into two assumptions which (AFAIK) are both unproven: 1. That "Internal Monologues" (not consciously forced by attention) exist in the first place, as opposed to being false-memories generated after-the-fact by our brain to explain/document a non-language process that just occurred. (Similar to how our conscious brains pretend that we were in control of certain fast reflexes.) 2. Some people truly don't have them, as opposed to just not being aware of them.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  Not only are they unproven, but are ultimately not provable at all. Some people will say yes, some people will say no. Probably we can take their word for it, but in the simplest case they could just lie (in either direction) and we would have no way to tell. In short, maybe these inner monologues exist and maybe they don't, but science can't comment on that. That said, it is clearly something we are interested in, but it will need to be addressed in some other way (i.e. religion, ideology, etc.).
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > but are ultimately not provable at all No, they are potentially falsifiable as we get better at scanning, identifying, intervening in brain activity. Just off the top of my head here, suppose we create a table puzzle problem that (in itself) doesn't require language to understand, like ones we make for certain animals. Have human subjects (silently) solve it. Afterwards, quiz the solvers about their internal monologue--or lack thereof--dividing them into two groups and noting the words used. Now change to a second puzzle of similar style and same overall difficult. Stun/anesthetize the language-centers of subjects, to deny access to any of the monologue-words (validating this intervention will involve other research), and then test them on the second problem. * If performance is constant for both groups, that suggests the monologue is illusory or at least not needed for this kind/scope of problem. * If performance drops for both groups, that suggests the no-monologue people might just not be as aware of a linguistic process that's actually happening. * If performance drops for monologue-subjects, that suggests it's a real and important difference in modes of logical thought. * If some other combination happens, you have an mysterious and exciting new line of research.
hombre_fatal 2y ago
Because we can't be sure whether two people interpret what "inner monologue" means and whether they think it describes a phenomenon that actually isn't different between them and other people. For example, I can think of interpretations of "I picture objects that I'm thinking about" that range from me not experiencing the phenomenon to me indeed experiencing the phenomenon. To say that you're not experiencing something that other people are experiencing in their head is a solipsistic notion where you hypothesize an experience that you imagine others are having and then discard it for being different than yours.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  And here I thought this was solved decades ago - I need to find the source, but I read about an old study where people describe their experience, and the answers were all over the "range from me not experiencing the phenomenon to me indeed experiencing the phenomenon". Then again, it's trivially reproducible - people self-report all variants of inner monologue, including lack of it, whenever a question about it pops up on-line. Same is the case with imagination - aphantasia is a thing (I would know, I have it).
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    I'm responding to "why can't we just take their word for it?" That you and I can come up with different ways to describe our subjective experience in conversation doesn't mean that we have a different subjective experience. Especially not when relayed by a species that's frequently convinced it has a trending mental disorder from TikTok.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      We can keep talking about it, and assuming we're both honest, we'll arrive at the answer to whether or not our subjective experiences differ. To fail at that would require us to have so little in common that we wouldn't be able to communicate at all. Which is obviously not the case, neither for us, nor for almost every possible pair of humans currently alive.

Terr_ 2y ago

> The existence of an "inner monologue" isn't really a falsifiable claim. Another possibility is that inner-monologues (ones not forced by conscious effort) do exist, but are just a kind of false-memory, something one part of our brain generates after-the-fact to explain/document the outcome of another non-language part. Kind of like how certain reflex-actions can occur before certain decision-making area of the brain light up, yet humans will believe that they sensed the event and made a thinking choice.

aeternum 2y ago

Feynman came up with a potential test by tracking the things he could and couldn't do while counting seconds (via internal monologue). He found he generally count not talk while counting. He then had others try and found that one of his mathematician friends was able to talk just fine while counting because it turned out he was counting visually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y