What do you think?
Not even all humans have that little voice.
In a way that scares me, but it would explain how we have so many different ways of looking at life.
I’m one of the people who doesn’t have a little voice. It weirds me out that other people do.
Do you ever speak to yourself out loud?
Nope
When you think about what you’re going to write, do you compose any of it in your head first?
Like, this sentence I am writing after I thought the first half of it in my brain. The rest of this paragraph I’m writing one word at a time, but I still imagine each word.
Oh no. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just my existence. It just streams out of my brain, through my fingers instantaneously. There is no first half second half.
Although I am a known terrible writer.
Worth noting, this is normal from my perspective. I think all of you are the weird ones.
Are you able to visualize? I have an inner monologue but no ability to visualize
I can visualize and have an inner monologue, I was just pointing out that not everyone does.
Sorry, I hope I didn’t come off as aggressive! I just think it’s amazing all the different ways people think.
You didn’t! I was just clarifying, no worries.
I don’t believe this. I know this is supposedly true, but I feel like people are lieing just to feel special or something.
How can someone not have a head voice? If one needs to go to the supermarket, does one not think “humm… What do I need… I need bananas, toilet paper…”…
People with neurodivergences ranging from mild autism to major life-ruining conditions have been hearing “I don’t believe you, you’re just doing it for attention” forever, and that’s a crappy and potentially very harmful position for someone outside the situation to take.
I’ve never had an inner monologue and I’ve had a conversation with a friend (who has an inner monologue) about this. He said the same thing about “specialness”, but I don’t really understand why one would be more or less special than the other.
It’s just simply another way to be.
And to answer your question, I go with a list and go and look for what I wrote down. Usually it’s images that go through my mind rather than a structured sentence, which makes no sense to me - but I don’t think it’s unspecial or anything!
Do you see things in your brain?
And maybe reflect a little bit on why you immediately reject the experiences of others just because they differ from your specific one?
While I have an inner monologue, I’m also able to shut it down and still think. The inner voice is likely an artefact of how we learn. So much learning is done by voice instruction that it becomes the default for most people.
I have a head voice, but not all the time, I see images, but not all the time, I can hear music in my head, most of the time.
When I write things down, I often speak the sentence in my head as I write it, but sometimes the words just fall out of me with no voice leading them
when im planning a food shop, I visualise the shop and walk around it in my head so I put the items I want in the right order on my list. When working out what i need it’s a combination of visualising the fridge/freezer and cupboards and physically looking in them to see what I have and then looking at my meal plan to see what I need. The meal plan i made by just sensing what im craving that week.
When I learn to play a song, I hear the music in my head and can sound that out to work out chords and melodies.
When I compose music, I can hear the next chord I want in my head and then have to sound that out on my instrument.
When I make silly videos to send to my family group chat, I think visually.
People are just different. If you struggle with that concept, then I feel sorry for you.
You say it’s for people to feel special, I say it seems to me that it’s more you feeling like you aren’t special because you wish you could think the way other people do.
In reality, it doesn’t matter how you think. I envy my wife as she is much smarter and more organised than me, but she can’t visualise anything or hear music in her head and thinks more systematically. She is jealous that I can do these things.
We both agree it’s silly.
Fantastic attitude. Do you always discount things you’re too stupid to understand as lies or is this a special case?
When I used to come out of the closet as a teenager, this was a common response: “it’s not real” or “you’ve decided to do this”.
It didn’t occur to me I could have righteous indignation about it, but it did lead to me to a place where I’m still enthusiastically delighted/shocked/vindicated when straight people literally don’t care about gays, or aren’t disgusted by gays, or when they wish noncishet people happy anniversary.
Not everyone has a voice in their head. Do you have a cat? Cats have thoughts. Unfortunately that thought is sometimes, “eff you, human!”
What do you mean about “not everyone has a voice in their head”? I have one… I would like to research more about this topic.
What do you mean about “not everyone has a voice in their head”?
Well, what do you think it means?
I believe it would be interesting to talk about this with someone wo inner monologue.
I do not have an internal monologue.
This has been at least discussed/studied before but I don’t know if there has been any sort of formal poll to find a rate between those that do and those that don’t.
There are some studies. I don’t remember the specifics but it’s something like 50/50 on hearing and seeing and about 20 percent do neither. I’m sure those numbers are off, but that’s vaguely what i remember reading.
What do you mean by seeing? Like they don’t see images in their mind?
We don’t.
Some people do. Many of us don’t.
I have to ask - in what way do you think about stuff? Especially whem you need to be mindful of a process or remember something?
I still think in words and images, but there is no voice.
Something else that came up in previous discussions. I remember emotional response more than specific things. For example, my wife can remember what we wore, what we ate, and other specifics, of a date we had years ago. I barely remember even the location, but I can easily recall that I was happy about the date, but there was some mild frustration early on, something about the restaurant, but then feeling better about it later.
I say this and my wife says, “Oh yeah, we were annoyed because we had reservations but still had to wait 20 minutes, but then we were given an appetizer.”
However, before my comments, she couldn’t recall if we liked the place or not.
I’ll remember if I liked someone, but not why or even their name.
Mine is just chunks of info or ideas. My coworkers think this is why i talk a lot unfiltered- because i don’t hear how it will sound it in my head before it comes out of my mouth. There’s a little test online that was going around for awhile where you try to visualize a red star and grade it 1-5.
I am curious how many people don’t have an inner monologue, but there are a few articles on the subject. Here’s one at random.>
My cognition is mixed. Verbal inner monologue is going most of the time when I’m just thinking about routine stuff. But if I’m “in the flow zone” working on a project or playing music or something like that, the little “voice in my head” vanishes completely and that’s when I’m the happiest. I suspect most people can relate to those modes.
That’s relatable to me at least. And often music is playing my my head in the place of my inner voice.
Agreed, now that I think about it. It’s definitely better to be in the zone. If I’m monologuing I think it might signify that I’m having trouble with something, but I don’t necessarily enjoy being that aware of my own self.
Thx for the info…
There are also people who are unable to see images in their mind. In case you want to go further down the rabbit hole.
Do you know if it’s some kind of mental illness? I mean some kind of human abnormality, or do you believe there are a lot of people like that?
My theory is that there’s no such thing as neurotypical.
Neurotypical is just the statistical average of all the different ways we’re fucked in the head.
i.e. Half have anxiety, the other half have depression and we just assume normal is somewhere in the middle.
We function just fine. Seeing images or hearing voices in your mind is not required for any task I’m aware of.
My MIL and to some extent my husband are like that. It was painful discussing design plans with them when we reno’d our kitchen. I just started doing mood boards so they could see what I had in my head that I wanted it to look like.
I’m terrible at decorating!! After 20+ years in my house most of my walls have pictures that are sentimental to me but not visually connected in any way.
There are a lot of us.
Many of us don’t. Many of us also don’t see images in our minds.
I don’t have one but my SO does and when he first referenced to it I just stared at him like he was hallucinating. Like wtf you mean you have a tiny voice that functions as a narrator at times?, doesn’t that freak you out? Does it use the third person to address you? It still kind of creeps me out because, as I said, I don’t have one.
Thoughts, yes. Please keep in mind that thoughts are not necessarily in the form of a voice, even in humans.
Not sure about thoughts, but cats are interesting in their level of committment to their intent when they “decide” they want to do something. They are laser-focused and its hard to actually meaningfully distract them from the execution once the order’s been placed haha.
Watch them sometime. Cat.exe are very deiberate little critters. It reminds me of when you hit the share sheet on iOS but you change your mind and try desperately to navigate away from it popping up or hoping you can cancel out the instruction but nope. Its coming
When my cat is staring me in my eyes I swear he’s trying to mind control me.
Cat holding paw out towards op
You will give me extra food!
Not trying, doing.
That’s just his taxoplasma communicating with your taxoplasma. Nothing to worry about.
They don’t have language, so they can’t have the internal dialogue.
But can they have imagination? Since many animals have dreams, then why not?
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My dog’s would often woof and move their paws on their dreams.
How can you say that animals don’t have language?
As I said in an earlier comment elsewhere in this post:
Have you never seen a dog wag their tail or play bow?
Have you never seen a squirrel twitching their tail at another squirrel who’s encroached on their territory?
Have you never encountered any media about whale songs?
All kinds of animals have all kinds of language.
I would say that animals have thoughts, yes. But I don’t think that they have an inner monologue or voice.
You could probably ask someone who has no inner voice. I think animals might be more similar to that.
No, but that is because they don’t have language.
That said, plenty of humans do not have a voiced internal experience. The lack of language does not imply a lack of cognition. I would expect that the brain of a closely related organism, say a chimp, would have many similar experiences generated by the same stimuli. Would they experience green like I experience green? I can’t even say that about a person sitting next to me, but they probably have an equivalent experience.
That said, if we had a way of communicating could we reach agreed terms? I can do that with my cat, so I would think he has an understanding of me and my behaviours along with what tends to happen when I do certain things like clap then shake my hands at the end of a treat session. He knows there are no more treats, he associates that with my hands clapping and shaking, so we communicate. Does he have a voice in his head describing it? Probably not. Does he have Meows? Again, probably not, but he would have a sense and memories of previous times.
Does he have Meows?
That’s such a cute and funny thing to imagine lol. An inner meowologue
they don’t have language
Have you never seen a dog wag their tail or play bow?
Have you never seen a squirrel twitching their tail at another squirrel who’s encroached on their territory?
Have you never encountered any media about whale songs?
All kinds of animals have all kinds of language.
I meant to say language in the linguistics sense, a series of abstract items which can be arranged to convey arbitrary meaning. For example, a dog barking can be a threat display, a warning, playful, sad, afraid, and so on. But can you use barking to create grammar? With grammar you could have labels for items in the world and use various barks to refer to them, make requests, ask questions, and so on. Some types of animals have warning calls that are specific to types of predators, for example an eagle call or a leopard call. Leopards require different responses than eagles so the distinction is very useful and helps others to respond. This is not quite language but is definitely a step in the right direction.
So yes, you are correct, lots of animals can communicate things to each other, but it is not the same as language like what humans have. Could we find an animal that does have language? Or something very close? Sure, but we haven’t shown that yet. Maybe we should focus on giving other animals a chance to develop before we wipe them all out.
but it is not the same as language like what humans have
And it doesn’t have to be. In fact this sort of thinking can limit how we learn about other animals.
Dogs don’t pass the mirror test for self awareness like some corvids and a few other animals do. But dogs don’t experience each other primarily through vision, scent is much more their main sense. So is that even a valid test for canid self awareness?
Some animals do have language and animals that are around people a lot likely have an inner voice that is their owner’s voice.
They likely don’t plan using this voice, the way people do. But it certainly influences their behavior.
A dog that’s been yelled at for getting in the garbage might hear a no in their head even if their owners at work.
This is something I’ve always been highly skeptical of. As a somewhat experienced meditator, I’m hyper-aware of the constant flood of self-talk happening in my head, but I don’t remember paying particular attention to it before I started practicing. It has always been there, but until then, I hadn’t paid any special attention to it. Whenever this subject comes up with people who don’t meditate, they often seem to live under the illusion that, except for intentional thoughts, their mind is more or less silent the rest of the time. I’d argue that 99.9% of people couldn’t sit for 20 seconds without letting their mind wander, even if their life depended on it. Even I couldn’t, despite my experience in meditation.
That’s why I think that when people are asked whether they have this inner voice or not, some say no because they’re not aware of it. Not having it would effectively be synonymous with being enlightened.
I have internal voice sometimes but not others. In some things my cognition is far more verbal, working through something like a monologue or conversation. Other times I may have more of a mental image of something, sometimes more in real space and sometimes completely disconnected from real space. Sometimes it is much more abstract with sensations and emotions with very little in terms of concrete metaphores.
Also I can have racing thoughts without it being language. I also have impacts on those racing thoughts from taking Ritalin (ADHD medication) and it is not just the word thoughts but also the flow of other types of cognition.
Also an experienced meditator.
Not everyone thinks in words. Some people think in pictures. Or in other sense consciousnesses. As an experienced cook, I can think in taste and smell without any auditory component of ‘what should I put in this dish’. For example.
As for word thinking, passive thoughts are more auditory and active thoughts more somatic (throat and jaw muscles will move). These can be decoupled from the sense of I making, especially passive thoughts.
At which point you get thoughts think themselves, to quote Jack Kornfield. A sort of bubbling up of passive thoughts in voices that aren’t mine.
It’s likely animals that live close to people experience this. The owners voice yelling no when they do something the owner wouldn’t like, even if the owner isn’t around.
Anyway, trying to not think can be like holding your breath. I can do that for awhile. But it’s not right effort. Letting thoughts settle, like sand in a glass of water. And letting go of the sense of I making. The mind will rest quite naturally. That’s calm abiding.
In other words, it’s attachment to the inner voice that’s making it difficult for you to imagine that a lot of people think in pictures or other ways. And noticing this sense of attachment in your practice with the intention of letting it go, might deepen your insight into yourself and what others may or may not experience.
Edit: this listening meditation is helpful for me in letting go of attachment to the inner voice. As is annapanasati, especially the third tetrad.
Yes. They think less but they vibe more. We overthink and undervibe.
Humans are animals.
True though that may be, there’s no benefit to mentioning that in this situation.
they
… So what sort of non-human are you? 🧐
He’s a cat.
I was making the point on the notion that we might be alone in that vs animals. If you don’t distinguish man from other animals, why would you assume that they couldn’t?
My cat has thoughts. They’re usually “today I feel like biting my owner because it’s a load of fun”
This video perfectly describes my cat… except the actual fur color. Because he’s a snowshoe, not… whatever kind of cat species is in this video.
Have you ever been close to a cat? I cant believe they can be wacky like this without some sort of inner monologue and intention.
Animals have thoughts, that is clear as day.
Inner Monolog? In a way. But not like us because they don’t speak English motherfucker.
But it’s possible to have thoughs if you don’t have inner monologue?
Bro, not even all people have an inner monologue. There are many different modes to process thoughts.
Yes. A thought can be a picture.
And I don’t say that they don’t have inner Monolog. It wouldn’t be like ours because that depends on the language we use.
A dogs inner Monolog would be barking I guess.
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Probably not expressed as a voice, but definitely thinking.
One of our cats would regularly get “that look” on her face and we’d tell her “Lorelei! Stop thinking evil thoughts!” then she’d go on a tear. Clearly plotting what she was going to do.
I think so. I have parrots who are at a 4 year old human’s intelligence level. They do things they know they shouldn’t and wait for me to turn my back, it’s like they know they shouldn’t but have an intrusive thought and act on it. Of course, once I say “excuse me…” With the dad tone, they fly to their cages and pretend they did nothing. To me that takes thought and reasoning, desire, planning, action, etc. On their part.
Dogs dream, and dreams are just thoughts.
