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stavros

I don't have an internal monologue.

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What do you imagine a inner monologue to be like?

A voice in my head that narrates thoughts.

Let's say you've heard someone say "A voice in my head narrates thoughts". What happens next inside your head?

I, for example, may produce something like the following sequence of internally represented words and non-words "A voice narrates... [imagines what it can feel like] Does it feel external to [non-verbal reference to conversation partner]? It doesn't work like that [implied reference to myself] [pause for introspection] I produce words. It's not like someone else narrates thoughts in my head. [stop producing words to check that] I just think, and one thing leads to another and that's why it's hard to stop the sequence of the words being produced by me and it's not because I can't stop some intrusive voice inside my head" and so on and so forth.

Phonetic realization of the words isn't important if I don't specifically concentrate on it.

Are your thoughts or ideas ever in language before you say or write them?

I think this is the same misunderstanding as “the mind’s eye” https://x.com/stuartjritchie/status/1708871999924179024?s=46

I can narrate them if I want to, but I have to choose to. I don't have the narrator constantly in my head, my default state is "no narrator".

My guess is that’s how everyone works. But we’ll never really know. It’s all analogies like wine tasting notes.

I know plenty of people who constantly have narrated thoughts and find it very hard to stop them.

I believe they are just explaining the same thing with a different analogy. Can you stop thinking thoughts? “Narration” is a metaphor.

They're pretty clear that their thoughts are in language, and mine are not. I'm not sure how those can be the same thing. I can stop thinking thoughts, yes.

I agree with wilg. For example, what you are describing seems similar to my own subjective experience and yet, I've always thought of myself as having an inner monologue. To me, an inner monologue is just about reasoning in my head with the help of language. You are capable of formulating sentences in your head? Solving riddles? You can articulate how you reached a certain conclusion? etc. Surely not every word that comes out of your mouth comes as a surprise? I don't think having an internal monologue necessarily means having a constant conversation with yourself.

An inner monologue is something specific, and refers to thoughts in the form of language:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapersonal_communication

As I originally mentioned, I understand what you are talking about, but I just don't agree it's a real distinction. I believe people who claim to have an inner monologue and people who claim not to are having more or less the same types of internal experiences, they just describe them differently. As the Wikipedia article you linked to discusses, this sort of thing is difficult or impossible to study because it is a subjective experience within your mind. Since most of the research angles involve self-reported studies, it's highly likely that these differences are illusions created by trying to explain mental experiences with language that cannot capture it.

From the tweet I linked earlier:

> This is just an issue of these things being extremely hard to explain using language, and people using words in subtly different ways.

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