Do you hear your own audible voice when you think?

[Chesterton]

But my big question is this: Does your speaking voice sound like the voice you hear in your thoughts? My does not.

Then obviously it's not you doing the thinking. I suggest you see an exorcist right away.

 

[Chesterton]

My mind is still blown.

Mine too.

I thought the "crazy" limit was hearing your voice + [an agreed upon number of] other voices. I am amazed some people do not hear a voice - and especially amazed by the different means of communication (i.e. text scroll similarity) that the brain can create to convey a message to self.

To extend the question, can the people that do not hear/converse with their own voice will sound to appear in the brain? So far, I have heard mechanisms for how sound is perceived for us in this thread, but can you will yourself to speak if you wanted to?

I would consider myself a philosopher first (stoicism), but it never occurred to me to ask a question like the OP - I have been presumptuous for a while!

No, I cannot will sound to appear in my brain, nor any other sensory perception. I can only imagine them.

 

[Chesterton]

It certainly seems to be my voice, though I can make it speak with an accent.

 

[Chesterton]

People who don't have inner voice must be like NPC...

Calling people NPCs can get you banned from Twitter, you know.

 

[Chesterton]

Don’t you think in words? You’d have to experience the thoughts as words in some way. As I type this I’m experiencing the words I write in my head without any sensory information beyond what I can see i.e. no external sound.

Yes, as I said in an earlier post, I think in words, but more like linear text, nothing auditory.

 

[Kaon]

But the bottom line is, if one or more of your senses is perceiving something that's not there, the technical word for that is "hallucination".

How do you know what is "not there"? You are still using the standard of academia to judge your reality - one very rudimentary facet of reality.

Peter was fine walking on water until his reasoning brain began to think about the physics of walking on water as a human, and he fell through. Faith of a mustard seed and such: we handicap our progress by subscribing to acadeemia as if it is *the* legitimate answer to observable reality of this plane of existence. The compulsion to do this comes from deep-rooted remnants of Enlightment thinking.

Your eyes lie to you just like your other senses. Senses lie, which is why you have to choose your stance and stick to it: if you seem crazy to others, then own it. The paradigm always changes every few hundred years (because we are ignorant), so often the crazy people of one generation are the geniuses of another - and vice versa. It's all foolishness and vanity, but if you want to staunchly align yourself to the philosophy of academia as the answer to reality, then make sure you are doing it for you (and not because of social fear of being scoffed at and derided).

Keep this in mind: we know the forces of the fields that permeate every fiber of space-time, and we determine the equations of motion down to the color interaction. Yet, we still use combustible fuel to transport ourselves, and we still use rocket ships based on h2/o2 chemical reactions. Our buildings are still made of wood frames that rots, and the population is susceptible to more disease despite scientific advancement. We genetically modify our food instead of finding better ways to grow producers in a way that does not alter the genetics of the organism (cross pollination is not genetic modification - I mean literally taking a strand of DNA out of producers and replacing it with a pestaside-resisitant sequence). Either scientific advancement is a romanticism (and sinusoidal at best), or we being played for fools.

 

[Resha Caner]

I don't hear my voice or any voice, but I don't know if I would say it's quiet. When I'm in deep thought, it's so "loud" I don't hear any physical sounds.

It's an interesting question, because it's something I've pondered - pondered for the reason that for a long time I would have deep, complex thoughts and then struggle to communicate them. I did some really weird stuff as a child - well, still do according to my wife.

For a long time I would tell people I had my own internal language for processing thought that was much more efficient and much richer than any human language … kinda arrogant.

What I have since realized is that I am heavily, heavily, heavily biased toward visual perception. As such, I think in pictures, not words. The thoughts are so amazing to me but there's that pictures and thousand words thing that always gets in my way.

It was pretty cool when I took geometry in high school, though. I can look at a geometry problem and know the answer in a flash. The time it takes me then, is only the time necessary to translate and write it out in mathematical language. I still sometimes have that happen with stories or engineering problems, where an entire feature film comes to me in a flash, and I rush to write it before it fades … or I know how to solve an engineering problem in a flash. It's kinda freaky sometimes.

And it means my verbal skills are actually pretty bad. I'm much better at typing out a discussion than speaking to people face to face. I absolutely hate phones where there are no visual clues for me.

I'm rambling aren't I? Sorry. It's just that it's a topic near and dear to my heart.

 

[Kaon]

There's a meme or twitter thread floating around about this, and yes it seems the two camps find it hard to imagine being in the other.

I think it's better to phrase this as 'having an inner monologue' as opposed to 'hearing your own voice when you think'.

I definitely have a voice, but it is not quite like hearing. If I imagine the sound of the roadrunner's Meep Meep or Beethoven's 9th, I can definitely perceive the sound-i-ness of it. The timpani sound like timpani, not like the 'idea of timpani'. At the same time it is not like actually hearing Beethoven's 9th. Similarly for this inner voice.

It certainly seems to be my voice, though I can make it speak with an accent.

It's not always yakking away. I'm sure when I drive to work, there are stretches of wordlessness.

This is fascinating (the entire thread so far).

What about in different languages? Can you speak in a different language?

 

[essentialsaltes]

This is fascinating (the entire thread so far).

What about in different languages? Can you speak in a different language?

It's not very natural, but yes. Indeed, since my German ain't that great, unless it's really a reflex like 'Gesundheit', I'm usually mentally rehearsing what I want to say.

So it's not as immediate like my train of thought is.

me [read's Kaon's question]
me [in my head] "Can I think in German?"
me [in my head] "Kann ich auf Deutsch denken?"

That second one wasn't really me thinking in German (or was it? maybe it was) but mentally translating something I already said to myself.

Similarly, after some great effort, I was able to 'translate' my voice into Samuel L Jackson's voice. Not my voice impersonating Sam Jackson, but something that sounds like Sam Jackson's voice the way the timpani sound like timpani. This is even more 'artificial' feeling than thinking in German, and it's hard to sustain for more than a phrase or sentence, and has the same feeling of translating something I was already going to say.

Probably if I practiced, I imaging fluency in a foreign language would provide 'fluency' in mentalese. So maybe both German and Jackson would be more natural than they are.

I mean, obviously, I haven't always spoken English and it isn't hardwired into the brain, so at some point English must have been grafted into my mentalese.

 

[Chesterton]

How do you know what is "not there"? You are still using the standard of academia to judge your reality - one very rudimentary facet of reality.

Sound waves are actual things. There are no sound waves entering the ear because of thinking.

 

[Kaon]

Sound waves are actual things. There are no sound waves entering the ear because of thinking.

Your brain is a receiver, and a transmitter.

 

[RaymondG]

You hear them audibly?
I form words in my mind when I type, read, etc. but I don't hear them audibly. Or like talking to yourself without speaking, that's not audible though.

I do that, too. I don't think it's that unusual.

I can know what a song sounds like in my thoughts, I can sing it in my thoughts, but it's not audible. It's not like hearing it with my ears.

I believe we are saying the same thing....just in different ways. We do not mean to say that our thoughts sound like someone yelling at us from the outside of us.

Although, I have had visions in which I heard and saw things that I thought were from/on the outside... But this is not what we are talking about for normal thought.

It is, i guess, an acknowledgement that a word is read... or thought is formulated...that "sounds" like your own voice....

 

[Chesterton]

Your brain is a receiver, and a transmitter.

It transmits by telling the mouth to create sound waves.

 

[Kaon]

It transmits by telling the mouth to create sound waves.

It can receive FM Radio waves based on the circuitry; no speaking required.

 

[Chesterton]

It can receive FM Radio waves based on the circuitry; no speaking required.

I don't know what that has to do with the topic of hearing one's own thoughts, though.

 

[Kaon]

I don't know what that has to do with the topic of hearing one's own thoughts, though.

Because if you can receive radio waves from outside sources, you can receive them from internal sources.

 

[RaymondG]

Anyone who thinks they are hearing voices, even their own if they aren't speaking, should get medical advice, imo.

Not so fast.... ask around... this is very common.

No, it is not the hearing of voices.......It is the conscious speaking and hearing of yourself speak in your head.

No one has said that they heard a random voice that they could not recognize in their head.

It is yourself deciding to speak in your head.....as, I once felt before this thread, everyone does, most of the time, when praying.

Now I have to repent from believing that people, who clasped hands together and mumble before meals, were doing it to be seen....... Now I understand, that they may have no other alternatives..... Either pray aloud....or not at all....

 

[Chesterton]

Because if you can receive radio waves from outside sources, you can receive them from internal sources.

Does the brain produce FM radio waves? I've never heard of that.

 

[RaymondG]

Honestly, the way you describe it makes it sound like a disorder, something that shouldn't be happening.

I do consider myself an alien, but not because of this.....for I thought this was common amongst you humans.

So if you were to sit through a rock concert, where a band was playing at a decibel level around 120, you would be hearing your thoughts at more than 120?

It is not about loudness. You will always be heard in your head no matter what is going on outside. Most likely, I would be thinking, "This is too loud!, I wonder how this will affect my hearing!" And I would hear the full sentence clearly in my head while thinking it.

I just think it, I don't hear anything.

I believe we are saying that same thing, just in different ways. How do you know that you thought anything? What we call hearing, is the acknowledgement of your thought. It isnt an audible sound.

We say speak....you say think. We say hear.....you say that you just know you thought something.

Yes, sometimes it involves visualization, sometimes visualization of words.

So now you are seeing things that arent there? Words floating in space? Im sure there is a disorder for that....

 

[klutedavid]

A colleague of mine was amazed at something she just found out. I had never heard of it either.
What she read was that some people, when they are thinking, hear their own voice, audibly just like they are actually talking. They can look in the mirror and have an internal conversation with themselves... while hearing their voice.

This colleague, and others so we have found, do just that. They were baffled that myself and others could think and make decisions in the silence of our mind.

So, are you one who can think and have thoughts in silence... Or... do you hear your own voice in a audible dialog?

I have never heard an audible voice in my mind except for once in my life. Someone called my name during an extended prayer session.

There was no mistake that someone called out my name as I heard it. I was alone at the time in the countryside.

I have met some folk who hear audible voices, so I know that it is a real phenomenon.