I have a serious question to people here describing themselves (as I understand it) as thinking in words and whole sentences:
How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist?
Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete? Are you afraid that thinking in language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?
1) By thinking about them in other modes. I have an internal monologue, but it's not so much "the only way I can think" as "a thing that happens that comments as I think, and can be used to talk through things in my head". Eg: I'm also a pretty strong visual/spatial thinker, I can recall scents OK, and I'm reasonably facile with numbers; all of these sorts of thinking / recollection feel different as I do them.
Some may involve the inner monologue in an assistive role - eg, for math, my mental voice will often either narrate or speak key numbers as I complete steps, which allows me to use audio-memory as well as visual-memory to keep track of all the things I'm operating on.
2) Dynamically created neologisms that refer to particular not-easily-describable thoughts. Though in many cases, my brain may not create an actual word but just think "THAT thing" where "THAT" is accompanied by the concept in question, or some association/shorthand of it.
I think it is a good idea to try to give things names. The named thing need not be very precisely defined, and it can change, or we can find a better name for it or both.
I think the way that this actually works is that we don't actually think in words and whole sentences, but that words and whole sentences flow from most of our thoughts. We've just become so used to this whole process that it feels like the words and sentences are driving the thoughts.
I'm certainly a "think in whole words and sentences" person, but if I think of it, I also have had moments realization/emotion that I certainly couldn't put into words.
I'm Flemish and my mother tongue is Dutch. Therefore I mostly think in Dutch, but sometimes I think in English. Then it regularly happens I can't think of the right word to describe something (actually that happens in Dutch too, but less frequently), while still knowing very well what I mean.
I think that can only mean that my 'real' thinking happens without words or language, and is then 'translated' into Dutch or English.
I think this is true, and was reaching for ways to express the same thought. Which just goes to show that although I internally verbalise a lot, the verbalisation itself is not the thinking. It just seems that way.
I think this can become a problem. Verbalising takes time, it acts as a brake on thought. I’m compensation I think it helps clarify and crystallise ideas and builds skills in expressing them into communicable form. There are definitely pros and cons.
I think with words, in multiple languages, but they're silent. I can't actually hear anything. Importantly though, the verbalizing is a later stage of thinking. First there is the thought, seemingly instant, non-verbalized, and fuzzy. If needed, I can already act based on that thought without verbalizing. However if I verbalize it in my head, then that allows for further analysis that may lead me to override the initial guessed value of the thought. Not everything can be verbalized easily though. I also heavily think in pictures. Pretty much exclusively scenes/objects from my memories. Sometimes remixed a bit, but nothing completely novel.
I understand thinking in concepts but not words, and I understand having an internal monolog, but it seems like you're describing a third option, unless I'm just misunderstanding. Obviously everyone's internal monolog is literally silent, as they're not speaking out loud, but it's most naturally described as 'hearing' the words in your head. (As opposed to literally hearing with your ears.)
It sounds like you're saying you will 'verbalize' your conceptual thoughts, ie put them into words, but not actually process the sounds of those words in your head? In what way do you think of the words then? As text? Or do you somehow think of words themselves using, like, the concept of each word, without mentally hearing their sounds?
If so, that is unfamiliar to me. Maybe I do it, but it's not something I recall being consciously aware of.
> Obviously everyone's internal monolog is literally silent, as they're not speaking out loud, but it's most naturally described as 'hearing' the words in your head.
I'm not sure it is that clear cut and universally same. So in my case, when I do the verbalization I do imagine the actual sounds, as opposed to written text or something like that. However those sounds are silent in the sense that they are clearly conjured up via some other pathways than what would be used to hear external voices of other people.
When thinking about images from my memories, they are extremely vivid and colorful. I can remember visiting a local supermarket and in this memory I have an immense amount of detail. I can remember individual small shapes and colors that were playing on some random advertisement TV screen hanging from the ceiling, I can remember walking past the shoe isle and I can still see the individual shoes and their texture and variation of colors in a single shoe. When I think of friends, I can see their faces with rather extreme precision. I can see individual facial hairs, birthmarks, wrinkles. This type of visual memory isn't limited in time either. I still have extremely vivid memories of at least a hundred events from when I was around 7.
When thinking of these visual memories I have, they appear in my mind's eye. It feels as if I'm at several places at once. I'm in the present, seeing whatever is in front of me. At the same time I'm also in the past, in my memory, and I can see these memories with great precision. To me, thinking and seeing these memories seems to use the same area of the brain. It feels very similar to see something in the present vs. seeing something in my past.
When I've talked to friends, I've found that the kind of precision I have in my memories isn't that common. However others still can visualize things pretty well. However there are also people who can't visualize anything. You tell them to think of their mom's face and they only see blur, perhaps making out the color of hair at best. There have been some studies into this mind's eye capability. [1]
Coming back to me saying I can't actually hear the verbalization in my head. When I say this, I'm thinking that it wouldn't surprise me at all if there are people out there for whom the verbalization seems like an actual sound. Very vivid and clear. While for me it's rather muted and feels nothing like hearing.
Interesting! Thanks, that analogy is really helpful. I definitely don't have that level of photo realistic mind's eye. As you say, I can visualize things, but it's not remotely like seeing things in the real world. The way I hear things in my mind is much more like hearing the real words. So I guess by analogy I can kind of understand what it might be like to have a similar internal auditory experience to my visual one.
FWIW reading other comments here I also realized that a better way to describe my internal monolog than internal hearing would be internal speech. It's really more like 'saying' something in my head than 'hearing' it. Even if what I'm remembering is someone else talking, it's kind of a mix between hearing them in my head and.. something like me doing an impression of them to myself.
I wonder if learning multiple languages as a kid has any influence on the way we think (I was raised bilingual and now I can speak 4 languages quite fluently), but also if the way we think determines what we are good at and the path we choose to live. I'm an engineer and I always enjoyed doing math and science, whereas I'm not that pasionate about art and humanities. I know some people can be really great at both, but most of us will only shine on one of these fields.
I think in words out loud by default, but I can intentionally interrupt my narration to get access to the instant, non-verbalized fuzzy representation. It feels weird.
A great many abstract concepts can be put into words (which are, to generalize, abstract symbols) - that is one of the great powers of human language. I wanted to ask what ideas cannot be so expressed, but of course there is a problem...
There may be candidates in qualia, the subjective experiences that tend to tie the philosophy of mind in knots, and which, being subjective, cannot be communicated precisely in language (can you tell a blind person what it is like to see red, such that they can learn it from your words?) In these cases, however, our internal monologue could refer to them indexically ("seeing red is like that", where that picks out an aggregation of memories.)
Bizzarre as this may seem to you, I can assure you that it feels very natural, easy and straightforward, though it might be something of an illusion, merely the way we explain thinking to ourselves when we pay attention to doing it (see my other post.)
I can only speak for myself apparently(I had no clue some people didn't have "conversations" in their head) but I can do both.
Frequently I will have "hunches" or "gut feelings" and so no that I can't put into words. Since this is HN, I will say that frequently occurs with programming. Sometimes a bit of code, or design, or decision will not site right with me. I can't explain it to myself internally or to others.
I am similar. After some musing I found that I usually have a faint internal monologue when considering simple things such as, "what should I write in this reply". Mostly in situations where you might be caught saying something aloud on accident. When starting a book, the first page or so usually has strong monologue, but it disappears almost completely after that. Frequently I spend hours in a row random thought. During these periods I cannot remember hearing an internal monologue. There are very likely other times that I am not conscious of the monologue. At the moment, trying to think I am floating in and out of monologue. I suppose this may be because I am somewhat focused on whether I do or not.
Finally, I've found somebody like me. I was starting afraid about how my brain works. Can I hear the sounds? is that the sound? where are the words? Oh, here I can see now. Hmm, let me try thinking about a class and methods of a module in my codebase... no voice, no words. no images. what the fuck? how I can know that.. yes it's like feeling. Fuck now I'm starting to hear the voice of somebody else. Which was the my voice?
I'm glad the top post in here kind clarifies it as "walking through situations in your head in which you have to explain things to people". Because I constantly do that but I don't need to "talk to myself" to make sense of abstract concepts. I tend to just visualize them however convenient. The "inner voice" part is just for preparing to having to explain the process to someone else, which can be helpful to order your thoughts but it's more of a byproduct than "the only way to think" for me.
I'm not sure if there's any science to this and I have doubts the questions about it have ever been formulated clearly enough for people to have an exact idea what we're even discussing here. I imagine most people can play through a potential interview in their heads and most people can think through an abstract problem (i.e. something with math/geometry) without having an inner monologue about it. It's more about how important it is to you to prepare for hypothetical conversations.
At least in my case, I have visual as well as auditory thoughts. I recently watched a video on how a Stirling Engine worked, and if I wanted to think about how it worked, I wouldn't talk myself through it, I'd just imagine the animated diagram.
Often there are shortcuts, so the internal monologue or visualisation can skip details or words if the end of the sentence is clear. Much like the way speed readers might hit a few key words to get an understanding of a sentence. It makes me wonder if the internal monologue only happens after the thoughts occur, like a narrator, though it doesn't feel that way.
There are still thoughts that are not narrated, like intuitions or moments where I can act without thinking things through. I just tried to work without an internal monologue, and I found it hard to chain thoughts together. Like I could sense what I wanted next, but I needed to have some auditory or visual hook to connect to it.
I do think in both and I feel there are multiple good answers to your question, but one that I find especially interesting is that while I do use words, they don't always mean what they mean in the general language.
So for exapmle when I use them to speak to someone, I usually use them in the common way. I transcribe my thoughts into words only in those ways in which those words are exactly used by other carriers of that language.
However, when I dream or reason about some new or abstract concept, I do still some of the words as anchors to hold on to specific parts of that concept, but I am not too strict about using the words that mean(in the common sense) - those exact parts of the concept. I just find the word that somewhat closely resembles something in that concept and use it. But it is just used as an anchor, to let my mind navigate around that concept. Many times, if I was to try to explain this concept to someone else using those exact same words - they wouldn't understand it, because they would be missing the very specific connections that my mind made just for this concept, for this thinking session. And those change all the time.
If the concept proves itself useful, I will just translate it into regular English (or other language) and write or remember etc. But it happens much later, not during the conception and reasoning stages.
> Are you afraid that thinking in language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?
I am not afraid of that and I don't think that it does so necessarily. Because if you use words simply as anchors, you can basically anchor them to any imaginable (as deep as you wish) information or concept or part of the internal world, you are basically not limited by the language. You are just using words as pointers, with arbitrary precision and pointing capability. If I am not limited by the implied requirement for those words to be used in the same way by other people (which I am not during this early stage of thought) - then words can basically be infinitely flexible.
Now I don't usually just use random words either, I automatically finds ones that sort of fit approximately, but this non-strict usage just allows to bend the boundaries and achieve great flexibility.
I do sometimes think without words though, when that just seems more efficient.
Whenever I am encountering an abstract concept internally, it does not appear as a clear visual representation but rather as its gestalt. Then there are two things happening. 1. most of these seem to bring their own set of keywords with them. 2. on the basis of these keywords I can further probe the concept using my internal monologue, like using a spotlight to get more details and pulling it out of the twilight of its gestalt. Step 2 is only necessary to explain the concept to others or put it in writing. All in all the transfer from gestalt concept to language sure leaves something behind but it also adds something that it could not have on its own.
> When I was a kid growing up in Far Rockaway, I had a friend named Bernie Walker. We both had "labs" at home, and we would do various "experiments." One time, we were discussing something -- we must have been 11 or 12 at the time -- and I said, "But thinking is nothing but talking to yourself inside."
> "Oh yeah?" Bernie said. "Do you know the crazy shape of the crankshaft in a car?"
> "Yeah, what of it?"
> "Good. Now tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking to yourself?"
- "What Do You Care What Other People Think?", Richard Feynman
Concisely describe the space battle you see in your mind's eye in less than 0.5 seconds. It's not that it can't be described. It's that I'm looking at / living a shot from a movie in realtime or faster than realtime. If I tried to write that out ... it would be too slow and actually over-specified.
Verbal thinker hear as well. Weak mind's eye, but imagined scenes or objects are actually easier to visualize and describe than memories of real objects or places, most of the time.
For me, scents are rich sensory experiences. Yet I can’t describe cinnamon to you, other than that it smells like cinnamon. It’s like an opaque pointer, I can compare equality but not inspect it beyond that.
That reminds me of the password used to enter the TARDIS control room in Doctor Who: "Crimson Eleven Delight Petrichor". But you could not say the password verbally, the words are irrelevant. You need to visualize the color, and the recall the petrichor smell in your mind, ...
Strongly verbal thinker here: weak "mind's eye" (or nose, or ear). I can remember and later identify images, music, etc with a high degree of accuracy, but when I call something up for "internal recall" my memory will almost always lack the fine detail of reality. It's very rare that I can "play back" or "conjure up" something in my head vividly. I don't absolutely require an internal monologue to think. With some things, like sports or gaming, there's a lot of non-verbal processing going on.
I can do reasonably complex verbal, mathematical, or IT work just in my head, and often have an internal monologue running while doing so. It not that my working memory[1] is especially good, it's just that if I'm spending more than a couple hours on it, I've mostly memorized it, so I can think about the solution, or at least the next step or steps, and then type or write them out. (Closing my eyes can help eliminate distractions, but isn't required. Good headphones playing something non-intrusive and blocking out audible distractions are at least as important, probably more important.)
What I can't do in my head is solve complex problems in real 3D space. If I'm trying to fit components into a box for a hobby project, or doing some moderately complicated carpentry for a home-improvement project, I prefer being hands-on. Need to be hands-on, really. I can't fit the pieces together in my head, even if I'm looking at a page full of all relevant measurements. 3D modeling software is okay, pencil and paper and drawing tools a very poor and painful substitute.
Interestingly, when I'm working with a hands-on project is one of the few times when I can make a very sharp mental picture. I can be looking at a piece of lumber, or a bare enclosure, and know it exactly what it will look like when I'm done.
The Buddhist concept of “emptiness” comes to mind. I’ve read a lot of descriptions of it, but only really grasped the concept through the subjective experience of meditation.
Further to that end, the clarity of a totally calm mind. Words can be used to poetically convey that state — but while they get close, I’m not sure they can adequately describe what pure thought is.
How do you know when to refactor code out into a new class? It starts with a hunch. You might notice that some logic had acquired a distinct shape relative to the code around it. You get this thought before the new code has a name or even a description, and now you can start to play it. It's like this in the general idea-space too.
> the same way you would talk about the concepts out loud to someone else.
But isn't this extremely exhausting and time-consuming? And if it indeed works this way, then where do you think the idea you are trying to formulate in your inner monologue comes from?
I suspect the author is exaggerating a bit when he says it's the only way he thinks. I also have the "narrative voice" but I absolutely can think about things without the voice, it just doesn't feel as much like "thinking", if that makes sense.
There are some things that are explicitly visualized, like an object I'm thinking about, where I wouldn't say in my head "I am imagining the sun. It is bright. Etc. etc.". I'd just picture the sun, and my "narrative" would probably be about why I was thinking about the sun, not describing it.
Same applies for more abstract concepts, just without the visualization.
This is how it seems for me, too. When I pay attention to what I am doing, it seems as if I am thinking in complete sentences, but if I then try to write down the idea that I have just been thinking about, I find that it takes a lot of editing to turn it into coherent language. Furthermore, I cannot really say anything about what it is like to think when I am not paying attention to doing so, so maybe it is just how I explain my experience of thinking to myself.
Perhaps experiments using techniques such as PET scans might reveal if there is something more characteristically linguistic going on in those of us who feel we have an internal monologue.
So how do you think about something that you can't describe to someone else? There are many things I can deeply understand, but turning that understanding into natural language takes considerable effort.
Are people with internal monologues incapable of understanding things they can't verbalize? Or is it that their brain just instantly verbalizes thoughts after the thoughts have already been formed? The latter seems a bit more likely to me, but I imagine it must be very lossy at times. (That is, the verbal monologue is merely a summary of the thought.) I often have thoughts that take only an instant, but would take many sentences to verbalize.
Neither; having an internal monologue doesn't necessarily mean you're constantly using it for everything, much like having speech. Though I would say it's harder to prevent oneself from "monologuizing" too much (particularly in situation of anxiety, and such) than from speaking too much, hence the meditation techniques designed to help with that. But no, at least for me there's no automatic verbalization of all thoughts.
> The latter seems a bit more likely to me, but I imagine it must be very lossy at times.
I would say that my internal monologue is kinda a summary, and is a bit lossy.
> I often have thoughts that take only an instant, but would take many sentences to verbalize.
I would not say that my internal monologue happens at speech-speed either, it can be much faster, and the actual idea or thought is still instantaneous. The monologue is more about rationalizing or understanding your thought.
This is good question. Personally I have a hard time imagining what it's like to have a deep understanding of something non-trivial without having arrived at that understanding through language.
Let me ask you this though: how do you know you understand it? If you've never rendered your idea into language, or seen/heard it put that way, then it has never been criticized or vetted by anyone else.
How can you think about concepts which cannot be put into words or for which no words exist?
Do you have to come up with elaborate verbal descriptions of abstract concepts in your head before you can think about them? If so, don't you think that any verbal description is essentially incomplete? Are you afraid that thinking in language categories prevents you from accessing deeper truths?