What do you think?
Wait, you have a little voice in your head??
Yeah you know like the devil and the angel of the cartoons…
Not sure if meta or real.
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.
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
Not trying, doing.
Cat holding paw out towards op
You will give me extra food!
The voice in my head requires complex language and symbolism. I don’t doubt that they’re capable of thought, just like Helen Keller was capable of thought before having language, but I doubt that it’s like the “little voice” in my head.
Dogs dream, and dreams are just thoughts.
Humans are animals.
True though that may be, there’s no benefit to mentioning that in this situation.
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?
they
… So what sort of non-human are you? 🧐
He’s a cat.
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.
How do you know other humans have thoughts? There is no way of measuring it, and there is no way to tell if someone is lying about it. You could measure brain activity. But There is no need for brain activity to be accompanied by experience. There is no law of nature that says that electrical signals are accompanied by experience or thoughts. There is also no way to tell the difference between a millimeter cube of brain from any animal. So if you believe that brain activity is represented by thoughts, then there is absolutely no way to draw an arbitrary line between humans and animals.
So i don’t even think it’s a question.
I think that it’s on a sliding scale. Some animals clearly have some kind of inner thought process, and clearly have their own personalities. Others not as much. I know that with cats, for instance, there are tools you can use that allow cats to communicate certain concepts to people, stings of buttons that are each linked to a discrete word. Cats can learn to string button presses together to ‘say’ things to their keepers. (Apparently the most common thing they ask for is clean water, so clean your cat’s water daily.) That may not be evidence of “thought” in the way that you’re thinking about it, but there’s clearly some form of cognition going on there.
clean water
I used to have a cat who did this. He would lead me to the bathroom, jump into the tub, and then wait patiently until I turned on the bath faucet – just a trickle!
My cat understands a “now” “later” type of situation and strings actions with it. For instance “now play later food”.
Edit: I taught him buttons and those are some of the choices
No, at least not most animals. There was a study a while back that showed that animals think by reducing the world to a series of binary choice that they react to in the moment. I imagine it’s a lot like when you’re playing a sport or video game and things get very intense and fast paced; your inner monologue isn’t telling you what your next move will be every second, you’re just reacting on instinct. That’s probably how animals see the world all the time.
That being said, “animals,” is a broad category, and some of them may be capable of creating an abstract narrative for themselves. It was recently discovered that whale songs have a phonetic alphabet, which means their language may be as complex as ours. If that’s the case, they may be capable of using that language to build an internal monologue.
I would say all living things have some form of thought and consciousness. Even those that lack brains like plants.
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I’m sure it depends on the animal. In fact humans think in at least two inner voices.
The ear consciousness is receptive, and the speech consciousness is active.
What I mean by this is a dog or another animal that spends a lot of time with people likely has a passive inner voice of their owner. A dog might hear an owner yell no when they go to do something the owner doesn’t like, even if their owner isn’t around.
Animals that are capable of speech such as a parrot, will likely have an active speech consciousness. Which is more somatic in tone.
For example, when I am in active speech consciousness I can feel my jaw and tongue muscles move. When in passive listening consciousness, my ears might move or strain to try to hear the inner speech.
With practice these somatic sensations can be decoupled from their internal sense consciousnesses. Which tends to help them quiet down and deepen meditation.
This is one of my favorite practices that’s accessible for people who don’t really meditate. The guided meditation is the first fifteen minutes of the video, so you don’t have to listen for the whole hour to get an inkling of what I’m pointing at.
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.
Many of us don’t. Many of us also don’t see images in our minds.
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.
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?
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 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.
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?
Some people do. Many of us don’t.
We don’t.
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.
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.
That’s relatable to me at least. And often music is playing my my head in the place of my inner voice.
Thx for the info…
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 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.
We function just fine. Seeing images or hearing voices in your mind is not required for any task I’m aware of.
