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Inner Speech: New Voices
Much of what we say is never said aloud. It occurs only silently, as inner speech. We chastise, congratulate, joke, and generate endless commentary, all without making a sound. This distinctively human ability to create public language in the privacy of our own minds-to, in a sense, "hear" ourselves talking when no one else can-is no less remarkable for its familiarity. And yet, until recently, inner speech remained at the periphery of philosophical and psychologicaltheorizing. This volume, comprised of chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, displays the rapidly growing interest among researchers in the puzzles surrounding the nature and cognitive role of the inner voice. Questions the aids and obstacles inner speech presents to self-knowledge; the complex relation it bears to overt speech production and perception; the means by which inner speech can be identified and empirically assessed; its role in generating auditory verbal hallucinations; and its relationship to conceptual thought itself.
- GenresPsychologyPhilosophy
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 9, 2018
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January 14, 2020
The essays by philosophers and psychologists in this anthology are unified by their topic matter of inner speech, or voices that we experience privately without any overt speech. Some of the essays are nonetheless extremely distinct from one another. There are perhaps 3-4 themes that run through these essays, unifying sub-groups of them; those sub-groups have very little to do with one another, and the chronological order of the essays are not ordered according to these sub-groups. So it is somewhat difficult for a reader with a specific perspective or question about inner speech to locate the chapters that are relevant to their question. Nonetheless, some of the essays are gems.
The general themes of the book can be phrased in terms of questions: Are thoughts and linguistically-articulated inner speech distinct from one another, the former being "pure," and the latter being thoughts "clothed" in the garb of language? How essential is auditory imagery to inner speech--that is, can we have inner speech without experiencing the auditory properties of overt speech, or are the two inseparable? What are the essential cognitive roles of inner speech--does inner speech facilitate or even make possible self-awareness and metacognition? How should we explain pathologies of inner speech (e.g., the experience that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have of hearing inner speech that comes from an agent external to their own agency)?
My favorite essays included the "The Causes and Contents of Inner Speech" by Carruthers. In this, he makes an important phenomenological distinction between inner speaking v. listening. He posits that the mechanisms that underpin overt speech and memory are employed in both, and he leaves open the question of what sorts of underpinning conditions might account for the difference between the two. He examines what kinds of information is delivered by the experience of inner speech; he argues that semantic contents of the sort that we apprehend through listening to overt speech is delivered by inner speech. He raises some interesting questions regarding the apparent infallibility of apprehending the correct meaning of inner speech, in contrast to our fallibility of that of outer speech. He argues that this appearance is misleading, and both inner and overt speech is mediated by interpretations and inference. I think Carruthers raised important distinctions and questions regarding inner speech and his arguments serve as a nice example of how philosophical argumentation can be used to decide between competing empirical hypotheses.
I also really liked "Inner Speech as the Internalization of Outer Speech" by Gauker. Gauker argues that inner speech is the only vehicle through which conceptual thought might arise. This requires that one dissociate inner speech from the auditory imagery that accompanies that speech; and to reject the myth that there is some "pure thought" that underlies any linguistic experience. This also requires that one find a new model of the nature of linguistic communication, so the intuition that inner speech is a form of communication, and is nonetheless the vehicle of conceptual thought, may be retained. Gauker presents some very interesting arguments to make these two points. I really like his analysis of how inner speech can be understood as a conversation; it is a "dialogue" between some imagistic experience and some propositionally-structured expression that represents that experience, which both are apprehended by the same subject.
A third essay I will summarize here is "When Inner Speech Misleads" by Wilkinson and Fernyhough. These are two psychologists. They argue that the contents of inner speech can be understood as consisting of two components: one is an assertion, which is truth-evaluable; and the second is the ascription of this assertion as being expressed the speaker (the subject of the inner speech). This first component is against the intuitive position that inner speech is a sort of imagination; but representational contents of imagination are not subject to truth conditions, while those of inner speech are, so inner speech cannot be a form of imagination. This analysis of inner speech allows us to understand how people with schizophrenia might experience external voices in their head; the second component, that the speech is expressed by the subject, has gone askew. The authors do a nice job in phenomenologically examining both non-pathological and pathological inner speech with respect to the features that distinguish the two.
Hopefully these summaries can give a potential reader a taste of what sorts of questions are addressed by these essays. Overall, I found about half of the essays worthwhile to read carefully. I also am somewhat dissatisfied by the fact that virtually none of the essays address Vygotskian approaches to inner speech, nor social-existential aspects of inner speech. Vygotsky has a fascinating theory that inner speech results from a child's "internalizes" the voices or perspectives of the people with whom she closely interacts. I think this proposal has so much unpacking that can be done by uniquely philosophers. So potential readers who are interested in Vygotskian ideas regarding inner speech will not find that in this anthology. I recommend this book to readers who want a broad overview on various different problems philosophers find worthwhile to study with regard to inner speech.
The general themes of the book can be phrased in terms of questions: Are thoughts and linguistically-articulated inner speech distinct from one another, the former being "pure," and the latter being thoughts "clothed" in the garb of language? How essential is auditory imagery to inner speech--that is, can we have inner speech without experiencing the auditory properties of overt speech, or are the two inseparable? What are the essential cognitive roles of inner speech--does inner speech facilitate or even make possible self-awareness and metacognition? How should we explain pathologies of inner speech (e.g., the experience that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have of hearing inner speech that comes from an agent external to their own agency)?
My favorite essays included the "The Causes and Contents of Inner Speech" by Carruthers. In this, he makes an important phenomenological distinction between inner speaking v. listening. He posits that the mechanisms that underpin overt speech and memory are employed in both, and he leaves open the question of what sorts of underpinning conditions might account for the difference between the two. He examines what kinds of information is delivered by the experience of inner speech; he argues that semantic contents of the sort that we apprehend through listening to overt speech is delivered by inner speech. He raises some interesting questions regarding the apparent infallibility of apprehending the correct meaning of inner speech, in contrast to our fallibility of that of outer speech. He argues that this appearance is misleading, and both inner and overt speech is mediated by interpretations and inference. I think Carruthers raised important distinctions and questions regarding inner speech and his arguments serve as a nice example of how philosophical argumentation can be used to decide between competing empirical hypotheses.
I also really liked "Inner Speech as the Internalization of Outer Speech" by Gauker. Gauker argues that inner speech is the only vehicle through which conceptual thought might arise. This requires that one dissociate inner speech from the auditory imagery that accompanies that speech; and to reject the myth that there is some "pure thought" that underlies any linguistic experience. This also requires that one find a new model of the nature of linguistic communication, so the intuition that inner speech is a form of communication, and is nonetheless the vehicle of conceptual thought, may be retained. Gauker presents some very interesting arguments to make these two points. I really like his analysis of how inner speech can be understood as a conversation; it is a "dialogue" between some imagistic experience and some propositionally-structured expression that represents that experience, which both are apprehended by the same subject.
A third essay I will summarize here is "When Inner Speech Misleads" by Wilkinson and Fernyhough. These are two psychologists. They argue that the contents of inner speech can be understood as consisting of two components: one is an assertion, which is truth-evaluable; and the second is the ascription of this assertion as being expressed the speaker (the subject of the inner speech). This first component is against the intuitive position that inner speech is a sort of imagination; but representational contents of imagination are not subject to truth conditions, while those of inner speech are, so inner speech cannot be a form of imagination. This analysis of inner speech allows us to understand how people with schizophrenia might experience external voices in their head; the second component, that the speech is expressed by the subject, has gone askew. The authors do a nice job in phenomenologically examining both non-pathological and pathological inner speech with respect to the features that distinguish the two.
Hopefully these summaries can give a potential reader a taste of what sorts of questions are addressed by these essays. Overall, I found about half of the essays worthwhile to read carefully. I also am somewhat dissatisfied by the fact that virtually none of the essays address Vygotskian approaches to inner speech, nor social-existential aspects of inner speech. Vygotsky has a fascinating theory that inner speech results from a child's "internalizes" the voices or perspectives of the people with whom she closely interacts. I think this proposal has so much unpacking that can be done by uniquely philosophers. So potential readers who are interested in Vygotskian ideas regarding inner speech will not find that in this anthology. I recommend this book to readers who want a broad overview on various different problems philosophers find worthwhile to study with regard to inner speech.
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