How do you even think if you can't talk in your head or form mental images? Are you sure that's possible?
Ikr? Having abstract thought processing is weird if you don't have it yourself, and the same for them about us.
Nope... When I "talk" in my head, there is no inner voice... When I imagine something "visually", there is no visual imagery of any kind involved... When I "imagine" touch, smell, taste, etc, etc, etc... those "qualia" are similarly missing...
What there is, is the "qualia" of characteristics and the "qualia" of meaning, without the "qualia" they are the characteristics and the meaning of...
To be otherwise... would have to be some kind of hallucination... no?
Seeing as i can superimpose visual imagery over my actual vision, yes, it's some kind of hallucination. But i know some people can't do that.
I just found out something really interesting. Not everyone has an inner voice. I do, I always have and thought everyone else did too, but apparently I was wrong.
There are varying degrees, and it sometimes goes beyond simply having an inner voice. Some people can't form mental images too. Some have an inner voice, but it is limited and cannot be used without serious focus. Others have more than one voice, while others can mimic the voice of others from memory.
For me, it helps with writing, as I recite in my head as I read and write, and that helps with image formation. The conversations between characters take place in my head, and they all have different voices, so that helps with dialogue. That one down side is it can get too loud if I stay in my head long enough and I get headaches.
What about you? On which side do you fall and how does that help or handicap you?
My inner voice is just me. When I read stories I use different voices for characters but there's only so many variations i can remember and keep stable. Sometimes things will mess it up and i can't use the voices without them sounding weird until i sleep. Like if they're talking or thinking to themselves and that text is in italics, their voice becomes muted, and too much of that and it'll make it hard to use their normal voice. Same thing with brackets and such, their voice is modified, which is one of the big reasons i strongly prefer stories that use quotation marks for speech, though i couldn't care less otherwise.
Aside from that voice, I have pretty good visualization if i do say so myself. Well, it would be better if i didn't have absolutely shit spatial awareness. Sizes tend to get the best of me and trying to think of size differences between characters, even when that difference is small, usually ends up with very dramatic and hilarious sights, similar to Source(Half-life, Gmod) characters having their bone frames fucked with, or physics glitches that cause models to stretch and shit. And when it comes to say, a room of a giant or a large creature, it's also pretty whack and hard to get right in my head. Being American while mort stories use metric system doesn't help at all, but I'm trying.
Other than that, and as i stated above, i can overlap my visual thoughts over my regular vision, such as giving myself a HUD or something (which I've done before). It's a little weird and sometimes disorienting, but it's also pretty cool since I'm assuming it's something not many people can do. Hopefully. let me be special plz
I always have inner voices. It can be distracting sometime, especially when I read a story. I’m quite a slow reader because of it. But aside from its downside, it’s really awesome.
From the moment I wake up, musics or songs start to play in my head. When I read, I hear a different voices of different characters, including the sound effects. Most of the time, I can alter or change the tone of the voices at will, but it will get quite mentally exhausting if I do it too much and too long.
Aside from that, it‘s totally awesome. Everytime I read, it’s like I watched a whole movie or anime in my head.
I wish my inner voice was as useful as yours. Maybe the only thing stopping it from that is the fact i have absolutely terrible memory, so even though listen to music for most of my day everyday, i can't remember songs at all. And even if i do, I'd still get the tone wrong and it sounds muted in my head. And my lack of creativity (and social skills) to have a lot of different voices for characters. Usually just reuse the same ones.
