Inner experience in humans
2024-10-31 — 2024-11-01
Wherein the phenomenon of an inner monologue, its absence in some persons, the inability to form mental images (aphantasia), and the difficulty naming emotions (alexithymia) are described.
When wondering how our mind works, one might also wonder what it is “like” to have a mind.
As a first approximation, this might look like it is correlated with the question “Am I a P-Zombie?”, but I suspect there are more terms to unpack.
One might also wonder if we have a similar experience of having a mind. It turns out, maybe not.
1 Inner voice
I am especially interested in the experience of having an inner voice, or an inner monologue.
I personally do have an inner voice, which I understand is not necessarily guaranteed. That inner voice is mostly drafting blog posts. This… sounds like I am making a joke, and I am a little bit, but it is also not inaccurate. I’m constantly philosophising. 1
I do not generally have a running commentary on my life, except insofar as that voice is rehearsing how to later explain things to others. I am not sure how typical this is.
- Simon Makin, Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming through Their Head
- Gary Stix, You Don’t Need Words to Think
2 Inner visualisations
Aphantasia is the inability to visualise things in your mind’s eye.
3 Scrutability of emotions
Alexithymia, also called emotional blindness, is a neuropsychological phenomenon characterized by significant challenges in recognizing, expressing, feeling, sourcing, and describing one’s emotions.
4 References
Footnotes
Probably only like 30% of it is blog posts; the rest is awkward relationship and work conversations.↩︎