Philosophical interest in inner speech has grown in recent years. In seeking to understand the phenomenon, many philosophers have drawn heavily on two theories from neighbouring disciplines: Lev Vygotsky’s theory on the development of inner speech in children and a cognitive-scientific theory about speech production. I argue that they have been too uncritical in their acceptance of these theories, which has prevented a proper analysis of inner speech.

Two connected questions that arise for anyone interested in inner speech are whether we tell ourselves something that we have already thought; and, if so, why we would tell ourselves something that we have already thought. In this contribution I focus on the first question, which is about the nature and the production of inner speech. While it is usually assumed that the content of what we tell ourselves is exactly the content of a non-linguistic thought, I argue that there (...) can be a lot of transformation in the process of converting a thought into words. Thus, the content of what we tell ourselves, being intrinsically linguistic, is different from the content of the thought our speech transmits. Fleshing out this kind of approach implies dealing with complicated questions which we lack enough knowledge about: the nature of non-linguistic thinking, and how speech (inner and overt) is produced; i.e. how the speaker goes from format a (format of thought) to format b (language). I show that these are pressing issues for any other position, but also suggest ways in which we could tackle such complicated issues. (shrink)

This paper disputes the widespread assumption that beliefs and desires may be attributed as theoretical entities in the service of the explanation and predic- tion of human behavior. The literature contains no clear account of how beliefs and desires might generate actions, and there is good reason to deny that principles of rationality generate a choice on the basis of an agent’s beliefs and desires. An alter- native conception of beliefs and desires is here introduced, according to which an attribution (...) of belief is, in a certain sense, an assertion on the believer’s behalf and an attribution of desire is, in a certain sense, a command on the desirer’s behalf. In terms of this conception of the attribution of beliefs and desires, we can begin to understand how attributions of beliefs and desires can be explanatory, although we still cannot expect the attribution of beliefs and desires to generate predictions based on an assumption of rationality. Finally, the reality of beliefs and desires is likened to the reality of money; it is the reality of things governed by objective norms. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is, in virtue of the (...) set of commitments and entitlements that the speaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normative status is determined by the normative attitudes shared by members of the utterer’s linguistic community. I propose here an account of such normative attitudes based on the ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. I explain how social normativity can be understood in that framework as the way in which members of a group shape their social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I apply this account of social normativity to basic communicative practices, thereby explaining how social normative expectations can emerge to regulate these communicative practices, eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normative statuses constitutive of linguistic content. (shrink)

Theorists have found it difficult to reconcile the unity of inner speech as a mental state kind with the diversity of its manifestations. I argue that existing views concerning the content of inner speech fail to accommodate both of these features because they mistakenly assume that its content is to be found in the ‘speech processing hierarchy’, which includes semantic, syntactic, phonemic, phonetic, and articulatory levels. Upon rejecting this assumption, I offer a position on which the content of inner speech (...) is determined by voice processing, of which speech processing is but one component. The resulting view does justice to the idea that inner speech is a motley assortment of episodes that nevertheless form a kind. (shrink)

In updating our beliefs on the basis of our background attitudes and evidence we frequently employ objects in our environment to represent pertinent information. For example, we may write our premises and lemmas on a whiteboard to aid in a proof or move the beads of an abacus to assist in a calculation. In both cases, we generate extramental (that is, occurring outside of the mind) representational states, and, at least in the case of the abacus, we operate over these (...) states in light of their contents (e.g., the integers represented by the beads) to generate new representations. In this paper, I argue that our belief updating processes and the grounds of their rational evaluation are partly constituted by extramental representations and operations. In other words, we don’t merely update our attitudes through an internal process of reasoning on the basis of available evidence. If we are to accurately understand and rationally evaluate our belief updating processes and resultant attitudes, we need to examine how we representationally appropriate our extramental environment in the updating process. (shrink)

People frequently report that, at times, their thought has a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently ‘talking’ to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, we explore the specifically epistemic role of inner speech in conscious reasoning. A plausible position—but one I argue is ultimately wrong—is that inner speech plays asolelyfacilitative role that is exhausted by (i) serving as the vehicle of representation for conscious reasoning, and/or (ii) allowing one to focus on certain types (...) of objects or relations, e.g., causal relations, abstracta, counterfactuals, etc., or to consciously entertain structured propositional contents that it would be hard (or impossible) to focus on or entertain with representations in other (e.g., imagistic) formats. According to this position, inner speech doesn't figure as a justificatory element in our reasoning or as the partial epistemic basis of our conclusions—it merely facilitates reasoning through (i) and/or (ii). In contrast to the view that inner speech is amerefacilitator, I establish that (outside of potentially playing roles (i) and/or (ii)) the language we use itself serves as a crucial source of information in reasoning. In other words, we reason from propositions about the language we use in inner speech as opposed to exclusively reasoning from the semantic contents of the speech. My conclusion follows from how we use language as a cognitive tool to keep track of information, e.g., the contents of premises, lemmas, previous reasoning results, etc., in reasoning. (shrink)

Our conscious thought, at least at times, seems suffused with language. We may experience thinking as if we were “talking in our head”, thus using inner speech to verbalize, e.g., our premises, lemmas, and conclusions. I take inner speech to be part of a larger phenomenon I call inner semiotics, where inner semiotics involves the subjective experience of expressions in a semiotic (or symbol) system absent the overt articulation of the expressions. In this paper, I argue that inner semiotics allows (...) us to bootstrap our way into entertaining thoughts about exact numbers and quantities that we couldn't prior to our competence with a numeric code. I establish that our arithmetic thoughts literally occur as (internal ‘articulations’ of) expressions in a numeric code. However, a problem arises for my view: just as we can slip in overt speech, producing an utterance that deviates from what we mean to say, there is very good evidence that we can slip in inner speech as well. If our arithmetic thought occurs in a numeric code, it's far from clear how we determine when a covert utterance constitutes a slip. In closing, I provide an account of what makes an inner speech utterance a slip. (shrink)

Recent scholarship emphasizes the scaffolding role of language for cognition. Language, it is claimed, is a cognition-enhancing niche (Clark, 2006), a programming tool for cognition (Lupyan and Bergen, 2016), even a neuroenhancement (Dove, 2019), and augments cognitive functions such as memory, categorization, cognitive control as well as meta-cognitive abilities (‘thinking about thinking’). Yet the notion that language enhances or augments cognition does not fit in with embodied approaches to language processing, or so we will argue. Accounts aiming to explain how (...) language enhances various cognitive functions often employ a notion of abstract representation. Yet embodied approaches to language processing have it that language processing crucially, according to some accounts even exclusively, involves embodied, modality-specific, i.e. non-abstract representations. In coming to understand a particular phrase or sentence, a prior experience has to be simulated or reenacted. The representation thus activated is embodied (modality-specific) as sensorimotor regions of the brain are thereby recruited. In the paper, we will first discuss the notion of representation, clarify what it takes for a representation to be embodied or abstract respectively, and distinguish between conceptual and (other) linguistic representations. We will then put forward a characterization of cognitive control and examine its representational infrastructure. The remainder of the paper will be devoted to arguing that language augments cognitive control. To that end, we will draw on two lines of research, which investigate how language augments cognitive control: i. research on the availability of linguistic labels, and ii. research on the active usage of a linguistic code, specifically in inner speech. Eventually, we will argue that the cognition-enhancing capacity of language can be explained once we assume that it provides us with a. abstract, non-embodied representations, and with b. abstract, sparse linguistic representations that may serve as easy-to-manipulate placeholders for fully embodied or otherwise more detailed representations. (shrink)

While the idea that thinking is a form of silent self-talk goes back at least to Plato, it is not immediately clear how to state this thesis precisely. The aim of the paper is to spell out the notion that we think in language by recourse to recent work on inner speech. To that end, inner speech and overt speech are briefly compared. I then propose that inner speaking be defined as a mental episode that substantially engages the speech production (...) system; the underlying model of speech production is sketched. Next, the cognitive role of inner speaking is explored, especially its role in thinking and reasoning. The question of whether it is a way of making thoughts accessible (to whomever) or whether it is a means of thinking itself is raised. I argue that there are two reasons for assuming that, occasionally, we think in language. More specifically, I will claim that some instances of thinking are instances of inner speaking as they exploit certain properties of natural language, and that some instances of inner speaking are instances of thinking as they play a decisive role in paradigmatic cases of thinking that result from internalizing and re-using certain social-linguistic practices. Finally, the Language-of-Thought hypothesis as an alternative account is critically discussed. (shrink)

This paper motivates a constraint on how to explain the “sense of agency” for conscious thinking. It argues that a prominent model fails to satisfy the constraint before sketching an alternative that does. On the alternative, punctate acts of conscious thinking, such as episodes of inner speech, are recognizable as our deeds because they are recognizable as parts of complex cognitive activities, which we know non-observationally in virtue of holding intentions to perform them.

This article defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.

Is inner speech an intentional action, something we do, or a reaction, something that happens to us? This paper will argue that it can be both, (although not at the same time). Some inner speech utterances are reactive: they are spontaneous, they require no effort, and we are not in control of their occurring. These inner speech utterances fail to meet the traditional criteria for qualifying as intentional actions. But some inner speech ut- terances are intentional actions, performed deliberately, effortfully (...) and with as much control as any other intentional action. When we deliberate, for example, inner speech utterances are the basic actions by which we bring about the non-basic action of deliberating. (shrink)

Inner speech travels under many aliases: the inner voice, verbal thought, thinking in words, internal verbalization, “talking in your head,” the “little voice in the head,” and so on. It is both a familiar element of first-person experience and a psychological phenomenon whose complex cognitive components and distributed neural bases are increasingly well understood. There is evidence that inner speech plays a variety of cognitive roles, from enabling abstract thought, to supporting metacognition, memory, and executive function. One active area of (...) controversy concerns the relation of inner speech to auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia, with a common proposal being that sufferers of AVH misidentify their own inner speech as being generated by someone else. Recently, researchers have used artificial intelligence to translate the neural and neuromuscular signatures of inner speech into corresponding outer speech signals, laying the groundwork for a variety of new applications and interventions. (shrink)