We experience some kind of inner speech for at least a quarter of our waking lives. This helps some,while others set out to reduce the chatter. And how does it relate to God?When you talk to yourself, who precisely is doing the talking, or who the listening? Walt Whitman wrote: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself. / (I am large,I contain multitudes.) But who are these multitudes? And who let them all in? Thus does language tempt us to posit a concert hall of homunculi within the head.
Charles Fernyhough’s fascinating and elegantly humane book is aware of the problem, but doesn’t attempt to solve it (doing so would probably require a true theory of consciousness). Instead he starts with the existence of what is technically termed “inner speech”, and sketches a theory of how it occurs. He inquires into its phenomenology (the feel of the subjective experience of talking to oneself),and he offers an intriguing developmental account of how we advance to do it at all, and why it is so useful.
It seems a miracle that most of us, and most of the time,own a sense of ownership and self-generation of our thoughts Related: Hearing voices with Charles Fernyhough and Francesca Kay – books podcast Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com