What do you think?
How do you know other humans have thoughts? There is no way of measuring it, and there is no way to tell if someone is lying about it. You could measure brain activity. But There is no need for brain activity to be accompanied by experience. There is no law of nature that says that electrical signals are accompanied by experience or thoughts. There is also no way to tell the difference between a millimeter cube of brain from any animal. So if you believe that brain activity is represented by thoughts, then there is absolutely no way to draw an arbitrary line between humans and animals.
So i don’t even think it’s a question.
Have you ever been close to a cat? I cant believe they can be wacky like this without some sort of inner monologue and intention.
I would say that animals have thoughts, yes. But I don’t think that they have an inner monologue or voice.
You could probably ask someone who has no inner voice. I think animals might be more similar to that.
Not everyone has a voice in their head. Do you have a cat? Cats have thoughts. Unfortunately that thought is sometimes, “eff you, human!”
What do you mean about “not everyone has a voice in their head”? I have one… I would like to research more about this topic.
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I am curious how many people don’t have an inner monologue, but there are a few articles on the subject. Here’s one at random.>
My cognition is mixed. Verbal inner monologue is going most of the time when I’m just thinking about routine stuff. But if I’m “in the flow zone” working on a project or playing music or something like that, the little “voice in my head” vanishes completely and that’s when I’m the happiest. I suspect most people can relate to those modes.
That’s relatable to me at least. And often music is playing my my head in the place of my inner voice.
Agreed, now that I think about it. It’s definitely better to be in the zone. If I’m monologuing I think it might signify that I’m having trouble with something, but I don’t necessarily enjoy being that aware of my own self.
Thx for the info…
There are also people who are unable to see images in their mind. In case you want to go further down the rabbit hole.
Do you know if it’s some kind of mental illness? I mean some kind of human abnormality, or do you believe there are a lot of people like that?
My theory is that there’s no such thing as neurotypical.
Neurotypical is just the statistical average of all the different ways we’re fucked in the head.
i.e. Half have anxiety, the other half have depression and we just assume normal is somewhere in the middle.
My MIL and to some extent my husband are like that. It was painful discussing design plans with them when we reno’d our kitchen. I just started doing mood boards so they could see what I had in my head that I wanted it to look like.
I’m terrible at decorating!! After 20+ years in my house most of my walls have pictures that are sentimental to me but not visually connected in any way.
We function just fine. Seeing images or hearing voices in your mind is not required for any task I’m aware of.
There are a lot of us.
Many of us don’t. Many of us also don’t see images in our minds.
What do you mean about “not everyone has a voice in their head”?
Well, what do you think it means?
I believe it would be interesting to talk about this with someone wo inner monologue.
I do not have an internal monologue.
This has been at least discussed/studied before but I don’t know if there has been any sort of formal poll to find a rate between those that do and those that don’t.
I have to ask - in what way do you think about stuff? Especially whem you need to be mindful of a process or remember something?
I still think in words and images, but there is no voice.
Something else that came up in previous discussions. I remember emotional response more than specific things. For example, my wife can remember what we wore, what we ate, and other specifics, of a date we had years ago. I barely remember even the location, but I can easily recall that I was happy about the date, but there was some mild frustration early on, something about the restaurant, but then feeling better about it later.
I say this and my wife says, “Oh yeah, we were annoyed because we had reservations but still had to wait 20 minutes, but then we were given an appetizer.”
However, before my comments, she couldn’t recall if we liked the place or not.
I’ll remember if I liked someone, but not why or even their name.
Mine is just chunks of info or ideas. My coworkers think this is why i talk a lot unfiltered- because i don’t hear how it will sound it in my head before it comes out of my mouth. There’s a little test online that was going around for awhile where you try to visualize a red star and grade it 1-5.
There are some studies. I don’t remember the specifics but it’s something like 50/50 on hearing and seeing and about 20 percent do neither. I’m sure those numbers are off, but that’s vaguely what i remember reading.
What do you mean by seeing? Like they don’t see images in their mind?
Some people do. Many of us don’t.
We don’t.
So many people making stuff up they have no way of actually knowing in this comment section. No wonder religion is so widespread!
The true answer, unsatisfying as it may be, is that we have no way of knowing the subjective internal experience (often referred to as ‘consciousness’) of other humans, let alone other animals. For all we can know, a rock could have thoughts. We really, for now at least, can’t know. Unfortunately.
They don’t have language, so they can’t have the internal dialogue.
But can they have imagination? Since many animals have dreams, then why not?
How can you say that animals don’t have language?
As I said in an earlier comment elsewhere in this post:
Have you never seen a dog wag their tail or play bow?
Have you never seen a squirrel twitching their tail at another squirrel who’s encroached on their territory?
Have you never encountered any media about whale songs?
All kinds of animals have all kinds of language.
What about the deaf and dumb? Language is not just spoken words. Maybe animals have their own kind of internal dialogues like deaf people.
My dog’s would often woof and move their paws on their dreams.
They are like people who never learn language. This sometimes happens to deaf people who are not taught to use sign language. Any inference about such a person’s intellect and capacities should be abstracted towards mammals at least.
No, at least not most animals. There was a study a while back that showed that animals think by reducing the world to a series of binary choice that they react to in the moment. I imagine it’s a lot like when you’re playing a sport or video game and things get very intense and fast paced; your inner monologue isn’t telling you what your next move will be every second, you’re just reacting on instinct. That’s probably how animals see the world all the time.
That being said, “animals,” is a broad category, and some of them may be capable of creating an abstract narrative for themselves. It was recently discovered that whale songs have a phonetic alphabet, which means their language may be as complex as ours. If that’s the case, they may be capable of using that language to build an internal monologue.
Based on watching my Borzoi decide whether or not to sneak into the kitchen, I’d say yes.
I think so. I have parrots who are at a 4 year old human’s intelligence level. They do things they know they shouldn’t and wait for me to turn my back, it’s like they know they shouldn’t but have an intrusive thought and act on it. Of course, once I say “excuse me…” With the dad tone, they fly to their cages and pretend they did nothing. To me that takes thought and reasoning, desire, planning, action, etc. On their part.
None of them have language beyond associating a small number of specific sounds or words to objects or events but I would bet my legs just above the knee down that Dolphins monologue “Squee-aww” when they spot a scuba diver. Dogs definitely daydream about you calling their name when you’re away for a long time. If they couldn’t in some way internalize the call then they would not remember it.
EDIT: To add onto my claim that they don’t have language beyond a certain level, that’s what we’ve been able to prove so far. We know that some of the smarter animals, such as dolphins, crows, and gorillas can understand quite a few words with daily training and even use and pass down taught language to limited capacity, but the longest experiments for complex languages with these animals have all resulted in “failure” to teach them or learn from them to the extent of being able to have conversations or form complex statements.
No, but that is because they don’t have language.
That said, plenty of humans do not have a voiced internal experience. The lack of language does not imply a lack of cognition. I would expect that the brain of a closely related organism, say a chimp, would have many similar experiences generated by the same stimuli. Would they experience green like I experience green? I can’t even say that about a person sitting next to me, but they probably have an equivalent experience.
That said, if we had a way of communicating could we reach agreed terms? I can do that with my cat, so I would think he has an understanding of me and my behaviours along with what tends to happen when I do certain things like clap then shake my hands at the end of a treat session. He knows there are no more treats, he associates that with my hands clapping and shaking, so we communicate. Does he have a voice in his head describing it? Probably not. Does he have Meows? Again, probably not, but he would have a sense and memories of previous times.
This is something I’ve always been highly skeptical of. As a somewhat experienced meditator, I’m hyper-aware of the constant flood of self-talk happening in my head, but I don’t remember paying particular attention to it before I started practicing. It has always been there, but until then, I hadn’t paid any special attention to it. Whenever this subject comes up with people who don’t meditate, they often seem to live under the illusion that, except for intentional thoughts, their mind is more or less silent the rest of the time. I’d argue that 99.9% of people couldn’t sit for 20 seconds without letting their mind wander, even if their life depended on it. Even I couldn’t, despite my experience in meditation.
That’s why I think that when people are asked whether they have this inner voice or not, some say no because they’re not aware of it. Not having it would effectively be synonymous with being enlightened.
I have internal voice sometimes but not others. In some things my cognition is far more verbal, working through something like a monologue or conversation. Other times I may have more of a mental image of something, sometimes more in real space and sometimes completely disconnected from real space. Sometimes it is much more abstract with sensations and emotions with very little in terms of concrete metaphores.
Also I can have racing thoughts without it being language. I also have impacts on those racing thoughts from taking Ritalin (ADHD medication) and it is not just the word thoughts but also the flow of other types of cognition.
Also an experienced meditator.
Not everyone thinks in words. Some people think in pictures. Or in other sense consciousnesses. As an experienced cook, I can think in taste and smell without any auditory component of ‘what should I put in this dish’. For example.
As for word thinking, passive thoughts are more auditory and active thoughts more somatic (throat and jaw muscles will move). These can be decoupled from the sense of I making, especially passive thoughts.
At which point you get thoughts think themselves, to quote Jack Kornfield. A sort of bubbling up of passive thoughts in voices that aren’t mine.
It’s likely animals that live close to people experience this. The owners voice yelling no when they do something the owner wouldn’t like, even if the owner isn’t around.
Anyway, trying to not think can be like holding your breath. I can do that for awhile. But it’s not right effort. Letting thoughts settle, like sand in a glass of water. And letting go of the sense of I making. The mind will rest quite naturally. That’s calm abiding.
In other words, it’s attachment to the inner voice that’s making it difficult for you to imagine that a lot of people think in pictures or other ways. And noticing this sense of attachment in your practice with the intention of letting it go, might deepen your insight into yourself and what others may or may not experience.
Edit: this listening meditation is helpful for me in letting go of attachment to the inner voice. As is annapanasati, especially the third tetrad.
Does he have Meows?
That’s such a cute and funny thing to imagine lol. An inner meowologue
Some animals do have language and animals that are around people a lot likely have an inner voice that is their owner’s voice.
They likely don’t plan using this voice, the way people do. But it certainly influences their behavior.
A dog that’s been yelled at for getting in the garbage might hear a no in their head even if their owners at work.
they don’t have language
Have you never seen a dog wag their tail or play bow?
Have you never seen a squirrel twitching their tail at another squirrel who’s encroached on their territory?
Have you never encountered any media about whale songs?
All kinds of animals have all kinds of language.
I meant to say language in the linguistics sense, a series of abstract items which can be arranged to convey arbitrary meaning. For example, a dog barking can be a threat display, a warning, playful, sad, afraid, and so on. But can you use barking to create grammar? With grammar you could have labels for items in the world and use various barks to refer to them, make requests, ask questions, and so on. Some types of animals have warning calls that are specific to types of predators, for example an eagle call or a leopard call. Leopards require different responses than eagles so the distinction is very useful and helps others to respond. This is not quite language but is definitely a step in the right direction.
So yes, you are correct, lots of animals can communicate things to each other, but it is not the same as language like what humans have. Could we find an animal that does have language? Or something very close? Sure, but we haven’t shown that yet. Maybe we should focus on giving other animals a chance to develop before we wipe them all out.
but it is not the same as language like what humans have
And it doesn’t have to be. In fact this sort of thinking can limit how we learn about other animals.
Dogs don’t pass the mirror test for self awareness like some corvids and a few other animals do. But dogs don’t experience each other primarily through vision, scent is much more their main sense. So is that even a valid test for canid self awareness?
Dogs dream, and dreams are just thoughts.
I’m not sure about all animals, but I’m pretty sure my sphinx cat does. I have to give her medicine every day and not only does she knows when it’s time to get it, but there are times where she will hide under the bed. Just laying down and looking at her and asking her to come out is enough to get her to wander over slowly and get it. It’s funny, you can almost see the thoughts going through her head as she realizes she has to just give in and go get her pill.
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