Docpot13 t1_j21i5qc wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:50 PM

Reply to comment by anengineerandacat in 11 years ago Michio Kaku talked about mind upload into Machine - Big Think by keghi11

I definitely don’t agree with the idea that an internal monologue is consciousness. This would make the existence of consciousness dependent on the ability to use language. And you are correct, I am one of those 7%.

anengineerandacat t1_j21ig1w wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:52 PM

Curious then, since I have never really met someone like that... how do you process situations? Like when you read a book, what is going on in your head? Do you even like reading books are they engaging to you?

Docpot13 t1_j21j93i wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:57 PM

I read all the time. It’s a form of communicating information which is as useful to me as anyone else. What is puzzling to me is why someone needs to talk to themselves. Who is talking to whom? If you are truly talking to yourself don’t you already know everything you are putting into words and now just making thought more complicated by trying to represent with words things which may not be well captured by language? What’s the point of telling yourself something? In order to communicate it you already had to understand it so why then mentally speak it? Bizarre.

anengineerandacat t1_j21u0r6 wrote on December 29, 2022 at 1:16 AM

I am communicating with myself; when I read I basically verbalize in-my-head what I am reading (and what I am typing). It mostly sounds like my physical voice but sometimes it could be in another's voice depending on the context and situation.

As far as to "whom" it's like talking into a room with an empty audience, sometimes I can visualize an audience to talk too and make-up things / situations for them to say but most often it's just me.

I am genuinely curious how you actually plan-ahead without having an inner voice, do you just "talk" to people without verbalizing it internally?

As to "why" I can't explain, it's been there since as long as I can remember... perhaps the voice has gotten louder over the years as I have learned to do "more" with it; I work as a Software Engineer day-to-day so most of my day is spent building mental structures and models of applications in my head and walking through where I'll do certain things next or even talking with my inner voice about said things in a form of rubber duck debugging.

Even this post, and your post are basically read back aloud and if I knew what you sounded like I would likely read the post back in your actual voice.

Without my inner voice... I don't think I would feel like I exist as a person, the bones / muscle / flesh surrounding my body are just what give me mobility but that "voice" is "me".

Which is why perhaps when I say you could clone the brain, since you can't clone my inner voice "I" will cease to exist. To my friends and family I might still exist but it'll be a different "me".