The Linguistic Determination of Conscious Thought Contents

Abstract

In this paper we address the question of what determines the content of our conscious episodes of thinking, considering recent claims that phenomenal character individuates thought contents. We present one prominent way for defenders of phenomenal intentionality to develop that view and then examine ‘sensory inner speech views’, which provide an alternative way of accounting for thought‐content determinacy. We argue that such views fare well with inner speech thinking but have problems accounting for unsymbolized thinking. Within this dialectic, we present an account of the nature of unsymbolized thinking that accords with and can be seen as a continuation of the activity of inner speech, while offering a way of explaining thought‐content determinacy in terms of linguistic structures and representations.

Inner speech

“…Another feature of these methods for eliciting and assessing inner speech worth flagging is that they assume inner speech to carry phonetic information about the sounds of words. Some argue that “condensed” or “impoverished” versions of inner speech are common and that these either fail to carry such information, or that do so only in a diminished sense (Fernyhough, 2004; Oppenheim & Dell, 2010; Vicente & Jorba, 2019). If this is correct, then behavioral measures that assume inner speech to necessarily have a strong auditory‐phonological component are only suitable for the study of a sub‐set of all inner speech episodes.…”

“…If this is correct, then behavioral measures that assume inner speech to necessarily have a strong auditory‐phonological component are only suitable for the study of a sub‐set of all inner speech episodes. Moreover, researchers seeking to build on Levelt's (1989) influential model of speech production typically identify several distinct stages of inner speech generation—distinguishing representation of the semantic “message” to be communicated from elements such as the syntactic frame, phonemic structure, and articulatory plan (Grandchamp et al, 2019; Vicente & Jorba, 2019). They may hold that silent rhyming taxes a relatively late stage of inner speech—one richer than the day to day voice in the head that isn't fixated on rhyme judgments.…”

“…On the basis of the kinds of errors they report, and the differences between those errors and the errors observed in overt speech, Oppenheim and Dell conclude that inner speech is phonetically “impoverished” compared to overt speech, occurring at a more “abstract” level of language processing (i.e., before full phonemic features are selected corresponding to the desired message). A number of theorists have attempted to explain how errors could be detected in inner speech, while still viewing inner speech part of a larger prediction‐comparison architecture for motor control, by positing multiple stages at which the components of inner speech are predicted and compared to internally generated results (Grandchamp et al, 2019; Vicente & Jorba, 2019).…”

A voice without a mouth no more: The neurobiology of language and consciousness

“…'Fringe' consciousness is the HOLISTIC model is suggested to come from the joint affective activations associated with situation models and upper brainstem functioning. Furthermore, most 'unsymbolised thought' might be the result of aborted inner speech, producing a 'fringe' through these same affective activations but without any inner speech becoming conscious (Vicente and Jorba, 2019).…”

The Relationship Between Conscious and Unconscious Intentionality

“…you could suppose, à la Pitt (2004), that phenomenal character alone suffices to confer conscious thoughts their determinate character. See Kriegel (2014) for a survey, and Vicente and Jorba (2019) for a response. It is worth noting that Vicente and Jorba's response is motivated by a view concerning linguistic thinking similar to Crane's.…”