My Aphantasiac Monologue
Whenever I bring up memory it inevitably also implicates my aphantasia, but this Musings post reminds me of that other mental process that causes much surprise at how different brains work: the so-called “internal monologue”.
So, I do have an internal monologue, but much like with how the aphantasia means that I conceive of things rather than literally imagine them, the name is true here. I’m not hearing words in my head, per se. This is really difficult to explain or describe, more so than the aphantasia. My brain is talking to itself as I write this, narrating the words I’m typing, but I’m no more “hearing” it in my head than I am “seeing” a red apple when I close my eyes and think about one.
It’s like I’m having thoughts about words rather than hearing words, just as I’m having thoughts about images rather than seeing them.
Of possible, if perhaps passing or tangential, interest to all of this are John Last for Noēma on feral minds, and Nora Bradford for Quanta Magazine on “default mode”, both of which recently came up in my reading.