I think "hearing" the voice is the confusing part, or only.
Hard to know if it's a difference in the phenomenon itself or in how people characterize and perceive it.
To me the question is about thinking conversationally. Internal dialogue. Whether or not that dialogue is perceived as sound is perhaps interesting, it's not hard to imagine it working differently. Written language exists. Sign language. Non-auditory language is not a stretch.
What is hard to conceive of is thought, especially intricate reasoning, without internal dialogue.
Hard to conceive, but not hard to believe. We all do lots of non-dialogue thinking. The evidence of this is everywhere. We come to conclusions, find answers to questions without "verbal" reasoning all the time.
Say you've been building software. You're considering changing something. As soon as its suggested, you realize a whole list of implications. User implications. Server implications. Testing process X will have Y issue. Advisor A will probably advise B. You didn't verbally reason your way to all these conclusions... yet they exist.
That said... all this stuff is kinda "subconscious." You don't know where these reasoned conclusions came from. It feels like a "from the muse" thing.
If I am consciously trying to reason... I'm most (only?) conscious of my verbal reasoning.
Hard to know if it's a difference in the phenomenon itself or in how people characterize and perceive it.
To me the question is about thinking conversationally. Internal dialogue. Whether or not that dialogue is perceived as sound is perhaps interesting, it's not hard to imagine it working differently. Written language exists. Sign language. Non-auditory language is not a stretch.
What is hard to conceive of is thought, especially intricate reasoning, without internal dialogue.
Hard to conceive, but not hard to believe. We all do lots of non-dialogue thinking. The evidence of this is everywhere. We come to conclusions, find answers to questions without "verbal" reasoning all the time.
Say you've been building software. You're considering changing something. As soon as its suggested, you realize a whole list of implications. User implications. Server implications. Testing process X will have Y issue. Advisor A will probably advise B. You didn't verbally reason your way to all these conclusions... yet they exist.
That said... all this stuff is kinda "subconscious." You don't know where these reasoned conclusions came from. It feels like a "from the muse" thing.
If I am consciously trying to reason... I'm most (only?) conscious of my verbal reasoning.