Inner speech and the nature of conscious thought

Frankfort, Thomas Morley (2024) Inner speech and the nature of conscious thought. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

Not all of what we call thinking, or conscious thought, necessarily involves language, but a lot of it does. This thesis addresses the kind that does, and the nature of the involvement. On the face of it, some instances of this kind of thinking seem to qualify as intentional. For example, when we deliberately and purposefully engage in thinking with a view to reaching a decision or coming to a conclusion. The question is: when we engage in this kind of activity, what do we, flesh and blood creatures that we are, actually and intentionally do? My answer to this question is that that we speak to ourselves, either aloud or, more typically, silently; I call this the thinking-as-speaking thesis. If valid, it significantly undermines the sharp distinction ordinarily drawn between mental action and bodily action. The argument for the thinking-as-speaking thesis has several strands, each the subject of a different chapter in this thesis. 1. The capacity we have for inner speech is the internalisation of, and is importantly continuous with, the capacity for overt speech. 2. Speech (both silent and overt) is a species of knowledge-how or practical knowledge. (I apply some ideas from action theory – such as the basic/non-basic distinction – to argue that the act of inner speaking is very often the basic action by which a non-basic action is executed.) 3. The nature of thinking-as-speaking has much in common with the nature of other kinds of skilled action: the intention which causes, guides and sustains the inner speech utterance informs the entire process of its production, from conceptualisation to articulation. 4. Crucially, the act of generating and performing the utterance makes a constitutive contribution to the content of the thought being expressed by it. 5. It follows from this that it makes no sense to think of a token thought as something which exists in the head of the thinker before she speaks. Rather, we should understand a token thought as a type of inner speech act, the performance of which is the means by which some cognitive goal – such as making a decision, reaching a conclusion, or solving a problem – is achieved. Metaphysically, thoughts are a type of action, not a type of object. 6. If intentions cause, sustain and guide the production of episodes of reasoning, as I claim, then it follows that not all intentions are formed as a result of conscious deliberation or reflection, on pain of a regress. Some intentions form spontaneously.

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