In a university class I took called “Reading Theory for Writers,” the professor had us write a page about whether we thought we had an inner voice. Not the kind that argues with you about which shoes to wear, but the one that speaks in your mind while you’re reading.

I argued that I do have an inner voice. My main evidence is that when I’m reading and I come across a word I’m not sure how to pronounce, I notice that’s the case. Why would I need to know how to pronounce a word if there isn’t some kind of voice in my head?

A similar concept, that our thoughts have a voice, has been used in TV and movies when you have some device that makes people’s thoughts audible to those around them. These disembodied voices come out of thin air, and of course, people are thinking offensive things about each other, resulting in conflict.

I remember reading something like this in one of David Eddings’ novels, where one character made another’s vocal so he could hear them. It took the second character a few minutes to realize his thoughts were actually audible. (The first character was doing this partly to provoke the second.)

I realized recently, however, that this is impossible (something impossible portrayed in the media?). The only thing that gives voice to our thoughts is our vocal cords. If our thoughts were to pass out of our minds some other way, we would need a similar mechanism. Even if our thoughts could be picked out of our heads by some external agent, it would need such a mechanism, and chances are, the resulting voice wouldn’t sound like its owner. We wouldn’t be able to identify people’s thoughts by the voice.

Anyway, that’s just something that was on my mind that I thought I’d share.

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