There's something very scary about this
actually to me.
>> There are groups of people they wanted
to do was bring into being a conscious
entity that they could converse with
called the Tulpa. And this was based on
a a Tibetan Buddhist practice from the
early early 20th century. And the idea
was that via dialogue and meditation
eventually you could create this kind of
entity, a spiritual entity that you
could converse with in different ways
and learn things from. There's something
very scary about this actually to me.
This kind of sounds like you're
channeling schizophrenia or you're
channeling psychosis in a real sense.
This doesn't necessarily seem healthy in
that what's really the difference
between a hallucination and the the
normal inner workings of our speech.
>> Um, it's a good question.
>> Dr. Ben Alderson Day is a psychologist
at Durham University whose work sits at
one of the strangest intersections in
all of inner experience. the boundary
between inner speech, hallucination, and
the voices we create in our own heads.
Ben's research has transformed how we
understand auditory hallucinations. And
his book, Presence, explored the eerie
phenomena of felt presences in everyone
from polar explorers to monks. If you
want to truly understand the contents of
your own inner conscious experience,
like your mental imagery, your own inner
speech, or your emotions, then click the
link in the description and take my
7-day inner experience challenge. It is
completely free to do and you will get
the most comprehensive breakdown of your
actual conscious reality using only
research proven methods. I am genuinely
so excited about this. Just click the
link in the description. I hope to see
you inside the community. It's another
one of the most unusual things the mind
can do is create another that can
seemingly kind of talk for itself and
have a life of its own. And whether
that's pathologically in the case of
like hearing voices or hallucinations,
whether that's creatively in terms of
like fiction writers, it's like it's a
very complex and unusual thing for the
mind to do. the way our minds work in
terms of like modeling other minds,
thinking how other people would think
and behave in particular situations. You
know, the capacity for all this stuff to
run kind of offline is all there. It's
just often people wouldn't push the
button to try and make it happen. There
was one time where I didn't recognize
the voice in my head and it was the most
terrifying moment of my life. I was 100%
convinced that my parents would have to
wheel me into like an asylum. Like I was
picturing some sort of like Arkham
Asylum type situation, you know, with
the Joker is in the cell next to me. And
it's one of those situations where like
theoretical knowledge runs into
experience where it's like I
Dr. Ben Alderson day. What's the most
important context for the listener to
understand their own inner speech?
Well, that's an interesting question.
If it's a question about why is in a
speech important, then you could say
something about child development or the
development of the mind.
If it's a question about adulthood, then
I would say it's most relevant to how we
think about mental health and how our
inner dialogues and inner monologues
shape, how we're experiencing the world,
how we confront distress and difficulty,
but also then how we how we repair, how
we engage in things like psychological
therapies. Understanding your own end of
speech and being aware of it is is super
crucial for that kind of context.
Do you think people generally have an
awareness of the contents of their inner
speech, the frequency, any other
features that inner speech might have?
Do you think people generally have a
good idea of that?
>> Um, for the most part, no. And that's
not to say that they can't, but I think
a lot of people will go about their day
not really thinking about it too much,
even if they're people who talk to
themselves absolutely all the time. And
very often um when people start to think
about it is when they are confronted
with um reports from other people that
radically differ. So every feels like
every six months or so something will go
viral somewhere on the internet about
somebody discovering that other people
don't do dialogues in their head or some
people talk to themselves all the time
or and it might not be about inner
speech. It could be about mental images.
It could be about other kind of aspects
of inner experience that suddenly people
realize they're not like others. Uh and
they're astounded by it. Um I mean and
how would they ever know? You know, it's
kind of a a core problem within
philosophy that the idea that we, you
know, we don't know the context of other
minds and we we would be a blood vess,
you know, we just rely on what people
tell us, you know. So it can be uh it
can be suddenly a real awakening I think
for some people to think about their
inner speech differently when they hear
about the potential contrasts.
>> Is my inner speech me?
>> Uh yeah. Yeah. I mean it doesn't have to
be in your voice but it is you and that
it's part of your mind. Yeah. You've
done work on people that have voices in
their mind that they swear aren't them.
Is that right?
>> Yeah. In in lots of different ways.
Yeah. So, um I've worked with people
with psychosis who hear voices that
other people can't hear. And um
often that will be voices that literally
feel like they're coming from outside
and that that you're hearing them like
you would hear any other voice um in a
room. Um but even some of those voices
um particularly over time might be feel
like they're actually coming from inside
the head and they might have the kind of
the characteristics or properties of
sound. So they might have kind of tone
and cadence or even a sense of volume.
Um, and yet it could feel like they're
part of your kind of inner inner realm,
your inner world. So, so that's one kind
of context. I've worked with those sorts
of voices. But I've also worked with
people who've tried to create spiritual
voices or who have tried to create
characters of the mind that speaks for
speak for themselves. Um, there's very
different various different groups who
do that. Um, so yeah, they there's a
real like constellation of things out
there. Do we know why some people
develop inner speeches that have
different accents, different voices,
different emotions and some people
don't? Do we understand the development
of these different types of inner
speech?
>> Well, I guess we don't really know
firstly why some people have lots of
inner speech and some people don't. um
the for a long time in the study of
inner speech there was always this
argument that everybody does this and
everybody does this all the time and I
think research over the past 15 years or
so and we've contributed to this as well
um has shown that actually this is an
exaggeration there's plenty of people
out there who don't seem to have um any
either kind of in a monologue or
dialogue who don't seem to rely on kind
of inner language and think about the
world in different ways um so so for
starters not everybody does
Um and um we you there is some evidence
that you get some variation say among
children where there are um challenges
to their language or their communicative
development. So um uh at various times
in the diagnosis of autism for example
you would have had to have had a delay
in your speech and language in the first
three years of life. So you might talk
about kids who were non-speaking at the
age of three when we'd usually expect
that between 18 months and two years.
this sort of thing. Um or for example,
uh deaf people, 95% uh have hearing
parents and that means that the
development of their language skills can
be very challenging because um most
hearing parents won't learn sign
language.
Deaf children will be encouraged to
learn called learning orally where you
learn to lipre and you try and practice
your own voice even when you're not
getting the proper auditory feedback.
And so there's various welldocumented
delays in language communication in
deafness. And there's some evidence
there's not great evidence that actual
actually actually things like kind of
inner speech are slightly different in
those sorts of cases. If early language
is different then later kind of self-t
talk is also going to be slightly
different as well. Um but the the
evidence is very patchy and actually in
the kind of history of doing work with
these sorts of populations is isn't so
good. Um so ultimately we don't know why
there's there's big variations. We've
got good theories why relating to things
like language development but we don't
have great evidence. Um in terms of like
the richness of what people experience
um now this likely reflects their own
experiences the kind of worlds around
them. You know there's studies of people
who have um inner speech in different
languages based on um where they lived
when they were growing up or when they
moved to a different country. Um there's
um research looking at kind of inner
speech being related to things like
having imaginary friends and imaginary
companions and kind of different
developmental phases as well. So inner
speech is a kind of almost like a rich
sponge through development that will
start to reflect your outer world
because ultimately that's what language
does. That's what your you know your
external language does. It's what your
speech does. It reflects who you are and
where you're from, the words that you
choose. Um, it's a it's a picture of who
you are and in a speech is no different.
>> I think this would be very hard to
experimentally determine, but do we know
when it emerges in development? I think
language of course will come first, but
do we know at what point in language
development does the first semblance of
inner speech start emerging? Again, I
can't really even figure out what
experiment you would do to run this
because most people, again, as you say,
don't have an awareness of their own
inner don't have knowledge of the
contents or frequency of their own inner
speech. So, how you're going to ask a
three-year-old in an experimental
paradigm about their inner speech? I
don't know. But do but do we know
anything around questions in those
areas?
>> Yeah. So um there are ways that you can
um approach this um and there's several
different lines of research within
developmental psychology that have tried
to explore it. So um to go back to some
theory first of all um there's a Soviet
psychologist called Lev Vigotssky who
was working in the 30s who's been
incredibly influential um in this area
and he had a theory that essentially
inner speech is internalized um external
speech and what happens is that um while
a child is growing up they first learn
to talk in conversation with adults
around them and what they do is they
learn to narrate what they're doing you
know they have a dialogue about the game
that they're playing, the puzzle they're
trying to solve, the bridge they're
trying to build. Um, and there'll be
kind of back and forth question and
answer. And what you can fairly
consistently see is kids age, say kind
of 3 to five, they'll then do that
themselves, right? So, they'll talk to
themselves while they're doing
something. And very often there's almost
this kind of sing songong element where
they'll ask themselves questions and
answer it as if they're having that
dialogue still with the caregiver even
if even though it's just them, it's just
them on their own. That's a phenomenon
known as private speech. Um and it's
been studied for for decades within
developmental psychology. What you see
post age five getting towards kind of
age seven or eight is um you sometimes
still see children talking to themselves
particularly when they're trying to
solve problems but gradually they get
quieter and quieter. So a classic
example is things like arithmetic,
learning to do arithmetic where you're
trying to do learn it out loud and then
you're doing sums on paper and you might
you still get some children who might
talk their way through a problem but
gradually kind of get quieter and kind
of quieter in how they do it almost to
the point where they're like whispering
themselves. And some people have argued
that this is kind of essentially private
speech going under the hood and becoming
inner speech becoming this kind of inner
dialogue where you don't need to talk
out loud in a similar way to when we
learn to read. We learn to read to we
learn to read out loud. Then gradually
we learn the ability to actually just
read in our heads and not have to say it
out loud as well. But that comes after
once we've done the external bit. Now
part of your question was that how the
hell do you go measure that stuff? And
there's a classic finding um from
studies of um verbal memory which shows
that um uh if you give children say a
set of words or pictures and you go past
the amount they can usually remember um
the children who um essentially don't
have inner speech will really struggle
to remember all the words that they need
to remember. But children who do have
inner speech can actually start to
rehearse the words they need to remember
and start to say it to themselves in
their own heads using something called
the funological loop. So that what they
could do is use the inner speech as a
kind of memory aid and then when it
comes to doing the tasks they can
actually solve them. And usually we see
children from the age of about seven
being able to do that. If they're doing
that as well, they also start to show um
evidence that they're turning things
into linguistic codes. So if you do this
test with like pictures and then you
say, "Right, in a few minutes you're
going to need to tell me what pictures
you saw." If they were just remembering
the pictures and then had to point them
out, then when what we wouldn't expect
is like certain types of linguistic
information to interfere with that. But
if they were coding them into words and
the words sounded similar, then some of
the similar words are also going to
interfere with their recall. Something
called the phological similarity effect.
So children who do this verbal rehearsal
are also more susceptible to these sorts
of effects which are actually to do with
phenology to do with speech. Um but they
have to be doing that in their heads for
that to even occur. Um so that's those
sorts of effects are usually taken as
good evidence that actually what
children start to do around about age
seven is they start to recode things
into internal language to support things
like memory and we can trace that and we
can estab that this sort of thing is
happening. So yeah about age seven is
often what people would say for the
beginnings of inner speech in that way.
>> Super interesting. Well, well explained.
The reason I'm so interested in this is
because I did this 10-week inner
experience sampling experiment with Dr.
Russell Pearl. Are you familiar with
Russ before? Yeah. Yeah.
>> Incredible. Yeah. Russ is amazing. I
love Russ. We've had many conversations
and I find it his work so interesting.
But so I went through that 10-week
process and I had ideas about my inner
speech on day one and it turns out that
practically all of them were wrong um by
the end of the 10 weeks at least in what
10 weeks of sampling revealed you know
you're going to get a decent guess it's
not going to be perfect. So with me at
the age of like 28 not really
understanding the contents of my inner
speech, I was there and thinking like
how the hell are you going to get at a
toddler's inner speech, you know? So
like you have all these kind of
correlational proxies, right? Sort of
indications, but you know these things
could happen without that
internalization of inner speech, right?
There still is when it comes to
phenomenology,
there's a bit of guesswork there because
you can't really ask them and get a
reliable response. That's right. Right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't be doing that
with children. They would find it very
hard, I think. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Do we have accurate numbers or
what does the best data say, do you
think, on how many people don't have any
inner speech at all?
>> Um, so there has been there has been
some work on something called
anendoasia.
um which is uh a term coined by um
Johanna Nerdigard and Gary Lupian a
language researcher um
off the top of my head I couldn't tell
you what proportion they're getting for
kind of fullon and an andandophasia um I
think um if it's something like
aphantasian which is the inability to um
experience any sort of mental images
then it could be as high as people that
kind of tend 10 to 20% of the population
wouldn't be doing this sort of thing. Um
I guess there's a question about like
whether t people tend to be doing it
versus whether they can do it and
something like you really get people who
just can't do it.
>> Um whereas a lot of the time within a
speech it might be that people think
that they're doing this a lot but
they're actually not doing it that much.
Like so they can do it, they can bring
it to mind. um but it's not a
spontaneous part of their experience in
a kind of really dominant way that
people might otherwise expect. Um and
and you know often people do think it's
crucial there, right? Because a lot of
our folk models of thinking involve
language. You know, if you think about a
program like Peep Show, uh now a
slightly dated reference, you know, to
get into
>> Great reference. Great reference.
>> Put people get into the inner world. You
know that what what you've got is
constant monologue, right? You've got
constant talk and that's that's supposed
to be that's what they're thinking at
any one point. And it would be very hard
to that wouldn't it that show if we were
actually thought in kind of other
modalities whether it's visual or
whatever like that you know that would
be really hard to show anyway but what
that picks up on is this kind of folk
idea of what it is to have a conscious
experience or to be thinking be aware
that you're thinking is to have a
linguistic experience. Um
>> yes
>> so that governs a lot of kind of I think
how people think about it and also
people what what people report. Um at
the same time uh you know so I've I've
worked with Russ a fair bit and I've
done I've never taken part in
descriptive experience sampling but I
have been part of the interviewing
group. Um so sometimes I've led
interviews and Russ has been to the side
or vice versa or this was a few years
back now. Um and I guess one thing that
struck me is that um
if we DES is sometimes a bit like a
microscope, right? And if we crank up
the microscope, we go zoom in right to
that moment of experience and pick out
what's happening right before the moment
of the beat. We might indeed pick out a
moment of sensory experience in real
kind of depth and wonder. You know, a
pure sense of Evan is looking at the
color purple or Evan is thinking about
his sore back or something like that.
you know, or Evan is thinking about the
cinema and that's it. Um, it was rare in
my experience that we'd pick out, you
know, kind of quite deep conceptual
thoughts or arguments or even parts of
dialogues, you know, when we did dees.
But I would be very concerned about
suggesting that those things aren't part
of people's thinking and experience. I
think they are. They just might be, you
know, at a broader scale, they might be
moments that happen once in a week as
opposed to all the time.
Something about the cranking of the
microscope means we're also missing some
perhaps quite important features of
people's experience. That kind of next
level of strata, you know, and that
might be conceptual experience. It might
be linguistic experience. Um, so when we
ask people, you know, how do you think
or how do you experience the world? It's
not necessarily that they're wrong if
they say, "Well, you know, a lot of time
I talk to myself and all these sorts of
things." But what they're saying is,
"Well, an important part of my
experience to tell you about is a lot of
the time I talk to myself if that's how
I experience it." And I also do all the
other things like I notice when my foot
is itchy, but that's not an important
part of my experience. You know, it's
not, you know, the very sensory and the
the kind of very everyday, they're part
of it, too. Um, but depending on what
tool we use, we pick out these things at
differing levels of focus. Okay. And um,
Russ certainly built a lovely
microscope, but it's not the only tool
for sure. And there's definitely issues
with it. I I felt that when I was
starting my experience sampling for the
day, you know, you have to carry around
this kind of box that looks a bit
strange and it looks like, you know,
it's from the 1970s or something and
you're kind of wiring in this earphone
that he he gave you and it's clearly a
different experience than usual and
you're kind of waiting for the beep and
then you're thinking, well, why hasn't
it beeped in a while? Hasn't beeped. So,
there's there's it's not quite pristine,
>> but I did I did get some interesting
realizations. you know, 10 weeks I think
you get a breakdown of like if you do
very very little inner speech, you'll
probably figure that out. If you do a
lot, you'll probably figure that out. If
you're in the middle, there's probably
some error bars on like less or more.
But like you'll figure out where you are
if there's any extremes or like I I I
realize that I a lot of my experience is
bodily like a lot of my emotions I feel
in the body. And in general, something
like 50% of my samples had some level of
sensory bodily sensory experience. And
that would have been something that I
would have identified with a bit, but it
really drove it home. And I was like,
"Wow, okay, that is true. That really
is, you know, like if I'm sick, I always
feel like a level of disembodiment, like
a disconnection from my body. If I'm
feeling really, really good about life,
I feel richly embodied." So something I
learned in that experience is that you I
really do experience um things in the
body. So you can figure stuff out and I
wasn't doing as many dramatic inner uh
dialogue battles with smart people that
I certainly thought I was,
you know, I always thought I was having
these richly intellectual debates with
people. um you know going back and forth
on these interesting like I didn't
really do that in my samples but
>> it gets it gets a it gets as you say
it's a microscope on I think what is the
most difficult question there is which
is phenomenology
>> absolutely and and I should say as well
you know Russ will say himself about 25%
of people he talks to do use a lot of
inner speech um there's just what he's
always emphasized there's just a whole
big variety of other things that can be
going on and and um and yeah, the
striking thing I remember doing those
interviews with him was how many people
we talked to who ended up being
surprised about their own experience
like it would go off in different
directions that they weren't
anticipating. So there's something
really valuable about that um that
process and that insight I think and in
general like the um whether it's uh
psychology, cognitive science,
philosophy of mind
often they are very very speech and
language focused. Um I I quite like to
say sometimes that inner speech has been
the history of inner speech has been
written by people who talk to themselves
a lot. you know that they you get this
part particularly through the influence
of philosophy actually. Um people who do
a lot of thinking in their mind with
words are also the people who are then
driven to write about it and who will
posit a very strong alliance between
certain types of conscious experience or
higher order thinking and a very
verbalized kind of experience. And that
excludes lots of other people in terms
of the actual experiences that they're
having. um including say marginalized
groups or groups who have kind of
atypical development of any kind or for
whom speech just isn't isn't an
important part of their experience right
um they you know they can think they can
have rich inner lives but it doesn't
mean that they are doing it in the same
way and it's and it's a problem to kind
of ally certain things about how the
mind works too closely to the fact that
some people just talk to themselves a
lot you know
>> yes you know it could
It could just be a kind of accidental
thing. It could be that some people just
happen to do that and some people don't.
It could be a quirk. It could be a kind
of evolutionary byproduct of other
systems and it doesn't it might not mean
anything. You know, it might not uh
actually translate into something which
then impacts upon um you know actually
how thinking works or uh what kind of
things you can think. Um so um but I
think that's not to say it's it's not
still part of kind of a rich part of
people's lives and a very interesting
phenomena to explore. Um but it's just
important to recognize the diversity
like people like yourself where
>> actually inner experience could take on
a very different shape.
>> 100%. I think this is one of the things
that's hardest for people to grapple
with that other people's experience of
the world isn't the same as theirs. So,
my first episode with Russ went pretty
viral for my channel. Over 300,000 views
now. And I got thousands thousands of
comments
>> from people just saying there is a 0%
chance that people there's some people
out there that don't dinner speak.
There's a 0% chance that people out
there can't visualize in their mind's
eye and can't generate pictures. People
would just absolutely refuse to believe
that other people's experience of the
world is different from theirs. And not
only that, but it can be radically
radically different.
Why is that such a hard thing to
believe? I mean, the variance, the
extent of the variance is surprising to
me. It's stunning how many ways humans
vary. But it's not surprising to me at
all that we do. And for some people, it
just seemed impossible that if their
mode of being was speech and inner
speech, that was their mode of
experience. Then they were just like,
there's just no way that someone else
does that because they they can't place
themselves in their shoes, right? If
that's their existence, they can't
understand what existence is without it.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's an
interesting question about why why
people struggle with it so much. Um,
I mean, there are there are personality
things playing into that, right? That,
you know, there's literally of the the
big five personality factors that we
study scientifically, one of them is
openness to experience. So I would sus
suspect you know if you're um somebody
who scores low in those sorts of things
then even the concept of other minds
working different ways would probably be
something that would you might struggle
with. I think a thing that we
>> um I think a thing that we
>> as children need to learn is that
people's feelings and emotions can
differ, right? Um and that's a key part
of learning to kind of get along or
function socially is actually people are
different in terms of how they're going
to feel about things, how they're going
to view things.
But there's often a kind of step change
in terms of
people aren't really encouraged to think
that other people think in a different
way or other people would literally see
the world in a different way or you know
that the almost like the nuts of the
nuts and bolts of the mind could be very
very different other than perhaps when
we talk about things like madness and
mental illness. Okay, that that the you
know that there could be that some
people are thinking about the world
radically differently but in a bad way
you know and maybe even that feeds into
people's gut feelings and people's alarm
when we talk about you know the mind
being radically different because if you
think that difference ultimately means
um one way being correct and the other
way being incorrect then divergence in
that way is something which must mean
pathology
>> or maybe even maybe even means that
you're the weird one and they're getting
it right in some way. So, and either way
it's confronting. So, hard to know. Um
but the other thing too is that people
just um
there's a strange thing about kind of in
inner experience and imagination where
you might think that these things are
fluctuating and up for grabs and very
creative and malleable and sometimes
people have incredibly strong
experiences of them which are as rigid
as if they were you know holding on to a
brick wall. Um, and an example that I
give from my research we've done in more
recent years about about reading
people's experience of like fictional
worlds and fictional characters is how
cross people get about characters voices
being wrong when they're cast in like
>> in radio plays whatever like that or
even the way they look in films or like
audiobook narrators being wrong you know
it's not like oh I don't quite like
their voices like it's there's this
strong casoral sense of this just is
wrong. This does not fit. Um, and we've
done a little bit of research on that
exploring, you know, playing different
voices to people when they imagine a
famous character and people can be
really, they don't might not be able to
describe what they are trying to listen
for, but people be adamant, right, that
they uh that certain things are wrong
that these things don't fit. So for me
that thing around kind of also other
minds working differently is is about it
kind of speaks to the same thing about
we have a strong sense of kind of
congruence sometimes about how our inner
representations work and how the mind
works and then something that doesn't
fit that model people are are startled
right it's kind of there's something
we've crossed some sort of boundary
>> yes yeah I was I loved reading about
that work that you were doing in the
fictional stories I find That's super
interesting. Do you think if you take a
social brain predictive engine stance on
that predictive framework, predictive
coding framework stance on that is that
the social brain modeling another self
in that book and maybe it's not really
able to differentiate between, you know,
the character that you're reading in the
book which has emotions and physical
characteristics and goals and you're
reading it over time. You're just
getting this stream of information and
your brain is in this black box and it's
trying to make sense of this stream of
information and maybe the most logical
explanation for this stream of
expformation
information is that it is actually a
self another a sentient conscious being.
Do you think that's part of that story
and part of why they're so annoyed that
the movie voice doesn't match because in
their in their mind they have modeled
that character so much that it's
actually a self to them. It's another
it's even sentient possible it's
conscious
>> uh quite possibly and there's definitely
a kind of investment factor that goes
into that whether it's almost investment
in the the architecture of a prediction
of another or whether it's just an
emotional investment over time in
particular types of characters um that
will be playing into how people are
reacting I think another key thing
though to say is that sometimes people
don't realize is how fast we make
judgments about speech and voice and
character and personality. You know, um
the there's a researcher called Nadine
Lavan at Queen Mary University of London
who's done lots of work on this. It
basically shows that our first
impressions of voices quite similar to
our first impressions of faces are
incredibly fast acting for sizing people
up in terms of what their likely
personality is, what their kind of like
social rank is, whether they're
trustworthy or not, all this sort of
thing. um like a voice holds so much
character and that also means you know
once we start to try and craft a voice
in a kind of fictional context or we're
reading a book we might not even be
aware of it but we very very quickly lay
down kind of certain ways in which this
voice must sound based on these things
we've learned about the character based
on these the way they talk in a book um
and it's hard to shift things out like
once the template is there you know
obviously a character can change through
a book or um sometimes repres
presentation of a character will be
updated if they fit well. So like you
know there are certain depictions of
characters in film or TV that then are
known to have then shaped even how the
writer thinks about that character. Um
the uh the really famous one being um
Alec Guinness playing George Smiley in
Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and in
Smiley's People, the John Larry books
that then became TV series and um and to
some degree Licar, the author, stopped
writing about Smiley as much after that
because Alec Giddis almost took
ownership of that character in his
depiction of it and it kind of changed
the representation for the writer
themselves. So, um, yeah, there is
there's definitely an element of kind of
investment over time, building
prediction over time, but these are
things our brains do automatically,
incredibly fast, whether it's how we do
voice recognition on the outside or
whether it's how we build fictional
voices on the inside.
>> Yeah. Another trait that people vary in
because I don't think I do that. I don't
I don't I don't think I do that at all.
>> And I don't think I have different
accents. I'm trying to think when you
were when you were talking there. I'm
trying to think, do I ascribe accents to
fictional characters? Um, I probably
don't read enough fiction to know I read
mostly non-fiction, but I don't think I
do that either. And again, I'm just so
interested in like what causes the
variance? Like what why and how would
you conduct experiments here to really
figure out why this variance exists?
Like what what are the features of a
brain that allows for all these
different personas to emerge? And then
some brains are perfectly happy with
these characters just all sounding like
you and having some emotion of course
and all of this. But there's just extra
traits here. There's just how do you
study these things? There's so many
interesting questions in this space.
>> Well, so we have a project at the moment
called Reader Bank um which is um a
longunning collaboration with the
Edinburgh International Book Festival.
And on reader bank, you can take a quiz,
the reader bank imagination quiz, which
tells you which one um which one of six
reader types you are in terms of your
own imagination
experience in relation to reading. So
>> uh things like are you more audio? Are
you more visual? Are you more into the
character's feelings or not? But also
like do you have main character energy?
Are you always kind of right in there in
the action? Or do you see it all kind of
like in a panorama like a cinematic
view? You answer a bunch of questions.
It tells you what you are. But what we
also do is we take the data away. We
analyze it and we use that in the
science of reading in the imagination.
So um our first paper from that is
currently under review. It's available
as a pre-print. It's led by one of our
researchers, Georgia Pontton. And
basically each year we refine it. We go
back to the festival. We do more work on
it. And we see also where it goes. You
know, if we find variations in terms of
what people are experiencing, how does
that relate to things like their general
imagery skills? Even how does it relate
to things like their mental health,
their proness to different types of kind
of um mental health conditions, not in
terms of risk, but just terms of
thinking about the links between uh how
the imagination works, how the creative
mind works, and then how that relates to
things like involuntary phenomena, so
things like intrusive thoughts or
earworms or things getting kind of stuck
in your head. um like we see these
things as being on a continuum then with
like situations where um they're
problematic from a mental health
perspective, but realistically they're
all part of this kind of spontaneous
morass of inner experience much of which
we don't have control over. You know, we
we don't get to choose kind of what
sounds get stuck in our head or like
what images kind of really stay with us,
what kind of people we keep thinking
about. You know, a lot of that is more
out of our control than we can
appreciate.
The reason that we study reading is
actually we fully expect variation.
Sometimes people kind of almost think
about reading as a straightforward
process, but actually the way the brain
creates a fictional world. Um, and I
don't just mean like coloring in Middle
Earth or something like that for a
reader. I mean the story world, the kind
of logical structure of a story, the
path of the characters through it. How
does the plot work? What are they
thinking? What is this person thinking
at this point? You know, it is a it is a
closed loop of complex expectations that
we are experts at building of following
and we enjoy doing it. But everybody's
drawing on a slightly different pallet
of kind of colors and resources and some
people it's a radio play. Some people
it's it is like full-on CGI kind of
visual thing. Some people it's like a
soap opera. It's just all about the
feels. Okay. So, we should expect
complexity. we should expect diversity
when it comes to something like reading.
It's one of the most complex things we
can do is build a story world. Um so
>> if if you're interested every it's still
open. People can go and take part and um
>> for sure I'll link I'll link that in the
description if I can and send the
listeners there because I've been trying
to do more of these kind of little
experiments with guests. I mean that
sounds fascinating. I'd love to do it
myself. I think a lot of a lot of the
listeners of the podcast would love to
do that.
>> I find all of this just so interesting.
I've become I've had so many inner
experience guests, but I've also done
the inner experience experiment. How a
question that's interesting to me is
there's there's clearly distributions of
ability in these different inner
experience um pillars or whatever you
want to call it like like visualizing,
inner speech. Um Russ calls it non-
symbolic um thinking and and these these
these different sensory experiences,
>> how trainable are they? Can we through
persistent process, voluntary effort,
improve our amount of inner speech? Can
we go from only having one voice in our
head to having multiple? Can we train?
Visualization is a big one. You know,
there's a big open question at the
moment whether people with aphantasia
are just at the very end of a
distribution in ability to visualize or
do they lack that neural infrastructure
altogether. Um, first off, do you I'm
curious. Do you have a perspective on
that? Is is it is it just simply a
spectrum of ability or, you know, could
there be a case that aphantasia is a
fundamentally different thing to
non-afantasia in that there's some
infrastructure there that's lacking or
some circuitry or or or something is
lacking? Or is it just that they can
visualize, but they're so far at the end
of the spectrum that it's basically
zero?
It's I think it's a really interesting
question. Um clearly there are some
people for whom like imagery is just not
part of their life. And um there you're
right there is emerging evidence that
there might be neurological differences.
As far as I know very often they're
based on functional connectivity rather
than structural connectivity. By that I
mean they're based on the synchrony
between signals as opposed to the actual
hardware um mostly. And the thing about
that is that it's a brain difference,
sure, but brain differences can change.
Signals can change. And so in theory,
that's the sort of thing that could
change. Whereas if it was something say
about their white matter, um then um you
would maybe struggle a bit more to kind
of change that once it developed. Um the
um going back to my point about inner
speech before you know a lot of what we
know about it is that is quite closely
tied to early development and language
development and um if language wasn't a
key part of your development early on
then I don't think it's ever going to
become something which is kind of second
nature in terms of your inner
experience. Now that's not to say that
you can't do it. Um I I would have
thought that even for most people if you
asked them try and repeat these words
say in your head or something like that
then they probably can do it. But in ter
if if people would want to be kind of
cultivating these things to
um
uh for whatever reason really then
actually there might be kind of hard
limits on how spontaneous this stuff is
ever going to be. Now the flip side is
there are some people out there who do
loads of different work both in terms of
visualization but also in terms of inner
dialogue often kind of create for
creative reasons and can end up with
incredibly vivid experiences through
repeated um uh attempts. So the two
there's three that come to mind. one
I've already mentioned before
not really but so writers for example um
well we did a survey of writers in 2020
paper came out this again was a
collaboration with Denver book festival
and we were interested in the fact that
some famous writers talk about
characters almost having a life of their
own or kind of talking for themselves or
telling them what to write in the story
even kind of dictating what would happen
and you some writers like swear by this
and some writers are kind of like
adamant that this is just made up. It's
what famous writers say to make
themselves sound more interesting. And
so we went and did a big survey of
professional writers about their
experiences of characters voices. And lo
and behold, about a third said, I do
this all the time. It's how I know the
processes work is the characters start
speaking to themselves. Um, and about a
third are kind of in between. They're
not sure what we're on about. And then a
third are like, absolutely not. This
never happens. Anybody who says it is a
charlatan. If we look at the people who
who are doing it very often what they're
doing is they're imagining via inner
dialogue. So it takes an amount of time
doesn't happen spontaneously takes a
number of weeks where essentially
they're almost building the framework
building the scaffold for a new voice to
emerge that will then start start
talking back to them. Now there's a
question there about whether they you
know they're probably already people who
are pretty good in a speech and in a
dialogue. Um, and yet they've still
managed to kind of boost it to the level
that you get up with other people's
voices in there in some way in terms of
what they're saying. Another group who
do something similar is Tulpammancers.
Have you come across Tulpammancers
before?
>> Only through your work and this
completely blew my mind and they were
pretty much the next couple of questions
I was going to ask. So, please go into
this. This is just wild. This is
completely insane.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, soci for people who
haven't heard of it, um, there was a
trend for it to occur about 10 years
ago. grew out kind of forums on Reddit
and 4chan and there were groups of
people um who some of whom were who are
bronies. They were kind of people who
share and enjoy uh My Little Pony, but
they we're talking adults and mostly men
um and they what they wanted to do was
bring into being um a conscious entity
that they could converse with um called
a Tulpa. And this was based on a a
Tibetan Buddhist practice from the early
early 20th century that was then picked
up by a movement called Theosophy. And
the idea was that via dialogue and
meditation eventually you could create
this kind of entity a spiritual entity
that you could uh uh converse with in
different ways and learn things from. uh
for the top amounts were doing it really
though for just the sake of like doing
it saying could you use the power of the
mind to create this other entity they
often the entity would often be could be
of the opposite sex might often be
actually kind of animal in form it could
be shaped by popular media like anime
and things like that um but it was it
was essentially you know creation for
the sake of it and um and the topists
would swear they could do this thing but
it would take a long time some people
would really struggle to do it and it
took intense
visualization but more particularly
dialogue again it was this sort of thing
you build the dialogue and eventually
this other entity comes um and um and
they've you know they've taken part in a
few research studies tokammancers
they're not always what you think they
are I think people made a lot of
assumptions about who would do this sort
of thing and that they might must be
kind of unusually in other ways in terms
of like their social skills or their
like their cognitive skills actually
they just even by the fact that they
have to really train their attention and
their imagination. They're quite unusual
kind of psychologically, but sometimes
in ways that like they're actually
better at on schools of like
metacognition or awareness or this sort
of thing because they're literally
trying to train their mind to do a very
specific thing in a similar way to, you
know, athletes who use visualization or
something like that. So, um they're not
always who you think they are. They are
quite odd. Um but they are people who
were almost trying to supercharge their
inner experience using inner speech
using dialogue and they and they seem to
end up with some very very vivid
experiences indeed some topas don't stop
talking even when you want them to stop
apparently and then that that can be a
challenge that they won't they won't go
away again. Um so
>> what is the exact process by which
people train this? If I wanted to try
and conjure a sentient entity in my
brain, start the process tomorrow. And
I'm really serious about this because I
find it very interesting. What like what
does that process look like? You say
dialogue and speech and meditation, but
specifically are you do you start
talking to the entity? Do you create an
entity and then you start talking to it
and then kind of just talk through that
because I just have no idea how that
works.
>> I think I think you would do both of
those things. Pete, I should say that
that a lot of topmancy is about people
sharing these techniques on these
forums. So if you go and look, they will
be out there. There are lots of guides
out there and like other things like
reality shifting, like lucid dreaming,
there are different ways of doing it. Um
and not all methods work for everybody.
Um but um the very often the kind of
some of the key ingredients seem to be
like putting yourself in a deep state of
kind of absorption. When you're focusing
on your inner experience, you shut off
from the rest of the world. Um, you
could use meditative techniques to put
yourself into that state and then both
visualizing what you you want your top
to look like and starting to talk to
yourself in your head to the top, maybe
even saying what the top would say back
to you, but practicing these things over
and over again in these kind of focused
states. eventually and I'm saying you
know after a matter of weeks if not
months people might start to get this
thing where it feels like the top is
talking for itself and and some
psychologists have speculated that this
could be essentially a kind of
automization process that you things
that come automatically and effortlessly
often feel like like you know where did
that come from you feel like you don't
have any agency over them like even like
certain ideas like an insight that
suddenly strikes you if you if you don't
feel it if you if you can't show the
working you can almost feel like it's
not one of yours. It might be that
something like that is happening with
topammancy that essentially the
dialogues go on long enough that this
thing's become so ingrained, you know,
that the topper is ready to speak before
you've even asked the first question.
Um, and the psychologist Sam Bessier
kind of likens it almost to like piano
playing where you learn it over so long
and you kind of get this muscle memory
that eventually like the tune plays
itself. you know, you're not you're not
effortlessly effortlessly thinking what
comes next in the notes. It's just it
just comes.
>> Some of that could be happening, but
yeah, there's loads of techniques out
there. Not one particular thing is going
to is going to make it for you. And it
might not work um for you, but um
there'll be there'll definitely be
people willing to give you tips about
it. So the prominent idea although
there's a lot that we don't know is that
this is actually sort of happening in
everyone's brains but what topammancers
are doing are sort of tapping into that
signal and turning up the dial that
there is as you say we do get just ideas
out of nowhere and things just do come
up from our subconscious into our
conscious and then they just appear but
maybe they're sort of being through
hyperfocus and awareness they're sort of
tapping into some extra feature of that
popping up to that so that it seems like
it's a separate entity. Is is that sort
of roughly?
>> Yeah. I mean, I think put another way
like
is one of it's another one of the most
unusual things the mind can do is create
another that can seemingly kind of talk
for itself and have a life of its own.
And whether that's pathologically in the
case of like hearing voices or
hallucinations, whether that's
creatively in terms of like fiction
writers, like it's a very complex and
unusual thing for the mind to do. And I
wouldn't say that everybody can do that,
but our the way our minds work in terms
of like modeling other minds, thinking
how other people would think and behave
in particular situations.
um thinking about how detailed we can
think about how people sound, how people
might think. You know, the capacity for
all this stuff to run kind of offline is
all there. It's just often people
wouldn't push the button to try and make
it happen. The thing about kind of
automaticity that could happen for
anything, right? Like if that's if that
is what's happened to monsters, that
could happen for anything, any sort of
learned skill. The point was more just
that that automaticity has that thing of
like it can almost feel happened like by
magic because you don't know how it's
happened. It's just arrived. But it's
because you've almost forgotten that
you, you know, you put the work in weeks
ago. You know, you built the muscle
weeks ago and that's why it can suddenly
happen now. But in that moment, it feels
like it comes out of nowhere. Um, in the
same way that if we're solving a problem
very often it helps to go away and think
about something else and your brain is
still getting on with it in the the
background and then suddenly it might
problem come to you. The reason it comes
to you instantly is like there's been
some sort of parallel processing going
on where your brain keeps buffering and
thinking and processing and then comes
back to you with the solution. So
>> those are the things happening in the
brain
>> all the time and our inner experience is
the stuff that kind of breaks through
and and isn't always the best read out
on what's been happening under the hood.
>> There's something very scary about this
actually to me like I I was just having
I I'm a big self-experimentter in these
things and I like to try and experience
it myself and try and see if I can
access it. And I was just having the
thought to myself of would I do that?
Like would I try do this? And then I got
like a sense of fear across my body of
like I don't know if I want to hear
voices cuz then like there is a sense
that this kind of sounds like you're
channeling schizophrenia or you're
channeling psychosis in a real sense and
I mean that like like in a real sense
that like are you this doesn't
necessarily seem healthy in that is
there some you know like what is the
real difference between a hallucination
and and inner speech right I mean that
can be be kind of hard to tease apart
because some of our inner speech is
involuntary and it kind of comes out of
nowhere and then like so what's really
the difference between a hallucination
and the the normal inner workings of our
speech?
>> Um it's a good question and people have
kind of defined it different ways. I
mean, if you unless you
um insist on hallucination being in a
kind of external percept
um the really the differences are about
a kind of an immediate experience that
it's not from you in any sort of way. Uh
and like it's not you speaking and it
has a kind of immediacy as if it's
something's really happening right now.
kind of sometimes people call it a
compelling sense of reality. So it would
make you turn around. It would stop you
in the tracks. And even when we talk
about kind of inner speech perhaps being
in other voices and other perspectives,
it doesn't have that. It doesn't kind of
hit you with that force. It doesn't um
have that immediiacy or sense of
reality. And probably people would still
recognize, oh no, it is me kind of it's
part of my mind talking to myself even
if it's you know imagining your mother's
voice in a dialogue or something like
that. So, so, um, it comes back to, you
know, a sense of ownership and a sense
of immediiacy really when we're
distinguishing those two states. But
they can get blurring. You get people
who've been hearing voices for a long
time where then actually the voice of
the other and their own thoughts kind of
become very intertwined.
>> I mean, my the most striking thing for
me is I remember interviewing people
with first episode psychosis about the
voices and I'm like, how how if at all
does it differ from a voice in the room?
and say it's just like hearing a voice
in the room and you go, "How are the ats
different from your own thoughts?" And
they go, "It's nothing like my own
thoughts." And you're like, "Okay, fair
enough."
>> Yeah. You know, we can we can labor the
point sometimes about what's the
difference when actually for people who
are right in the midst of it, they're
like, "It's really obvious.
>> It's just experiential. It's
phenomenal." Like it's just
>> um and it's you know, it really hits
you. Um, but I mean chick. So, have you
tried other stuff like I don't know,
reality shifting, lucid dreaming, like
these other states of being or
>> I really want to. Honestly, I'm quite
vanilla about it. I've just just tried
different states of meditation um
different psychedelics, but I'm I I
would like to do more and I would like
to try and experiment and do more
things, but this topammancy one is kind
of scary to me. um like there's like
like it seems like that you could drive
yourself insane kind of doing this in in
a very true sense. I don't know. Do you
has there been any I know the literature
on topamancers is is is probably not
very extensive but is there any links
with psychosis or mental illness or
hallucinations of any kind that you've
seen? Because even the way you were
describing that like how do you know
it's hallucination? Well, it's another
thing that's the top. That's the
>> toa, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, not that I know
of. I mean, I think a lot of people
assumed that they would be people who
are psychosis prone in some way and
maybe prone to dissociation, but we
don't have any good evidence that they
are. Um,
>> interesting.
>> And um, certainly if we compare it with
things like AI psychosis and people
talking to chat bots and other lens like
there isn't like a health panic about
topamy. Um, it hasn't, as far as I know,
kind of led to any kind of really
serious cases of stuff. Um whereas
just engaging in a you know a madeup
dialogue with an LLM for some people
seems to be like a really really
problematic thing. Again might already
be prone to those sorts of things. We
don't know. We have to be very careful
about calling things AI psychosis but um
like
dialogue with another can send you off
in quite unusual directions and you've
got various means means to do that now.
Um I think and I think both you I think
you're right to kind of think um hard
about
what kind of state of mind topman would
put you in. And there does seem to be
almost like a trade-off of control and
agency that almost you're kind of giving
up some control to allow other things to
kind of come in and talk to you. Um and
how that kind of gets reclaimed
>> is an interesting question. Um, but I'm
always worried I'm always I guess my
instinct is that a lot of people would
pathize these differences very quickly
or just assume that people are being
weird or they must be strange mentally
ill. And actually
>> if you if you instead you compare it to
say like spiritual practices, imagine
creative practices,
>> these are things that people been doing
for millennia, you know, and they can
put themselves in very unusual states of
being, but it doesn't necessarily mean
that they're
>> kind of problematic or, you know, um
>> yeah, for sure. I don't want to cast
dispersions or or that there's any sense
of judgment. It's just a a genuine seems
like there's a link there, but I have no
idea. Like I had
>> there was there was one time where I
didn't recognize the voice in my head
and it was the most terrifying moment of
my life
>> and it was because I made the
>> terrifying and foolish and ridiculous
decision of taking a tab of LSD
alongside an edible cannabis
>> at the same time
>> and was having like the time of my life
for like 3 hours and then very suddenly
it just clicked and I didn't recognize
the voice in my head and I was like,
"Oh, that's that's really that's really
quite scary. That's terrifying. I don't
understand what's going on here at all."
I was 100% convinced that my parents
would have to wheel me into like an
asylum. Like I was picturing some sort
of like Arkham Asylum type situation,
you know, with the Joker is in the cell
next to me and my parents would just
have to wheel me in. And that I was
tweaked like I like that was the word
that kept going through my mind is like
do people just tweak? Like do people
just go crazy and suddenly they you know
suddenly their s their the voice in
their own head that they used to be so
familiar with and they used to recognize
us then does that just ever go away and
I you know was studying neuroscience at
the time and I was like but I don't
think so I don't have any cases of that
but I don't know because I don't again
it's one of those situations where like
theoretical knowledge runs into
experience where it's like I can't
there's no amount of neuroscience
textbook that explains what the hell I'm
experiencing in that moment And
>> I don't know if that's anything like
Topammancy, but I know that for 3 hours
I didn't recognize the voice in my head
and it was the worst 3 hours of my life
probably. Now, now I can look back and
think that that's super interesting and
I went through it and that was a very
interesting experience, very negative in
the moment, but I don't think about it
negatively now because it's just
experience. Um, but like if that's what
topmancy is, I don't want it. And I
don't I'm not saying it is, but you
know, that's the only experiential
comparison I would have.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it
sounds quite unsettling really. In some
ways, you could see techniques like
topmancy is a bit a bit like kind of
offline psychedelics um that people are
kind of trying to do these things but
without the substances. And um I think
that also means like intensity of
experience is going to be dialed down.
Loss of control is going to be dialed
down. Like it's probably never going to
quite hit in the same way as as
something you you've experienced in that
sense. Um, but um
>> I've never never done either, so I
wouldn't know. Um, so
>> would you be curious to ever try
topammancy or one of these things? Do
you think that trying to add the
experiential dimension would add to your
scientific work? Again, I think
scientists like I was always very
surprised that Russ I talked to about
psychedelics with Russ a lot and I was
just it was so surprising to me that
someone who studies phenomenology hasn't
um tried or sampled in the thing that
alters your phenomenology more than
anything else. Just just out of
curiosity and interest um always
surprised me. You're you've never been
tempted to kind of add that experiential
dimension to your theoretical work.
Not really. Um I mean I'm too coward of
these techni psychedelics. Um and
I so I am somebody who uh has a lot of
kind of inner dialogue and things like
that and can imagine things fairly kind
of vividly or in depth and didn't ever
feel a need to kind of push those things
further. Um but you know they're useful
and I appreciate them particularly when
when writing for example for writing
books and things like that. been being
fantastic. So, uh, no, I'm I'm quite
happy with where I am on a theoretical
perspective and I much prefer
interviewing people about their own
experiences. That's that's my job. So,
>> how do you think we make progress on
inner experience as a field because it
feels like consciousness researchers
don't really talk to inner experience
people. inner experience people talk a
little bit to consciousness but there's
a bit of a separation in the field of
you know trying to figure out what
consciousness is and then the people
studying firsthand subjective experience
and there's a big chasm between them and
I know Russ and Guiiero Pichini people
like them have tried to kind of create
that bridge across but I'm curious on
how you envision the future of inner
experience research how you think we can
unify it a bit with consciousness which
is of course actually what we're talking
about which is subjective experience. Um
what are your thoughts on that more
generally?
>> Um well not having worked in
consciousness research I I guess I've
never felt the need to follow their
agenda and
>> but isn't what you do consciousness
research if you get me? You know what I
mean? Like what you do is consciousness
research if we're if we're not talking
about the the the academic field label.
But I I guess so my research has come
more from psychopathology, right? And so
often I'm interested in what we can
learn from it to then go back to inform
mental health kind of treatment and
practice. And there's a long tradition
within that research of working with
other unusual groups who kind of
practice different states of
consciousness. So um and and all of that
within that tradition working with
people's self-reports and inner
experience and kind of using descriptive
phenomenology is is fine and is part of
it. I think that consciousness studies
or consciousness science as it's
currently construed has
both very specific models and very
specific methods of kind of what counts
as doing it kind of properly. and often
you know as a field does not inform you
know say psychopathology very well and
doesn't actually pay that much attention
to very unusual states in those sorts of
context. So um it just depends you know
what what your aim is there. You're
absolutely right that all of these
things are part of consciousness. Um but
it depends on whether you want to use
those methods or whether you know it
doesn't something like um IIT doesn't
bear any relationship to kind of a lot
of what I do is just not relevant to
kind of our day-to-day work. So that's
not to say it's not an important theory
but I do I literally do not design
experiments which speak to that at all.
So it's um it depends kind of
integration for whom and what's what's
achieved there. Um and um I think
there's a really productive conversation
going on that can be had between in a
way kind of inner experience research
work on imagery and imagination and work
within psychopathology. Um and that uses
similar enough kind of approaches,
models and techniques that actually
there's I would say some of that some of
that kind of cross talk is pretty
healthy. It is there you do get
integration or you've got
crosspollination of ideas. Um so um yeah
I'd be interested to know kind of what a
consciousness researcher m makes of that
but um
>> it's uh people are aiming at different
things. They've got their own
community's got their own internalized
debates about things as well. So
>> yeah I just don't know how you have a
theory of consciousness that doesn't
incorporate subjective experience which
is sort of the only thing anyone can
agree is consciousness.
So yeah, anyway, the I know we're out of
time, Ben. This has been so much fun. I
think your work is is super super
interesting. I would there was so many
more areas I would have wanted to go
down if we had more time, but your work
is super cool. Let's see if we can do
this um the the Edinburgh book uh
imagination reading style thing. We'll
try and give that to the listeners and
see if
>> Yeah, for sure. I'll email you after
that. But thank you so much. This has
been great. This has been super fun.
>> Fantastic. Thank you very much, Evan.
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