> Alex invoked, so...
>
> IME talking with people, there are several different kinds of
> perceptions of what it is *like* to think or just to be conscious.
>
> Going just from my personal discussions with others:
>
> The most common one seems to be an 'inner verbal monologue'. That is,
> there is a sense of oneself as talking about stuff, and that talking
> *is* the consciousness. E.g. you'll think out a problem by talking it
> out in your head; have a running commentary about what others are
> saying or doing; what others might think of you; etc etc.
>
> This is *not* the same thing as schizophrenia or MPD or the like
> because the voice is *you*, i.e. it doesn't seem like some outside
> commenter. And it's not an auditory (or for the below, visual)
> illusion; there's no confusion as to its overlapping with real
> audio/visual senses. It just is audio-like in quality.
>
> Less common and less easily described, there are:
> * other linguistic-monologue kinds of thought:
> - textual thought, which is essentially the same as an inner verbal
> monologue except that it's not-quite-visual text (somewhat like a
> 'typewriter' display effect) rather than psuedo-verbal speech (I've
> only met one person who has this)
> - signed thought, ditto but using a sort of ?proprioceptive sense of
> sign language (only met 1, but have read accounts of others; all born
> deaf with early access to ASL)
> * abstract thought, where ideas aren't really encoded symbolically in
> any perceptible way until it comes to expressing, memorizing, or
> rehearsing them - i.e. their manipulation (thinking through a problem,
> recognizing social context, etc) is purely abstract (this is what I
> have)
> * visualistic thought (which I don't really understand, but seems
> nonlinguistic)
>
> O CONLANGers: what is *your* qualia of thought?
>
>
> This is a potential research interest of mine, but I've not seen
> anything published on it that's not blithely assuming that everyone
> uses one particular form (usually the inner verbal), so if you know
> stuff please forward me links / pdfs.
>
> I'd like at some point to do research on the neural correlates of
> these different qualia, see if they could be messed with (eg cause
> someone to have a different type of conscious experience), and see if
> they correlate well with changes created by meditation*. I may
> actually have the opportunity to do this soon (grad school), so ideas
> for research projects or background reading would be appreciated.
>
> - Sai
>
>
> * Even more OT: Meditation teaching often presumes inner verbal
> monologue, and that the goal of meditation is to shut it up (eg
> through mantra recitation or mushin induction techniques) so that one
> can experience the rest of consciousness. IMO this is inaccurately
> dogmatic, in that a) not everyone does think that way to begin with (I
> don't) and b) any given school usually teaches only one class of
> technique (eg mantra recitation and other one-point-focus techniques),
> which isn't necessarily the best for everyone to achieve that goal.
>
> I'd like eventually to write a recipe-book of meditation techniques;
> if you're interested, see
>
http://s3.amazonaws.com/saizai-public/Sai%20Emrys%20-%20Meditation%
> 20for%20hackers%20-%20all-point%20techniques.pdf
> and
http://saizai.livejournal.com/659495.html (which are effectively
> an excerpt and crude outline, respectively) and contact me off-list.