Why do we talk to ourselves?

Deamer, Felicity

Abstract

Human beings talk to themselves; sometimes out-loud, other times in inner speech. In this paper, I present a resolution to the following dilemma that arises from self-talk. If self-talk exists then either, (i) we know what we are going to say and self-talk serves no communicative purpose, and must serve some other purpose, or (ii) we don’t know what we are going to say, and self-talk does serve a communicative purpose, namely, it is an instance of us communicating with ourselves. Adopting (i) was the strategy taken by Bart Geurts, who claims that the primary purpose of self-talk is to entrain commitments, and is not (primarily) communicative. While accepting that self-talk can usefully play this role, I criticise the view that entraining commitments is self-talk’s fundamental role. I argue that adopting the view that we are self-blind, at least to a significant degree, means that we can accept that self-talk does play a communicative role.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 1, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jun 5, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-06
• Deposit Date: Sep 21, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 22, 2021
• Journal: Review of Philosophy and Psychology
• Print ISSN: 1878-5158
• Electronic ISSN: 1878-5166
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 425-433
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00487-5
• Keywords: Philosophy; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7816010
• Additional Information: First Online: 5 June 2020