Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

There has been a recent increase in philosophical interest in the phenomenon of inner speech (see Langland Hassan & Vicente, 2018; Gregory & Langland-Hassan, 2023) with many debates currently playing out, including ones on the content of inner speech, the relationship between inner speech and thought, and the role that it plays in self-knowledge. One debate that has received less attention concerns whether (and in what sense, and to what extent) inner speech is dialogic. In this paper, we articulate different versions of this so-called “dialogism”, and test them against various objections. We end by reflecting on some explanatory payoffs that different forms of dialogism may have, especially when it comes to understanding various mental health conditions.