I still wonder about that. I've always thought that there's a good chance that some people just say their internal thoughts are "heard" because that's the closest physical phenomenon to describe it to someone else.
We lack consistent language for describing things that we can't be certain are being experienced by another person in the same way. Make a noise, we can describe what both people experience as "hearing." But when both have a thought, there's no common reference stimulus to tie to the sensation.
There may be no (direct) common reference between the two people, but there is a common reference. If a person hears a sound, and then later their mind reproduces that sound (say, remembering a song) they'd say they 'hear' the sound in their head (or at least I've never met anyone that doesn't unless they're making a fine distinction between the subjective experiences of hearing with the ears vs 'hearing' with the mind.) If someone says 'I don't hear my own thoughts/memories', particularly in reference to a common experience (take the song example from earlier) we can reasonably infer that their subjective experience is very different from someone who does 'hear' their own thoughts.
I know that personally, I am quite capable of hearing (or seeing) thoughts/memories, and the experience is near enough to the real thing that I wouldn't use any other term other than to clarify that I'm not undergoing some sort of self-induced hallucination.
I still wonder about that. I've always thought that there's a good chance that some people just say their internal thoughts are "heard" because that's the closest physical phenomenon to describe it to someone else.
We lack consistent language for describing things that we can't be certain are being experienced by another person in the same way. Make a noise, we can describe what both people experience as "hearing." But when both have a thought, there's no common reference stimulus to tie to the sensation.
There may be no (direct) common reference between the two people, but there is a common reference. If a person hears a sound, and then later their mind reproduces that sound (say, remembering a song) they'd say they 'hear' the sound in their head (or at least I've never met anyone that doesn't unless they're making a fine distinction between the subjective experiences of hearing with the ears vs 'hearing' with the mind.) If someone says 'I don't hear my own thoughts/memories', particularly in reference to a common experience (take the song example from earlier) we can reasonably infer that their subjective experience is very different from someone who does 'hear' their own thoughts.
I know that personally, I am quite capable of hearing (or seeing) thoughts/memories, and the experience is near enough to the real thing that I wouldn't use any other term other than to clarify that I'm not undergoing some sort of self-induced hallucination.