The Giants Shoulder #63 Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and Why You Can’t Trust Your Own Thoughts
Oct 9, 2025
Gualtiero Piccinini, a philosopher and consciousness researcher, dives into the nuances of inner experience. He reveals that many people lack inner speech, experiencing instead unsymbolized thought. Through Descriptive Experience Sampling, he discusses how consciousness doesn't exist in a single stream but as multiple independent spotlights. Gualtiero also explores how sleep can produce conscious thoughts, the challenges of aphantasia, and why introspection can be misleading without rigorous methodology. His insights reshape our understanding of how we think and perceive our inner lives.
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Conscious Moments Persist During Sleep
- Gualtiero found he was often conscious during sleep outside REM, experiencing brief propositional thoughts rather than full dreams.
- He would immediately forget most of these sleep-thoughts unless caught right at the beep.
Flashes Of Thought From Intermittent Beeps
- Gualtiero switched to an intermittent alarm to wake from deep sleep and experienced short, dying 'flashes' of quasi-thoughts paced with the beeps.
- After several flashes the alarm finally woke him and he could recall only fragments.
Use Rigorous Sampling, Not Casual Introspection
- Use Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) with immediate notes and trained questioning to get faithful first-person data.
- Trust careful iterative interviewing over casual introspection to reduce theory-laden errors.
