I may be in a somewhat unique position to address this question, as one of the many many many weird transient neurological things that happened to me after my stroke was a period I can best describe as my internal monologue going away.
So I know what it's like to be the voice in my head, and what it's like not to be.
And it's still godawful difficult to describe the difference in words.
One way I can try is this: have you ever experienced the difference between "I know what I'm going to say, and here I am saying it" and "words are coming out of my mouth, and I'm kind of surprised by what I'm hearing myself say"?
If so, I think I can say that losing my "little voice" is similar to that difference.
If not, I suspect the explanation will be just as inaccessible as the phenomenon it purported to explain, but I can try again.
I wasn't to add another data point, but I'm not sure the one I got can even be called that: I have no consistent memory on this subject. I am notoriously horrible at luminosity and introspection. When I do try to ask my brain, I receive a model/metaphor based of what I already know for neuroscience which may or may not contain data I couldn't access otherwise, and which is presented as a machine I can manipulate in the hopes of trying to manipulate the states of distant brains. The machine is clearly based on whatever concepts happen to be primed and the r...
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: