GM
I was talking with @Jay
about this the other day over coffee.
There were different studies done in the last 20 years on how individuals process thoughts. The majority of people do not have an "inner voice" that processes ideas, but think rather in abstract pictures or feelings.
This use to bother me, as the implications would seem to indicate that the majority of people wouldn't be able to form worldviews unless given input. For example, if you only watch CNN or FoxNews, you will feed yourself that worldview without the ability to process or discern propaganda. The input your receive becomes your worldview without any friction. The theology your home church teaches is never questioned, it simply becomes your frame of reference and hermeneutic when dealing with how you understand the scriptures.
The fact is that these other modes of thinking do have built in processes to handle critical thinking, and that critical thinking doesn't come naturally to anyone of these thought processes but need to be developed universally.
https://www.hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/hurlburt-akhter...
PubMed
Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology - PubMed
Inner speech-also known as covert speech or verbal thinking-has been implicated in theories of cognitive development, speech monitoring, executive ...
