I am going to describe here a known fact about Thoughts and Thinking that must have important Philosophical Ramifications even though I can't think of any.

Here it is the Puzzling Fact. "A person cannot think verbal thoughts without speaking those thoughts aloud." This fact is a well known fact among psychologists and might be known to you.

If you are willing to cooperate I can partially demonstrate this fact by performing a simple experiment. Not a thought experiment but a real one.

As follows:

First, Repeat this thought out loud several times:

"The father handed the baby to the mother".

Ignore the meaning. The meaning is irrelevant.

Now think those very same words again silently. Think them again BUT WITOUT READING THEM. Close your eyes or something.

Notice how easily and smoothly these thoughts roll out.

Now open your mouth very wide, as wide as you can.

Now think those words again. Don't read them

Do you notice an awkwardness in your thinking? Awkwardness almost to the the point of an inability to think the words at all?

Let me enlarge on this.

One can easily buy speech detecters. These are ordinary motion detectors that can be clamped onto a subjects's lips and tongue and laid against a person's vocal chords (in the adam's apple) during a scientific experiment and speech movements can be detected.

Many such experiments have been carried out wherein the subject is asked to think silently and speech has always been detected.