This paper argues for the importance of inner speech in a proper understanding of the structure of human conscious experience. It reviews one recent attempt to build a model of inner speech based on a grammaticization model (Steels, 2003) and compares it with a self-regulation model here proposed. This latter model is located within the broader literature on the role of language in cognition and the inner voice in consciousness. I argue that this role is not limited to checking the (...) grammatical correctness of prospective utterances before they are spoken. Rather, it is a more broadly activity-structuring role, regulating and shaping the ongoing shape of human activity in the world. Through linking inner speech to the control of attention, I argue that the study of the functional role of inner speech should be a central area of analysis in our attempt to understand the development and qualitative character of human consciousness and that modelling can play a central role in that understanding. (shrink)

To define 'consciousness' is to describe its uses and deter-mine its boundaries, essential nature, and mechanisms. I distinguish between 'normal waking consciousness'; altered forms of waking consciousness underlying trance, absorption, hypnosis, dissociation, meditative states, drug states, and out of body experiences; and REM/dreaming and slow-wave/deep sleep - examining them by the basic characteristics and mechanisms of normal waking conscious-ness: cortical arousal, qualitative experiences, first-person subjectiv-ity, intentionality, knowing objects and self, interaction with external and inner world, united field, and reflective consciousness.