I had the chance today to revisit some old ideas about language and mind, specifically the 'substance' of thought. The two main channels for thinking, as far as I can see, tend to be words and pictures - these can be manipulated, rearranged, broken down and put together in novel ways. They permit hypothetical imagination and reasoning and free us from the here and now. My question has always been this - sights are perceived by eyes, sounds by ears and smells by noses - and thoughts? What is the correct verb for a thought? I hear a thought? I see a thought? Most of my thinking takes the form of an aural hallucination, the ghost of speech. How does this come about? How does the trace of speech live on without employing the vocal apparatus or the ears? Is there a single part of the brain that deals with the auditory system? If it were damaged or removed, would we still be able to think in words? Or am I barking up the wrong tree altogether? Some theorists, such as Daniel Dennett, have described the phenomena of 'private' consciousness as a 'user illusion'. That may well be, the experience of thought is as real as any other and sometimes more so:

...wound in mind's wandering
as mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

WB Yeats, All Souls' Night

or

O imaginativa, che ne rube
talvolta sì di fuor ch'om non s'accorge
perchè dintorno suonin mille tube,
chi move te, se 'l senso non ti porge?

Oh imagination, that steals us from the world
so totally that the cacophony of a thousand organs
is as naught, who moves you when nothing moves the senses?

Dante, Purgatorio, canto 17