[rossnordby]

Not OP, but: if you're thirsty and there's a cup of water nearby, presumably you don't need to verbalize the full set of motor commands necessary to move your arm, grasp the cup, and so on. It's a pretty complicated motion involving quite a few decisions, but they're decisions that don't involve verbal ability. (Or at least I assume that's the case.)

For me, at least, most thinking feels like a version of that, but generalized. That doesn't mean it's necessarily easy- I can't come up with a fancy new algorithm by just desiring it momentarily- but most things just don't need words to be thought.

If I want to figure out if, say, some geometric modification obeys some property, the content of the thoughts is the spatial reasoning directly. I can go back and explain the thoughts verbally, but the words are just labels for the more 'native' reasoning.

In my case, I can still think things verbally, though it does seem closer to subvocalization than full inner voice as described. No aphantasia for me either.