The voices can apparently be aware of so many different things:
- your thoughts,
- your feelings,
- your memories,
- what you see,
- what you hear,
- what you taste,
- what you smell,
- what you feel,
- what you hear others say (speech recognition),
- what you imagine (your mind’s eye),
- and what you believe.
The voices apparently being intelligently aware of them (in other words understanding them) becomes apparent when they can comment on, or/and react in other ways to these things, or/and behave intelligently.
When comparing schizophrenia to a computer, those are the different things it can “read”.
In addition to “reading”, there are different faculties it can manipulate (or “write to”) to produce:
- inserted thoughts, (and possibly also intrusive thoughts,)
- strange feelings, or feelings caused/triggered by your schizophrenia,
- fake memories, recall (of memories) that is not caused by you trying to recall something,
- visual hallucinations,
- auditory hallucinations,
- gustatory hallucinations,
- olfactory hallucinations,
- tactile hallucinations,
- voices (speech production),
- images in the mind,
- and delusions (fake beliefs)
– respective to the 11 faculties it can “read”.
In addition, for some who have schizophrenia, it can also control:
12. the body, making “you” do things you wouldn’t do,
13. the dreams you see,
14. your sleep and waking,
… and other faculties.
That’s a lot of different faculties for schizophrenia to manage (intelligently) - to perceive, understand, and control (in computer terms “read”, “process” and “write to”).
That means one of two things:
- either schizophrenia is a very complex thing all over the brain,
- or there’s an intelligent “central processor” (or “CPU”) positioned somewhere where all faculties are connected together (to provide a complete conscious experience) - somewhere near the link that connects the brain (physical), the consciousness/soul (non-physical), and your will. (The ‘will’ part is there if schizophrenia is intelligently controlling things*1 against or irrespective to your will, in which case it apparently uses its will to do things. *1 - things that are normally controlled by your will, like your body)
If the 2nd case is true, the question is - on which side of the fence does this ‘central processor’ sit?
( The intelligently controlled faculties or symptoms become apparent in cases where
- the voices behave in a complex or intelligent manner,
- the voices recall things you did in the past,
- the voices show you mental images,
- the voices cause strange feelings in your body,
- the voices appear in the dreams or when your schizophrenia controls your dreams,
- the voices control your body,
- the voices or sounds sound like they’re coming from a certain place,
or in any case where the symptoms appear in a controlled manner, or are related to what the voices say or other things, rather than appearing randomly. )
(I’d say a particular case of schizophrenia is intelligent, if it can produce voices that do more than simply repeat your thoughts (the theory of voices being “your own thoughts”) or produce a word salad.)
This does not cover/address certain types of schizophrenia, like catatonic schizophrenia, where the postures and movements of the body do not make sense, or are just repetitive in nature.