Defining tinnitus: a socratic and epistemological inquiry

Defining tinnitus using a Socratic approach poses a philosophical challenge: identifying features that are shared by all instances of tinnitus and only tinnitus. Existing definitions variously describe tinnitus as the perception of sound without an external source, a phantom auditory perception, or an auditory sensation without meaning. However, such formulations struggle to distinguish tinnitus from related phenomena such as dream sounds, auditory hallucinations, or involuntary musical imagery. This paper adopts a Socratic approach to examine tinnitus as a working concept, aiming not to impose a definitive definition but to expose the conceptual and empirical questions that must be resolved before one can be established. The analysis focuses on tinnitus as a first-person experiential phenomenon that is epistemically accessible primarily through self-report. Candidate features examined include occurrence in wakeful consciousness, persistence beyond fleeting moments, sound or sound-like character, absence of intrinsic semantic content, and the conditions under which tinnitus becomes experientially salient, including whether intrinsic unpleasantness plays a role. These features are treated as hypotheses rather than settled criteria. By analytically separating tinnitus itself from the meanings attributed to it, the distress it may evoke, and its impact on functioning, the paper formulates a series of research questions aimed at refining the definition of tinnitus through phenomenological, linguistic, and empirical investigation.