The variety and limits of self-experience and identification in imagination

Abstract

Imagination and other forms of mental simulation allow us to live beyond the current immediate environment. Imagination that involves an experience of self further enables one to incorporate or utilize the contents of episodic simulation in a way that is of importance to oneself. However, the simulated self can be found in a variety of forms. The present study provides some empirical data to explore the various ways in which the self could be represented in observer-perspective imagination as well as the potential limits on such representations. In observer-perspective imagination, the point of view or perspective is dissociated from the location of one's simulated body. We have found that while there are different ways to identify with oneself in an observer-perspective imagination, the identification is rarely dissociated from first-person perspective in imagination. Such variety and limits pave the way for understanding how we identify with ourselves in imagination. Our results suggest that the first-person perspective is a strong attractor for identification. The empirical studies and analysis in this paper demonstrate how observer-perspective episodic simulation serves as a special case for research on identification in mental simulation, and similar methods can be applied in the studies of memory and future thinking.

Feeling episodic: Dimensions of phenomenology in observer memory.

“…However, the experience of an occupied perspective seems to be a common part of observer memory. In addition to the findings of Lin and Dranseika (2021), it appears that in an observer memory, one could recall what happened to oneself in the past as if one is seeing the scene from someone else’s perspective. One way to avoid the three-term problem is by appealing to the psychological mode.…”

“…This does not seem to be the full story, however. In work that challenges this notion of an unoccupied point of view, Lin and Dranseika (2021) study the experience of self in observer imagination, which offers some insights into self-experience in observer memory. They explore various ways in which the self is represented in observer imagination: (1) the self is represented as occupying the observer’s or the external vantage point; (2) the self is represented as occupying the position of protagonist in the scene, viewed from an external perspective; (3) the self is represented as occupying both; and (4) the self is represented as switching between the two.…”

“…McCarroll, 2018). This difference between how the self is represented (the locus of self-representation) can have an impact on the phenomenology of the mental state (Lin & Dranseika, 2021).…”

Experimental philosophy of memory

“…See alsoLin and Dranseika (2021). 12 Note that, whereas Rose looks at semantic memory (memory for facts), finding that memory presupposes knowledge and hence truth, Dranseika (2020) looks at episodic memory (memory for events), finding that memory does not presuppose truth.…”