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

本所林映彤（Ying-Tung Lin）教授與 Vilius Dranseika 教授（亞捷隆大學）一同發表的文章，收錄於 Synthese。恭喜林老師！以下為本文摘要，全文請見連結。

本文摘要

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.