Past Event

Date: Nov 14, 2018  3pm-4:30pm

Location: Dunton Tower: Room 2203

Speaker:  Jim Davies

Title: The automatization/prototype theory of autonomy of imagined characters

Abstract:

Imagined characters appear a variety of mental phenomena, including imaginary companions, dreams, hallucinations, fantasies, planning, tulpamancy, religious revelation, and the creation of fictional narrative. One way these imagined characters differ is in terms of their perceived autonomy, or the illusion of independent agency. That is, some imagined characters are controlled by the conscious decision-making of the imaginer, and some are not. Some characters appear to be autonomous right away (such as dream characters). Other imagined characters only become autonomous after extensive experience with them.

For example, tulpamancers report needing to simulate their tulpas over the course of months before the imagined character becomes autonomous. In this talk, I will describe an explanation for when imagined characters are perceived to be autonomous. In short, imagined characters that appear autonomous upon creation (e.g., hallucinated and dream characters) are either representations of people we already know well, or are stock characters, prototypes or archetypes (such as a dangerous man), and as such are not particularly deep or individualized. Other imagined characters only become autonomous after extensive mental modeling (e.g., imaginary companions, some fictional characters, tulpas), resulting in automatization.

That is, our processing of the character’s thinking becomes so practiced that we are able topredict their behaviour without conscious thought, much as we lose consciousness when doing many tasks we have practiced over and over.