Introspection note

Empathy.

(1) What simulation-theory / theory-theory hybrids are available? Could different persons be distributed along a spectrum of simulation-theory theory-theory hybridity?

(2) Varieties of simulationism: direct matching; inverse modelling; response modelling ("the function of mirror neurons in social cognition is not so much to “mirror” the target’s action; rather the function is to instantly prepare a complementary action in response to the target"); Alvin Goldman's simulationism ("it is essential that the simulating system recognize its own mental states"); Gordon & Heal's radical world-directed simulationism ("the person is thinking about the world from the perspective of the person being simulated, rather than thinking about their beliefs, desires and other psychological states"; cf. ascent routine).

(3) When meeting someone new, I have a strong sense of an existing relationship or trace being adapted for the purpose. There's usually a superficial &/or circumstantial resemblance / resonance. Could this have anything at all to do with simulationism?

(4) In a group, the impression that I am "anchored" in the vision of one particular person other than myself. Radicalised in crushes and limerence.

(4a) Relationship between simulationism & what is perhaps misleadingly called "objectification."

(4b) Possibility of "thick" simulationism in which scraps of personality, perspective, memory are lathed into offline representations ("homunculi" [cf. defixiones in WiP Beyonce]).

(4c) Possibility of hybrid "homunculi" in group situations. Cf. ideal reader, imagined audience, et al.

(4d) If simulation worked like this, how quickly and easily could you switch from one perspective to another?

(5) Also BTW cf. cognitive impenetrability, systems doing "double duty" (fully online representation / offline or perhaps somehow partly subvening online representations).

From Schiller's letters on aesthetics

"No doubt the artist is the child of his time, but unhappy for him if he is its disciple or even its favorite!

"[...] Cherish triumphant truth in the modest sanctuary of your heart; give it an incarnate form through beauty, that it may not only be in the understanding that does homage to it, but that feeling may lovingly grasp its appearance. And that you may not by any chance take from external reality the model which you yourself ought to furnish, do not venture into its dangerous society before you are assured in your own heart that you have a good escort furnished by ideal nature. Live with your age, but be not its creation; labor for your contemporaries, but do for them what they need, and not what they praise. Without having shared their faults, share their punishment with a noble resignation, and bend under the yoke which they find it as painful to dispense with as to bear. By the constancy with which you will despise their good fortune, you will prove to them that it is not through cowardice that you submit to their sufferings. See them in thought such as they ought to be when you must act upon them; but see them as they are when you are tempted to act for them. Seek to owe their suffrage to their dignity; but to make them happy keep an account of their unworthiness: thus, on the one hand, the nobleness of your heart will kindle theirs, and, on the other, your end will not be reduced to nothingness by their unworthiness. The gravity of your principles will keep them off from you, but in play they will still endure them. Their taste is purer than their heart, and it is by their taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugitive. In vain will you combat their maxims, in vain will you condemn their actions; but you can try your moulding hand on their leisure. Drive away caprice, frivolity, and coarseness from their pleasures, and you will banish them imperceptibly from their acts, and at length from their feelings. Everywhere that you meet them, surround them with great, noble, and ingenious forms; multiply around them the symbols of perfection, till appearance triumphs over reality, and art over nature."

From Schiller's letters on aesthetics

"The misfortune of his brothers, of the whole species, appeals loudly to the heart of the man of feeling; their abasement appeals still louder: enthusiasm is inflamed, and in souls endowed with energy the burning desire aspires impatiently to action and facts. But has this innovator examined himself to see if these disorders of the moral world wound his reason, or if they do not rather wound his self-love? If he does not determine this point at once, he will find it from the impulsiveness with which he pursues a prompt and definite end. A pure, moral motive has for its end the absolute; time does not exist for it, and the future becomes the present to it directly; by a necessary development, it has to issue from the present. To a reason having no limits the direction towards an end becomes confounded with the accomplishment of this end, and to enter on a course is to have finished it."

From Schiller's letters on aesthetics

"It is only when a third character, as previously suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to moral principles can be free from injurious consequences; nor can anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free-will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity.

[...] All improvement in the political sphere must proceed from the ennobling of the character. But, subject to the influence of a social constitution still barbarous, how can character become ennobled? It would then be necessary to seek for this end an instrument that the state does not furnish, and to open sources that would have preserved themselves pure in the midst of political corruption."