Research Program / Claims / beliefs-12
Seth suggests exploration through the 'first inner sense,' such as using the mind's eye to encircle objects and imaginatively see their backsides, and using inner touch to 'enfold' surrounding things.
赛斯建议通过“第一内在感官”进行探索，如用心灵之眼环绕物体并想象看清其背面，以及用内在触觉“包裹”周围事物。
Concept beliefs · Domain Belief Dynamics and Mind–Body Regulation · methodological suggestion · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.
Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
About 300 people are randomly assigned to encircling visual imagery, tactile imagery, or matched spatial training for 4 weeks; tests include objects with viewed backs, objects inferable by shape, and objects whose backs contain independent random patterns. Each person has about 200 critical trials, with pre-registered four-alternative forced-choice accuracy, confidence calibration, and transfer effects; apparatus excludes reflections, transparency, touch, and experimenter cues, with blind scoring; an independent replication of about 300 people tests any positive effect on hidden random patterns.
Suggested paper title
Visual and Tactile Imagery Training for Occluded-Object Inference: A Pre-registered Randomized Study
What it would overturn
Only if repeatable identification is achieved for random back-side information never contacted and not inferable would the hypothesis that 'imagery content derives from existing sensory information, memory, and generative inference' be overturned.
Candidate labs / funders
Joel Pearson，University of New South Wales，视觉意象研究：[研究主页](https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/joel-pearson); Devin B. Terhune，King’s College London，Awareness & Modulation Lab
Specificity of Seth's formulation
Encircling and enfolding are relatively concrete practice instructions but lack success criteria; as imagery practice they overlap with existing methods; only as a means of acquiring unknown external information do they yield distinguishable predictions.
Note
This rating addresses the cognitive gains or external-information acquisition efficacy of this specific practice set; imagery experience has existing support, but more vivid experience may also raise confidence without raising accuracy.
Evidence (1, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim beliefs-12, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/beliefs-12