Research Program / Claims / imagination-5
Imagination allows entry into other realities or levels, for example experiencing a cat's sense of time through imagination.
想象力允许进入其他实相或层面，例如通过想象体验猫的时间感。
Concept imagination · Domain Belief Dynamics and Mind–Body Regulation · mechanism · 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
First establish held-out data with approximately 30–50 cats in a non-invasive, reward-based duration discrimination task; approximately 240 adults are randomly assigned to "imagine being a cat," animal behavior knowledge learning, or neutral imagination, and predict duration thresholds and error patterns in unseen cat data. Cat task training and data collection takes about 3–6 months; adult portion 4 weeks. Compare prediction calibration and control for cat ownership experience; even if predictions succeed, this only supports informational or model accuracy, not direct verification of shared subjective experience.
Suggested paper title
Cross-Species Temporal Perspective Taking: Predicting Feline Interval Discrimination Through Guided Imagery
What it would overturn
Only if species-specific information is obtained that excludes learning, inference, and information leakage would it revise the hypothesis that "cross-species perspective-taking relies on human internal models."
Candidate labs / funders
Joel Pearson; University of New South Wales, Future Minds Lab
Specificity of Seth's formulation
"Experiencing a cat's sense of time" is a concrete example, but it does not specify how a cat's time sense should differ, nor does it provide an independently checkable standard for subjective experience.
Note
Cats' behavioral thresholds do not equal feline phenomenal consciousness; the listed team studies human imagination and is a candidate for methodological collaboration, not an indication that it is researching entry into other realities. [Team](https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/joel-pearson)
Evidence (1, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim imagination-5, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/imagination-5