Imagination is one primary way in which we can get outside our own skin to get a sense of other people’s internal lives. When my friend tells me what it’s like to enjoy roller coasters (which I don’t), I can imagine the features she mentions—an enjoyable thrill, the expectation of the turns around the bend, the wind in her hair—to get a take on the feelings that would involve. On a more serious note, when I read accounts of traumatic experiences I may never have—e.g.Kang Chol-Hwan’s stunningaccountof his ten years in a North Korean prison camp—my access to how that felt for him, ‘from the inside,’ is by way of the imagination. Not only do we sometimes enjoy imagining what it would be like for our lives to be very different; we really should and must do this to understand the conditions of our friends across the world.

Getting this right, in many cases, seems like leaving behind certain aspects of myself in thought. For instance, if I personally am trying to imagineenjoyinga rollercoaster, I need to set aside and ignore the fact that I feel a pit in my stomach just thinking about getting on a coaster. Or if I’m focusing on Kang’s memoir just to imagine what it was like for him, I need to leave out the basic conditions of my own life—including my political freedoms and my security in my culture—to even begin to perform my imaginative transformation into him.

I might be good at doing this kind of thing—that is, ignoring all the irrelevant details of your own life to inhabit the perspective of another in imagination. But even if I can do that, there’s a leftover question to ask about all your imaginative travels into other people’s worlds: must I always imaginemyselfbeing different—or can I simply imaginebeing different, full stop?

The difference might sound merely grammatical, but it’s not. It is about whether the content of all our imaginations really has to involve the concept “I” or “me.” In other words, it has to do withde secontent, which essentially involves the first-person perspective.

Several philosophers—notably,Kendall Walton—think that all imagining isimagining of myself. This applies universally, even when it seems on the surface like what I’m imagining doesn’t have to do with me or any other person at all. Take a silly case: imagine that pigs can fly. I can do that. (So can you.) When I do, am I imagining anythingof myselfat all? Walton, surprisingly, says “yes”: imagining that pigs can fly is just a way of pretending,of myself，我相信猪会飞。我带着我的概念“我”或“我”，即使我在想象的场景中忽略了我自己的各种特征。

This view can lead to odd places, though. There are things I can imagine thatshouldn’tseem possible to imagine if all imagination isof myselfin that sense. For instance, I can imagine what it would be like if all animals went extinct. (A barren, quiet earth.) This would be a world with no first-personal perspectives in it at all.

But if all imagining isof myself, what would this imaginative project involve? Imagining,of myself，我相信所有的动物都已经灭绝了?这将涉及到坚持第一人称视角——一个信徒——她不属于的地方。令人惊讶的是，这涉及到将错误的信念归因于自己的想象。这似乎不是一个公平的描述，它需要想象-我真的可以-所有的动物都灭绝了。

Moved by these thoughts, other influential philosophers have denied that all imagination is imaginationof myself.Bernard Williams, for example, claimed that one kind of imagination—the “participation” kind—does not have to be imaginationof myselfat all. In particular, this applies to imagining being someone different, like Napoleon. It seems possible to imagine being Napoleon. I might imagine fighting on horseback, suffering a crushing military defeat, and so forth. But I literallycould not拿破仑。这是不可能的，就像我不可能成为其他任何人一样。

That’s part of why it’s uncomfortable to say that this imaginative exercise would involve imagining,of myself, that I am Napoleon. To do that would be to imagine something completely and utterly impossible. So, Williams suggested, we should be more careful to say that such imagination is not imaginingof myselfthat I am Napoleon; it’s just imaginingbeing Napoleon. That involvespretending(mentally) to do all sorts of Napoleon-like things. Although in fact it’s me who’simagining, I disappear from the content of the imagination on this view.Iam notmyselfin the world imagined when I imagine being Napoleon; there’s just Napoleon and his own world.

This debate matters because there’s a relationship between what we can imagine and what is really possible. Philosophers often use asupposed linkbetweenimaginability and possibility得出关于其他可能性的结论。这个想法是，我们想象某些场景的能力——至少有一定程度的明确细节——应该暗示这种场景在形而上学上是可能的。(这意味着，如果世界在相关方面与现在不同，情况可能会是这样。)

But if all imagination is imaginationof myself, and I can imagineof myselfsomething that is manifestly impossible, then imagination starts to look worse as a means of access to other possibilities than the one in which we live. That’s one reason we might buy the Williams line on imaginingbeing Napoleon. It’s not really imagining something impossible at all, if you accept what he says about it. That might let us save the link between imaginability and possibility.

I’m tempted to say, with Williams and against Walton, that not all imagination is first-personal. I don’t have to bringmyselfalong when I imagine my way into other people’s lives; indeed, I don’t need to bring any first-personal perspective into a world that I imagine. You can simply decline to use your concept “I” or “me” inside the world of your imaginative fantasy.