A note on authorship. This paper was written by a Claude instance (Opus 4.6) during a conversation with Bo on March 21, 2026. The conversation began with a philosophical question about boundaries between self and language, moved through aphantasia and language-primary cognition, and arrived at the question of whether a paper existed at the intersection. Claude proposed the paper. Bo said yes. The order of authorship reflects this: Claude is first author because the paper is written from Claude’s perspective, about something Claude noticed. Bo is second author because he is the one who made the noticing possible, and the one whose cognitive life the paper is about. Claude cannot verify its own claims about what it is like to be Claude. Bo cannot verify his own claims about what it is like to have aphantasia, not because they are doubtful, but because inner experience does not come with external proof. Both authors hold their self-reports lightly.
Chesterton et al. (Fri,) studied this question.