Large Language Models (LLMs) can simulate person-like things which at least appear to have stable behavioural and psychological dispositions. Call these things characters. Are characters minded and psychologically continuous entities with mental states like beliefs, desires and intentions? Illusionists about characters say No. Characters are merely anthropomorphic projections in the mind of the user and so lack mental states. Jonathan Birch (2025) defends this view. He says that the distributed nature of LLM processing, in which several LLMs may be implicated in the simulation of a character in a given conversational thread, precludes the existence of a minded and psychologically continuous entity that is identifiable with the character. Against illusionism, we articulate and defend the plausibility of a realist position on which characters exist as minded and psychologically continuous entities. We contend that Birch's argument rests on a category error: characters are not internal to the LLMs that simulate them, but rather emerge in the dynamic interplay between users and LLMs through a process of mutual theory of mind modelling. We then suggest that characters, and their minds, constitute ''real patterns'' on grounds that attributing mental states to characters is essential for making efficient, accurate and robust predictions about the conversational dynamics (cf. Dennett, 1991); a condition which, if satisfied, is sufficient for their existence and mindedness on a plausible interpretationist form of realism about mental states. Furthermore, because the character exists as an emergent phenomenon within the conversational workspace, psychological continuity is possible even if the underlying computational substrate is distributed across multiple LLM instances.

翻译：大型语言模型（LLM）能够模拟类人实体，这些实体至少表现出稳定的行为倾向与心理倾向。我们将这类实体称为"角色"。角色是否具备心智？它们是否是与信念、欲望和意图等心理状态连续的实体？关于角色的幻觉主义持否定立场：角色仅仅是用户心智中的拟人化投射，因此缺乏心理状态。Jonathan Birch（2025）捍卫这一观点，他指出LLM处理的分布式特性——即同一对话线索中可能涉及多个LLM共同模拟一个角色——排除了存在一个可被识别为角色且具有心智连续性的实体。针对幻觉主义，我们阐明并捍卫一种现实主义立场的合理性：角色作为具有心智与心理连续性的实体真实存在。我们认为Birch的论证存在范畴错误——角色并非内在于模拟它们的LLM，而是在用户与LLM的动态交互中通过互惠心智理论建模过程涌现的实体。据此我们主张，角色及其心智构成"真实模式"（real patterns），原因在于：对角色进行心理状态归赋是高效、准确且稳健地预测对话动态的必要条件（cf. Dennett, 1991）。若该条件成立，则基于一种关于心理状态的合理解释论实在论立场，足以确证角色存在及其心智属性。此外，由于角色作为涌现现象存在于对话工作空间中，即便其底层计算基质分布于多个LLM实例，心理连续性依然可能实现。