Mental time travel and the philosophy of memory (Forthcoming in Unisinos Journal of Philosophy) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Editorial: Memory as Mental Time Travel
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
Originally understood as memory for the "what", the "when", and the "where" of experienced past events, episodic memory has, in recent years, been redefined as a form of past-oriented mental time travel. Following a brief review of empirical research on memory as mental time travel, this introduction provides an overview of the contributions to the special issue, which explore the theoretical implications of that research.
Journeying to the past: Time travel and mental time travel, how far apart?
Frontiers in Psychology, 2023
Spatial models dominated memory research throughout much of the twentieth century, but in recent decades, the concept of memory as a form of mental time travel (MTT) to the past has gained prominence. Initially introduced as a metaphor, the MTT perspective shifted the focus from internal memory processes to the subjective conscious experience of remembering. Despite its significant impact on empirical and theoretical memory research, there has been limited discussion regarding the meaning and adequacy of the MTT metaphor in accounting for memory. While in previous work I have addressed the general limitations of the MTT metaphor in explaining memory, the objective of this article is more focused and modest: to gain a better understanding of what constitutes MTT to the past. To achieve this objective, a detailed analysis of the characteristics of MTT to the past is presented through a comparison with time travel (TT) to the past. Although acknowledging that TT does not refer to an existing physical phenomenon, it is an older concept extensively discussed in the philosophical literature and provides commonly accepted grounds, particularly within orthodox theories of time, that can offer insights into the nature of MTT. Six specific characteristics serve as points of comparison: (1) a destination distinct from the present, (2) the distinction between subjective time and objective time, (3) the subjective experience of the time traveler, (4) their differentiation from the past self, (5) the existence of the past, and (6) its unchangeability. Through this research, a detailed exploration of the phenomenal and metaphysical aspects of MTT to the past is undertaken, shedding light on the distinct features that mental time travel to the past acquires when it occurs within the realm of the mind rather than as a physical phenomenon. By examining these characteristics, a deeper understanding of the nature of mental time travel is achieved, offering insights into how it operates in relation to memory and the past.
Toward a Typology of Mental Time Travel
In this article I set out to unify and in some measure extend some of the current models of mental time travel (MTT). In the past, models have focused either purely on the mental scenes evoked through MTT (Suddendorf & Corballis 1997, 2007; Suddendorf et al. 2009) or on the conceptual mechanisms enabling MTT (Stocker 2012, 2013). I claim that these models are largely compatible and suggest how they can be combined in a ‘two-layered’ model consisting of a ‘constructional’ and a ‘conceptual’ level. I suggest that not all mental scenes can be attributed to MTT and that the difference between MTT scenes and other scenes is MTT scenes’ function of future planning. I also suggest that function is a useful criterion for distinguishing three different types of MTT, which I name ‘deictic’, ‘sequential’, and ‘extrinsic’ each making its own contribution to a phenomenon so important to what makes us human.
Is mental time travel real time travel?
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 2020
Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used...
Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to remember past events and to anticipate or imagine events in the future. MTT globally serves to optimize decision-making processes, improve problem-solving capabilities and prepare for future needs. MTT is also essential in providing our concept of self, which includes knowledge of our personality, our strengths and weaknesses, as well as our preferences and aversions. We will give an overview in which ways the capacity of animals to perform MTT is different from humans. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that MTT might represent a quantitative rather than qualitative entity with a continuum of MTT capacities in both humans and nonhuman animals. Given its high complexity, MTT requires a large processing capacity in order to integrate multimodal stimuli during the reconstruction of past and/or future events. We suggest that these operations depend on a highly specialized working memory subsystem, 'the MTT platform', which might represent a necessary additional component in the multi-component working memory model by Alan Baddeley.
Updating the Story of Mental Time Travel: Narrating and Engaging with Our Possible Pasts and Futures
We can learn important lessons about the folk psychological capacities needed for mental time travel by considering the limitations prêt-à-porter versions of theory theory and simulation theory encounter when it comes to understanding how we make sense of others and engage emotionally and imaginatively with fictions. The arguments and analyses supplied in this chapter not only warn us against some natural and tempting pitfalls for those who wish to take the familiar theory of mind path, it offers a positive, narrative-based proposal for going a quite different way. If the analysis of this chapter holds good then there are strong reasons to explore further the possibility that our capacity for mental time travel may be best understood as a narratively driven form of dramatic engagement. This initial work lays the ground for further research that may provide a richer understanding of the cognitive basis of our special capacities for mental time travel.
Mental Time Travel: How The Mind Escapes From The Present
Although physical time is unidirectional and physical events are pinned to the present, we can mentally go back and forth in time to "replay" past episodes or imagine future ones. Mental time travel is imprecise, since we can never recover past events with complete fidelity or know exactly what will happen, but it is adaptive in that it enhances future planning and creates a sense of personal continuity through time. Recording of brain activity suggests that mental time travel is not unique to humans, as often supposed, but is an adaptation that goes far back in evolution-although in humans it probably allows greater detail and narrative structure than even in our great-ape cousins. Language may have evolved to allow us to share our mental time travels, and this sharing does appear to be uniquely human, an adaptation to the intense social structure of our lives.
Synthese, 2019
Bringing research on collective memory together with research on episodic future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar (Mem Stud 9(4):376–389, 2016) have recently developed the concept of collective future thought. Individual memory and individual future thought are increasingly seen as two forms of individual mental time travel, and it is natural to see collective memory and collective future thought as forms of collective mental time travel. But how seriously should the notion of collective mental time travel be taken? This article argues that, while collective mental time travel is disanalogous in important respects to individual mental time travel, the concept of collective mental time travel nevertheless provides a useful means of organizing existing findings, while also suggesting promising directions for future research.
Mental Time Travel and Attention (2017)
Australasian Philosophical Review, 2017
Episodic memory is the ability to revisit events in one's personal past, to relive them as if one travelled back in mental time. It has widely been assumed that such an ability imposes a metaphysical requirement on selves. Buddhist philosophers, however, deny the requirement and therefore seek to provide accounts of episodic memory that are metaphysically parsimonious. The idea that the memory perspective is a centred field of experience whose phenomenal constituents are simulacra of an earlier field of experience, yet attended to (organised, arranged) in a way that presents them as happening again, is, I suggest, a better one than that the memory perspective consists in taking as object-aspect the subject-aspect of the earlier experience, or the idea that it consists in labelling a representation of the earlier experience with an I-tag.