‘Mental Time Travel’: Remembering the Past, Imagining the Future, and the Particularity of Events

Debus, Dorothea

doi:10.1007/s13164-014-0182-7

Cited by 71 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The prospects for applying direct realism to episodic future thought and episodic counterfactual thought thus appear dim. Indeed, Debus (2014;cf. Perrin 2016) has explicitly argued that there is a difference in kind between episodic memory and episodic future thought, on the ground that, in episodic memory, the subject stands in an experiential (ultimately, a causal) relation to a particular event, whereas, in episodic future thought, the subject does not and could not stand in an experiential (causal) relation to a particular event.…”

Section: From the Co-temporality Problem To The Co-reality Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

Sant’Anna

Michaelian

2018

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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The debate over the objects of episodic memory has for some time been stalled, with few alternatives to familiar forms of direct and indirect realism being advanced. This paper moves the debate forward by building on insights from the recent psychological literature on memory as a form of episodic hypothetical thought (or mental time travel) and the recent philosophical literature on relationalist and representationalist approaches to perception. The former suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic memory will have to be a special case of an account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought more generally. The latter suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought will have to combine features of direct realism and representationalism. We develop a novel pragmatist-inspired account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought that has the requisite features.

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Section: From the Co-temporality Problem To The Co-reality Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disjunctivism poses a problem because it postulates a fundamental discontinuity between remembering and other forms of episodic hypothetical thought (Debus 2014;Perrin 2016). This discontinuity, as we saw above, forces the relationalist to adopt problematic commitments in order to save his view.…”

Section: Disjunctivism Avoidedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

Sant’Anna

Michaelian

2018

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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“…Debus 2007;Gerrans and Kennett 2010;Suddendorf and Corballis 2007). There has also been some focus on metaphysical issues -whether forward and backward time travel are the same kind of process (Debus 2014) -as well as conceptual issues concerning the relationship between thinking about, and experiencing, the past (Debus 2013). These latter issues will be bracketed in this paper.…”

Section: Mental Time Travelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storytelling agents: why narrative rather than mental time travel is fundamental

Hardt

2017

Phenom Cogn Sci

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I propose that we can explain the contribution of mental time travel to agency through understanding it as a specific instance of our more general capacity for narrative understanding. Narrative understanding involves the experience of a pre-reflective and embodied sense of self, which co-emerges with our emotional involvement with a sequence of events (Velleman 2003). Narrative understanding of a sequence of events also requires a 'recombinable system', that is, the ability to combine parts to make myriad sequences. Mental time travel shares these two characteristics: it involves an embodied sense of self and the ability to create novel scenarios. What is unique about mental time travel is that it is a story explicitly about our selves, and it involves metarepresentation. Agency is enabled by narrative understanding when we are able to put our current situation into a larger narrative context, whereby some possible actions, but not others, make sense. However, new features of agency are enabled when we understand stories that are explicitly about our selves: we gain the ability to plan and act on plans.

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“…The view that SUBJ is the content of M, however, does not factor any objective facts into the content of my episodic memory. 22 On the idea that episodic memory involves the experience of mental time travel, see Dorothea Debus (2014).…”

Section: Objmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the idea that episodic memory involves the experience of mental time travel, see Dorothea Debus ().…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic Generation in Memory

Fernández

2015

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Does memory only preserve epistemic justification over time, or can memory also generate it? I argue that memory can generate justification based on a certain conception of mnemonic content. According to it, our memories represent themselves as originating on past perceptions of objective facts. If this conception of mnemonic content is correct, what we may believe on the basis of memory always includes something that we were not in a position to believe before we utilised that capacity. For that reason, memory can produce justification for belief through the process of remembering. This is why a subject may be justified in believing a proposition on the basis of memory even if, in the past, she was not justified in believing it through any other source. The resulting picture of memory is a picture wherein the epistemically generative role of memory turns out to be grounded on its intentionally generative role.

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‘Mental Time Travel’: Remembering the Past, Imagining the Future, and the Particularity of Events

Cited by 71 publications

References 20 publications

Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

Storytelling agents: why narrative rather than mental time travel is fundamental

Epistemic Generation in Memory

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