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Memory as mental time travel

In Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory. Routledge. pp. 228-239 (2017)

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  1. Journeying to the past: Time travel and mental time travel, how far apart?Trakas Marina - 2023 - Frontiers in Psychology 14 (1260458).
    Spatial models dominated memory research throughout much of the 20th 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 (...)
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  • Imagination as a process.Nicholas Wiltsher - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2):434-454.
    According to recent orthodoxy, imagination is best characterised in terms of distinctive imaginative states. But this view is ill-suited to characterisation of the full range of imaginative activities—creation, fantasy, conceiving, and so on. It would be better to characterise imagination in terms of a distinctive imaginative process, with the various imaginative activities as more determinate implementations of the determinable process.
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  • Predicting the Past from Minimal Traces: Episodic Memory and its Distinction from Imagination and Preservation.Markus Werning - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2):301-333.
    The paper develops an account of minimal traces devoid of representational content and exploits an analogy to a predictive processing framework of perception. As perception can be regarded as a prediction of the present on the basis of sparse sensory inputs without any representational content, episodic memory can be conceived of as a “prediction of the past” on the basis of a minimal trace, i.e., an informationally sparse, merely causal link to a previous experience. The resulting notion of episodic memory (...)
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  • The hybrid contents of memory.André Sant’Anna - 2020 - Synthese 197 (3):1263-1290.
    This paper proposes a novel account of the contents of memory. By drawing on insights from the philosophy of perception, I propose a hybrid account of the contents of memory designed to preserve important aspects of representationalist and relationalist views. The hybrid view I propose also contributes to two ongoing debates in philosophy of memory. First, I argue that, in opposition to eternalist views, the hybrid view offers a less metaphysically-charged solution to the co-temporality problem. Second, I show how the (...)
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  • Mental time travel and the philosophy of memory.André Sant'Anna - 2018 - Unisinos Journal of Philosophy 1 (19):52-62.
    The idea that episodic memory is a form of mental time travel has played an important role in the development of memory research in the last couple decades. Despite its growing importance in psychology, philosophers have only begun to develop an interest in philosophical questions pertaining to the relationship between memory and mental time travel. Thus, this paper proposes a more systematic discussion of the relationship between memory and mental time travel from the point of view of philosophy. I start (...)
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  • Is remembering constructive imagining?André Sant’Anna - 2023 - Synthese 202 (5):1-28.
    The (dis)continuism debate—the debate over whether remembering is a form of imagining—is a prominent one in contemporary philosophy of memory. In recent work, Langland-Hassan (2021) has argued that this debate is best understood as a dispute over whether remembering is a form of constructive imagining. In this paper, I argue that remembering is not a form of constructive imagining because constructive processes in remembering and imagining are constrained, and hence controlled, in different ways at the level of consciousness. More specifically, (...)
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  • Episodic Memory as a Propositional Attitude: A Critical Perspective.André Sant'Anna - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.
    The questions of whether episodic memory is a propositional attitude, and of whether it has propositional content, are central to discussions about how memory represents the world, what mental states should count as memories, and what kind of beings are capable of remembering. Despite its importance to such topics, these questions have not been addressed explicitly in the recent literature in philosophy of memory. In one of the very few pieces dealing with the topic, Fernández (2006) provides a positive answer (...)
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  • Editorial: Memory as Mental Time Travel.André Sant’Anna, Kourken Michaelian & Denis Perrin - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2):223-232.
    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.
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  • Attitudes and the (dis)continuity between memory and imagination.André Sant'Anna - 2021 - Estudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 64:73-93.
    The current dispute between causalists and simulationists in philosophy of memory has led to opposing attempts to characterize the relationship between memory and imagination. In a recent overview of this debate, Perrin and Michaelian have suggested that the dispute over the continuity between memory and imagination boils down to the question of whether a causal connection to a past event is necessary for remembering. By developing an argument based on an analogy to perception, I argue that this dispute should instead (...)
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  • Defending Discontinuism, Naturally.Sarah Robins - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2):469-486.
    The more interest philosophers take in memory, the less agreement there is that memory exists—or more precisely, that remembering is a distinct psychological kind or mental state. Concerns about memory’s distinctiveness are triggered by observations of its similarity to imagination. The ensuing debate is cast as one between discontinuism and continuism. The landscape of debate is set such that any extensive engagement with empirical research into episodic memory places one on the side of continuism. Discontinuists concerns are portrayed as almost (...)
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  • Teoria causal da memória: uma introdução em filosofia da memória.Glaupy Fontana Ribas - 2021 - Griot : Revista de Filosofia 21 (3):148-163.
    This paper is an introduction on the Causal Theory of Memory, one of the most discussed theories in philosophy of memory in the present days. We begin with Martin & Deutscher’s formulation of the theory, in which the authors present three criteria in order for a given mental state to be considered an instance of memory, amongst them, the famous causal criterion, which stipulates that a memory must be causally connected to the past experience. Subsequently, we discuss if these criteria (...)
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  • The Phenomenology of Remembering Is an Epistemic Feeling.Denis Perrin, Kourken Michaelian & André Sant’Anna - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.
  • La causalité du souvenir épisodique. Un débat récent en philosophie de la mémoire.Denis Perrin - 2022 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 113 (1):85-108.
    Une relation causale appropriée à une scène vécue dans le passé est-elle nécessaire pour qu’une représentation de cette scène en soit le souvenir épisodique? Le présent article expose les réponses qui sont actuellement apportées à ce débat central en philosophie de la mémoire. Il introduit d’abord les conditions définitionnelles avancées par la théorie causale standard, avant d’examiner les critiques qui ont été formulées à leur encontre. L’article présente et discute alors deux familles de théories qui ont été proposées en réaction (...)
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  • Remembering the Past and Imagining the Actual.Daniel Munro - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (2).
    Recently, a view I refer to as “hypothetical continuism” has garnered some favour among philosophers, based largely on empirical research showing substantial neurocognitive overlaps between episodic memory and imagination. According to this view, episodically remembering past events is the same kind of cognitive process as sensorily imagining future and counterfactual events. In this paper, I first argue that hypothetical continuism is false, on the basis of substantive epistemic asymmetries between episodic memory and the relevant kinds of imagination. However, I then (...)
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  • Radicalizing simulationism: Remembering as imagining the (nonpersonal) past.Kourken Michaelian - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology:1-27.
  • Memory without content? Radical enactivism and (post)causal theories of memory.Kourken Michaelian & André Sant’Anna - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):307-335.
    Radical enactivism, an increasingly influential approach to cognition in general, has recently been applied to memory in particular, with Hutto and Peeters New directions in the philosophy of memory, Routledge, New York, 2018) providing the first systematic discussion of the implications of the approach for mainstream philosophical theories of memory. Hutto and Peeters argue that radical enactivism, which entails a conception of memory traces as contentless, is fundamentally at odds with current causal and postcausal theories, which remain committed to a (...)
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  • Imagining the past reliably and unreliably: towards a virtue theory of memory.Kourken Michaelian - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):7477-7507.
    Philosophers of memory have approached the relationship between memory and imagination from two very different perspectives. Advocates of the causal theory of memory, on the one hand, have motivated their preferred theory by appealing to the intuitive contrast between successfully remembering an event and merely imagining it. Advocates of the simulation theory, on the other hand, have motivated their preferred theory by appealing to empirical evidence for important similarities between remembering the past and imagining the future. Recently, causalists have argued (...)
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  • From authenticism to alethism: Against McCarroll on observer memory.Kourken Michaelian & André Sant’Anna - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (4):835-856.
    In opposition to the natural view that observer perspective memory is bound to be inauthentic, McCarroll argues for the surprising conclusion that memories in which the subject sees himself in the remembered scene are, in many cases, true to the subject’s original experience of the scene. By means of a careful reconstruction of his argument, this paper shows that McCarroll does not succeed in establishing his conclusion. It shows, in fact, that we ought to come to the opposed conclusion that, (...)
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  • Episodic memory is not immune to error through misidentification: against Fernández.Kourken Michaelian - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9525-9543.
    The claim that episodic memory is immune to error through misidentification enjoys continuing popularity in philosophy. Psychological research on observer memory—usually defined as occurring when one remembers an event from a point of view other than that that from which he originally experienced it—would seem, on the face of it, to undermine the IEM claim. Relying on a certain view of memory content, Fernández, however, has provided an ingenious argument for the view that it does not. This paper reconstructs Fernández’ (...)
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  • Collective mental time travel: remembering the past and imagining the future together.Kourken Michaelian & John Sutton - 2019 - Synthese 196 (12):4933-4960.
    Bringing research on collective memory together with research on episodic future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar :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 (...)
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  • Confabulating as Unreliable Imagining: In Defence of the Simulationist Account of Unsuccessful Remembering.Kourken Michaelian - 2020 - Topoi 39 (1):133-148.
    This paper responds to Bernecker’s attack on Michaelian’s simulationist account of confabulation, as well as his defence of the causalist account of confabulation :432–447, 2016a) against Michaelian’s attack on it. The paper first argues that the simulationist account survives Bernecker’s attack, which takes the form of arguments from the possibility of unjustified memory and justified confabulation, unscathed. It then concedes that Bernecker’s defence of the causalist account against Michaelian’s attack, which takes the form of arguments from the possibility of veridical (...)
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  • Memory and perception, insights at the interface: editors’ introduction.Christopher McCarroll, Kourken Michaelian & Santiago Arango Muñoz - 2021 - Estudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia) 64:5-19.
    The recent development of specialized research fields in philosophy of memory and philosophy of perception invites a dialogue about the relationship between these mental capacities. Following a brief review of some of the key issues that can be raised at the interface of memory and perception, this introduction provides an overview of the contributions to the special issue, and outlines possible directions for further research.
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  • Pensamento Singular e Atos de Pensamento Episódicos.Soutif Ludovic - 2018 - Manuscrito 41 (1):93-113.
    No debate acerca da singularidade de, pelos menos, alguns de nossos pensamentos sobre o mundo, assume-se corriqueiramente que o responsável pela natureza singular do episódio mental não é o próprio episódio e, sim, a proposição singular expressa quer por um proferimento assertórico de sentença singular autônoma, quer pela cláusula complementar em um relato de atribuição de atitude proposicional. As rotas semânticas padrão assumem que a singularidade do episódio mental (conceitual) é por assim dizer “herdada” da singularidade do conteúdo. Argumento que (...)
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  • What Sort of Imagining Might Remembering Be?Peter Langland-Hassan - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2):231-251.
    This essay unites current philosophical thinking on imagination with a burgeoning debate in the philosophy of memory over whether episodic remembering is simply a kind of imagining. So far, this debate has been hampered by a lack of clarity in the notion of imagining at issue. Several options are considered and constructive imagining is identified as the relevant kind. Next, a functionalist account of episodic remembering is defended as a means to establishing two key points: first, one need not defend (...)
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  • Time and Narrative: An Investigation of Storytelling Abilities in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.Francesco Ferretti, Ines Adornetti, Alessandra Chiera, Serena Nicchiarelli, Giovanni Valeri, Rita Magni, Stefano Vicari & Andrea Marini - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.
    This study analyzed the relation between mental time travel (MTT) and the ability to produce a storytelling focusing on global coherence, which is one of the most notable characteristics of narrative discourse. As global coherence is strictly tied to the temporal sequence of the events narrated in a story, we hypothesized that the construction of coherent narratives would rely on the ability to mentally navigate in time. To test such a hypothesis, we investigated the relation between one component of MTT—namely, (...)
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  • Preteriception: memory as past-perception.István Aranyosi - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10765-10792.
    The paper explicates and defends a direct realist view of episodic memory as pastperception, on the model of the more prominent direct realism about perception. First, a number of extant allegedly direct realist accounts are critically assessed, then the slogan that memory is past-perception is explained, defended against objections, and compared to extant rival views. Consequently, it is argued that direct realism about memory is a coherent and defensible view, and an attractive alternative to both the mainstream causal theories and (...)
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  • Mental Time Travel? A Neurocognitive Model of Event Simulation.Donna Rose Addis - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2):233-259.
    Mental time travel is defined as projecting the self into the past and the future. Despite growing evidence of the similarities of remembering past and imagining future events, dominant theories conceive of these as distinct capacities. I propose that memory and imagination are fundamentally the same process – constructive episodic simulation – and demonstrate that the ‘simulation system’ meets the three criteria of a neurocognitive system. Irrespective of whether one is remembering or imagining, the simulation system: acts on the same (...)
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  • Continuities and discontinuities between imagination and memory: The view from philosophy.Kourken Michaelian, Denis Perrin & André Sant'Anna - forthcoming - In Anna Abraham (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Imagination. Cambridge University Press.
  • Remembering and Imagining: The Attitudinal Continuity.Peter Langland-Hassan - forthcoming - In Anja Berninger & Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Memory and Imagination. London: Routledge.
    Cats and dogs are the same kind of thing in being mammals, even if cats are not a kind of dog. In the same way, remembering and imagining might be the same kind of mental state, even if remembering is not a kind of imagining. This chapter explores whether episodic remembering, on the one hand, and future and counter-factual directed imagistic imagining, on the other, may be the same kind of mental state in being instances of the same cognitive attitude. (...)
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  • Memory.Kourken Michaelian & John Sutton - 2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Remembering is one of the most characteristic and most puzzling of human activities. Personal memory, in particular - the ability mentally to travel back into the past, as leading psychologist Endel Tulving puts it - often has intense emotional or moral significance: it is perhaps the most striking manifestation of the peculiar way human beings are embedded in time, and of our limited but genuine freedom from our present environment and our immediate needs. Memory has been significant in the history (...)
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  • Aphantasia: In Search of a Theory.Andrea Blomkvist - 2022 - Mind and Language:1-23.
    Though researchers working on congenital aphantasia (henceforth “aphantasia”) agree that this condition involves an impairment in the ability to voluntarily generate visual imagery, disagreement looms large as to which other impairments are exhibited by aphantasic subjects. This article offers the first extensive review of studies on aphantasia, and proposes that aphantasic subjects exhibit a cluster of impairments. It puts forward a novel cognitive theory of aphantasia, building on the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis of memory and imagination. It argues that aphantasia (...)
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  • The philosophy of memory today and tomorrow: Editors' introduction.Kourken Michaelian, Dorothea Debus & Denis Perrin - 2018 - In Kourken Michaelian, Dorothea Debus & Denis Perrin (eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory. Routledge. pp. 1-9.
    This introductory chapter provides an overview of the chapters making up the book, which are grouped into six sections: challenges and alternatives to the causal theory of memory; activity and passivity in remembering; the affective dimension of memory; memory in groups; memory failures: concepts and ethical implications; and the content and phenomenology of episodic and semantic memory.
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  • Beyond the causal theory? Fifty years after Martin and Deutscher.Kourken Michaelian & Sarah Robins - 2018 - In Kourken Michaelian, Dorothea Debus & Denis Perrin (eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory. Routledge. pp. 13-32.
    It is natural to think of remembering in terms of causation: I can recall a recent dinner with a friend because I experienced that dinner. Some fifty years ago, Martin and Deutscher (1966) turned this basic thought into a full-fledged theory of memory, a theory that came to dominate the landscape in the philosophy of memory. Remembering, Martin and Deutscher argue, requires the existence of a specific sort of causal connection between the rememberer's original experience of an event and his (...)
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  • Remembering, Imagining, and Memory Traces: Toward a Continuist Causal Theory.Peter Langland-Hassan - forthcoming - In Christopher McCarroll, Kourken Michaelian & Andre Sant'Anna (eds.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory. Routledge.
    The (dis)continuism debate in the philosophy and cognitive science of memory concerns whether remembering is continuous with episodic future thought and episodic counterfactual thought in being a form of constructive imagining. I argue that settling that dispute will hinge on whether the memory traces (or “engrams”) that support remembering impose arational, perception-like constraints that are too strong for remembering to constitute a kind of constructive imagining. In exploring that question, I articulate two conceptions of memory traces—the replay theory and the (...)
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  • A defense of causalist continuism.Matheus Diesel Werberich - manuscript
    Traditionally, philosophers consider the question of whether episodic memory and imagination belong to the same kind (the (dis)continuism problem) as ultimately depending on the causality question - i.e., whether remembering requires a causal connection to the past event. In this framework, if memory is a simulation process (as claimed by simulationism) and does not require a causal connection, then it is sufficiently similar to imagination and, thus, continuism follows. On the other hand, if a causal connection is necessary for memory (...)
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  • A Panpsychist Interpretation of Anne Conway's Metaphysics.Andrew Fyffe - 2020 - Aporia 20:1-9.
    This paper proposes a panpsychist interpretation of Anne Conway’s (1631-1679) metaphysics, as elucidated in 'The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.' Contemporary versions of panpsychism attempt to explain how consciousness is realised in the natural world. They posit that matter is intrinsically experiential, such that when it is arranged into the form of a human brain, it gives rise to human consciousness. Similarly, Conway argues that substance is constituted by both Body and Spirit. The former serves as an (...)
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  • On the Difference Between Episodic and Autobiographical Memories.Gabriel Zaccaro - 2021 - Aporia 21:65-78.
    Is there a difference between recollecting episodes from the past and recalling autobiographically? Both in the philosophical and psychological literature, it does not seem that there is a consensus on whether autobiographical memories should be considered as a metaphysically equivalent concept to episodic memories or a different category of memory entirely. In this article, I give reasons to believe that autobiographical memories do not relate to the recollection of past episodes since they do not have an associated subjective experience and (...)
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  • Continuísmo e Descontinuísmo em Mental Time Travel: a relação entre memória e imaginação.Glaupy Fontana Ribas - 2018 - Revista Eletrônica Frontistés 12 (21):1-9.
    No presente artigo apresentarei a teoria do mental time travel, sendo esta uma teoria relativamente recente que coloca a memória episódica como uma forma de viajar mentalmente no tempo. Apresentarei também as duas teorias que disputam acerca da natureza dos processos de mental time travel, a saber, o continuísmo e o descontinuísmo. O continuísmo é a teoria onde afirma-se que a imaginação e a memória são ocorrências mentais do mesmo tipo, e que a única diferença existente entre ambas é a (...)
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