Episodic memory is a major area of research in psychology. Initially viewed as a distinct store of information derived from experienced episodes, episodic memory is understood today as a form of mental "time travel" into the personal past. Recent research has revealed striking similarities between episodic memory - past-oriented mental time travel - and future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT). Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel brings together leading contributors in both empirical and theoretical disciplines to present (...) the first interdisciplinary look at the human to imagine future scenarios. Chapters focus on the challenging conceptual and theoretical questions raised by FMTT, covering themes such as: varieties of future-oriented cognition; relationships between FMTT and episodic memory; subjective temporality in FMTT; the self in FMTT; and functional, evolutionary and comparative, developmental, and clinical perspectives on FMTT. With its focus on the conceptual issues at the heart of fast-developing research on FMTT, this edited volume will serve graduate students to senior scholars working on or interested in FMTT and related areas as a synthesis of current theoretical thinking and a source of questions for future FMTT research. (shrink)

This introductory chapter reviews research on future-oriented mental time travel to date (the past), provides an overview of the contents of the book (the present), and enumerates some possible research directions suggested by the latter (the future).

In this paper we argue that autobiographical memory can be conceptualized as a mental state resulting from the interplay of a set of psychological capacities?self-reflection, self-agency, self-ownership and personal temporality?that transform a memorial representation into an autobiographical personal experience. We first review evidence from a variety of clinical domains?for example, amnesia, autism, frontal lobe pathology, schizophrenia?showing that breakdowns in any of the proposed components can produce impairments in autobiographical recollection, and conclude that the self-reflection, agency, ownership, and personal temporality are (...) individually necessary and jointly sufficient for autobiographical memorial experience. We then suggest a taxonomy of amnesic disorders derived from consideration of the consequences of breakdown in each of the individual component processes that contribute to the experience of autobiographical recollection. (shrink)

Benjamin Libet compared the perceived time of direct brain stimulation to the perceived time of skin stimulation. His results are among the most controversial experiments at the interface between psychology and philosophy. The new element that I bring to this discussion is a reanalysis of Libet's raw data. Libet's original data were difficult to interpret because of the manner in which they were presented in tables. Plotting the data as psychometric functions shows that the observers have great uncertainty about the (...) relative timing of events, as seen the shallow psychometric slopes. A second indication of uncertainty comes from Libet's use of three response categories, A first; B first; and A and B simultaneous. The large number of “perceptually simultaneous” responses provides a further measure of the difficulty of the judgment. There are thus a very broad range of stimulus delays in which the subject is unable to make an accurate ordering response. These points provide evidence that there is no compelling reason to invent exotic or ad hoc mechanisms to account for Libet's data since the uncertainty window is large enough to allow simple mechanism such as memory shifts. Libet argued that his data provide evidence for a backward referral in time. I argue that even though Libet's own data are weak, there are good arguments for a backward referral mechanism to help the subject make sense out of the tangled chaos of asynchronous information associated with experienced events. (shrink)

S. Pockett and G. Gomes discuss a possible bias in the method by which Libet's subjects estimated the time at which they became aware of their intent to move their hands. The bias, caused by sensory delay processing the clock information, would be sufficient to alter Trevena and Miller's conclusions regarding the timing of the lateralized readiness potential. I show that the flash-lag effect would compensate for that bias. In the last part of my commentary I note that the other (...) target articles do not examine the most interesting aspect of Libet's unfashionable views on free will. I point out that Libet's views are less strange than they at first appear to be. (shrink)

This issue of Consciousness and Cognition presents four target articles and eight commentaries on the target articles. The present article presents comments on those commentaries, grouped into backward referral and volition categories. Regarding backward referral: I disagree with my fellow commentators and take the unpopular position of defending Libet's notion of backward referral. I join my fellow commentators in critiquing Libet's notion of a 500-ms delay. I examine several of the hypotheses suggested by other commentators for why cortical and lateral (...) meniscus stimulation give very different timing results. I suggest a simple experiment to help discriminate among the hypotheses. I comment on why temporal reordering is more likely to occur late rather than early in mental processing. Regarding Libet's volition experiments, I ask what is the root of the controversy, given the general agreement on the data. I agree with a commentator that Libet's chronotheology rather than his chronoscience is the cause of much of the controversy. Rather than joining others in criticizing Libet for his chronotheology I point out that he is making a respectable philosophical point regarding nondeterministic Free Will, but one that is easily misunderstood. I discuss two ways by which Libet's viewpoint can be brought into mainstream science. (shrink)

Introductory remarks about the problem of the self -- The epistemological self : the self of neural instantiation -- The ontological self : the self of first-person subjectivity -- The epistemological and ontological selves : a brief "summing up" -- Empirical evidence and the ontological and epistemological selves -- Some final thoughts.

An attention shift from a stationary to a changing object has to occur in feature space, in order to bind these stimuli into a unitary percept. This time-consuming shift leads to the perception of a changing stimulus further ahead along its trajectory. This attentional framework is able to accommodate the flash-lag effect in its multiple empirical manifestations.

This study probes whether a prosopagnosic patient can make accurate explicit affective judgements towards faces. Patient MJH was shown photographs of faces of well-liked family members and public figures rated as “evil” by opinion polls. MJH was asked to rate each face on two 7-point scales (Likeability and Pleasantness). Since he is unable to explicitly recognise faces, his ratings were based on his evaluative reaction to the faces presented. In a second phase of the experiment, MJH was told the name (...) of the faces previously presented and asked to rate them using the same scales. MJH's Likeability ratings during the picture-viewing phase of the experiment and the explicit phase were highly correlated. Based on these findings, we propose that thought consists of an explicit declarative and an implicit emotional aspect, which may become dissociated in prosopagnosia. (shrink)

Quantum Mechanics is typically divided into two parts: the unobserved amplitude given by the equations of quantum field theory and the observed measurement aspect. We argue that a better approach is insert a probability realm in the middle. The reason is that every measurement involves interactions with a complex environment where massive decoherence transforms the amplitudes into standard probabilities. The probabilities eliminate complex superpositions so that quantum states A AND B become classical states A OR B. Thus the measurement process (...) becomes a simpler and more familiar process of the observer selecting from classical type probabilities. This is close to the approach recommended by Henry Stapp. We anticipate that by using this approach many of the different interpretations of quantum mechanics become more similar to each other. (shrink)

Explores the meaning of death, how people of different times, regions, and religions have coped with it, and the progress and effects of the war waged against it by researchers, physicians, and surgeons.