Mental time travel

In contemporary research on memory, the idea of mental time travel (MTT) has been connected , at the functional level, with planning and imagining what might occur in one's future. Episodic memory impacts on our capacity to move imaginatively towards possible scenarios ahead. Consequently, Gerrans and Kennett (2010, 2016) urge us to agree that MTT is essential to moral agency. In this paper, we suggest that if we conceive the specific varieties of MTT as something more than remembering one's past and imagining one's future , then the capacity of undoing one's past both by episodic counterfactual thinking and the emotion of regret must be considered essential to moral agency on equal terms.

Avete mai riflettuto su quanto oggigiorno i giovani non abbiano alcun interesse per la Storia? Io penso di essere l’eccezione che conferma la regola. Di conseguenza, dopo quasi due mesi di permanenza a Fukuoka e una valanga di rifiuti, ho deciso di rassegnarmi e di visitare da sola lo Yoshinogari Historical Park (吉野ヶ里歴史公園, Yoshinogari Rekishi Kōen), un meraviglioso sito archeologico nella prefettura di Saga, risalente al periodo Yayoi (300 a.C.- 300 d. C.). Coloro che non hanno mai studiato la storia giapponese forse lo conoscono solo di nome, chi invece ha studiato questo periodo storico all’università lo ricorda probabilmente come quello di cui c’era meno da studiare e durante il quale si suppone sia avvenuto il passaggio dalla caccia/raccolta alle prime forme di agricoltura. Fine. Eppure è un periodo piuttosto lungo, circa 600 anni di storia di cui si sa poco o nulla. Dovevo rimediare a questa mia incolmabile lacuna storica.

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About the need to centralize our genomic research efforts to focus on creating complete multi-dimensional datasets to win the War on Aging
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Are we ready to win the war on aging?  Do we already have the weapons to defeat death?

In the 1960s a lot of resources and research was directed to fight the “War on Cancer” with initially very primitive tools.  However, in contrast to us today, the researchers in the 1960s aimed to accomplish their objective to test every substance or compound about its anti-cancer effects.  In contrast to us, anti-cancer-researchers did not have the luxury of data and tools to which we have access today.  Back then, nobody dared to imagine proposing a new data-driven-research approach.  Lacking any data for making inferences about the carcinogenic or cancer-killing effect, they had nothing to rely on, except for their intuition and the commitment to systematically test all the compounds, which they managed to generate. Yet, they gradually succeeded until this very day. Each new compound tested functions like a feature of the object cancer.

ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss some literature relating to episodic memory, future episodic thinking and mental time travel in humans and non-human animals. We discuss the concept of mental time travel and argue that the concept relies on subjective phenomena such as consciousness and on this basis is not useful when studying episodic memory and future episodic thinking, particularly in non-human animals. We discuss recent work which emphasizes views of both episodic memory and future thinking which do not rely on such mental time travel and, more importantly, give less prominence to the concept of time. The implications of such a view for research into future thinking in non-human animals are considered.

Bringing research on collective memory together with research on episodic future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar (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 both of organizing existing findings, while also suggesting promising directions for future research.

Actors in competitive environments are bound to decide and act under conditions of uncertainty because they rarely have accurate foreknowledge of how their opponents will respond and when they will respond. Just as a competitor makes a move to improve their standing on a given variable relative to a target competitor, she should expect the latter to counteract with an iterative lagged asymmetric response, that is, with a sequence of countermoves (iteration) that is very different in kind from its trigger (asymmetry) and that will be launched at some unknown point in the future (time lag). The paper explicates the broad relevance of the newly proposed concept of " iterative lagged asymmetric responses " to the social study of temporality and to fields as diverse as intelligence and counterintelligence studies, strategic management, futures studies, military theory, and long-range planning. By bringing out in the foreground and substantiating the observation that competitive environments place a strategic premium on surprise, the concept of iterative lagged asymmetric responses makes a contribution to the never-ending and many-pronged debate about the extent to which the future can be predicted.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652

Dans la psychologie et la philosophie de l’esprit contemporaines, il y a beaucoup des discussions sur le « voyage mental dans le temps ». C'est une expression métaphorique forgée par les psychologues Suddendorf & Corballis (1997), pour faire référence à la capacité neurocognitive des êtres humains de se rappeler un épisode personnel et d’imaginer un épisode futur. Donc, voyager mentalement dans le temps implique le système de mémoire épisodique et la capacité d’imaginer des épisodes autobiographiques à l’avenir.  Toutefois, il y a un débat attisé sur le voyage mental dans le temps, parce qu’il existe deux perspectives contraires sur cette capacité : le contiuisme et le discontinuisme. D’une part, le continuisme a été proposé, par exemple, par Suddendorf & Corballis (2007), Michaelian (2016a) et De Brigard (2014a) (2014b). Les auteurs affirment qu’il existe de petites différences entre la mémoire et l’imagination ; mais il n’y a pas de différences fondamentales entre cette mémoire et cette imagination. D’autre part, le discontinuisme a été proposé, par exemple, par Debus (2014) et Perrin (2016). Les philosophes soutiennent qu’il existe des différences fondamentales entre la mémoire et l’imagination, c'est-à-dire la mémoire et l’imagination sont des états mentaux de types différents.
Dans cette présentation, je propose une approche philosophique au problème pour montrer que le discontinuisme est une perspective problématique. En m'appuyant sur les considérations de Perrin & Michaelian (2017), je soutiens que le discontinuisme inclut la nécessité d’une liaison causale entre l’épisode passé et le souvenir ultérieur, autrement dit que le discontinuisme implique une théorie causale de la mémoire. Par conséquent, la perspective discontinuiste a les mêmes problèmes que cette théorie. Dans cette présentation, j’affirme que la théorie simulationniste de la mémoire suggère de meilleures réponses aux problèmes et je montre aussi que cette théorie implique le continuisme entre la mémoire et l’imagination. Dès lors, un point de vue continuiste à partir de la théorie simulationniste est une perspective avec de plus grands avantages théoriques. Ma présentation est divisée en trois sections. Dans la première, j’expose la manière dont les psychologues ont caractérisé le voyage mental dans le temps et j’explique en quoi consiste le continuisme et le discontinuisme. Dans la deuxième section, je critique l’approche discontinuiste. Dans la troisième section, j’expose les conclusions de ma présentation.

A frequent and equal tendency to think positively about one’s past and future has been conceptualised as a balanced time perspective (TP). Such a dispositional temporal orientation has been associated with higher life satisfaction and happiness. The aim of the present study was to develop and to validate a French version of the Balanced Time Perspective Scale (BTPS; Webster, 2011), which has been specifically designed to assess the combined use of positive future and past mental representations as resources for the self. Data were collected from an online survey in a sample of 622 French-speaking individuals from the general population. Results indicated that the French version of the BTPS replicated the 2-factor structure of the original questionnaire, and showed excellent internal consistency. External validity was supported by specific relationships with measures of TP and positive affect. In addition, a high propensity to project oneself positively both in the future and the past was associated with greater use of cognitive reappraisal.

ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss some literature relating to episodic memory, future episodic thinking and mental time travel in humans and non-human animals. We discuss the concept of mental time travel and argue that the concept relies on subjective phenomena such as consciousness and on this basis is not useful when studying episodic memory and future episodic thinking, particularly in non-human animals. We discuss recent work which emphasizes views of both episodic memory and future thinking which do not rely on such mental time travel and, more importantly, give less prominence to the concept of time. The implications of such a view for research into future thinking in non-human animals are considered.

This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of (1) the relationship between regret and episodic memory, (2) the temporal structure of " regretful memory " , (3) the affective and evaluative dimension of regretful memory, and (4) the counterfactual dimension of regretful memory. Based on Husserl's phenomenology I offer an analysis of regret's complex structures of intentionality and time-consciousness. Husserl held that episodic memory requires two temporal orientations on one's own experience: the past now that one relives and the present now in which one does the reliving. If memory generally entails two temporal perspectives, regretful memory brings in a third point of temporal reference: that now that could have been. Drawing on Hoerl & McCormack (2016) I give an account of regret as a mnemic and counterfactual form of intentional consciousness that confronts an alternative past and attempts to negotiate between two essential yet conflicting features of its actual past: its contingency and its irreversibility. On this basis I then draw on Bagnoli (2000) to offer a phenomenological theory of regretful memory as an emotional mode of valuing possibilities that belong to the past.