Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past
312
Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past
312eBook
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Overview
In this book, Kourken Michaelian builds on research in the psychology of memory to develop an innovative philosophical account of the nature of remembering and memory knowledge. Current philosophical approaches to memory rest on assumptions that are incompatible with the rich body of theory and data coming from psychology. Michaelian argues that abandoning those assumptions will result in a radically new philosophical understanding of memory. His novel, integrated account of episodic memory, memory knowledge, and their evolution makes a significant step in that direction.
Michaelian situates episodic memory as a form of mental time travel and outlines a naturalistic framework for understanding it. Drawing on research in constructive memory, he develops an innovative simulation theory of memory; finding no intrinsic difference between remembering and imagining, he argues that to remember is to imagine the past. He investigates the reliability of simulational memory, focusing on the adaptivity of the constructive processes involved in remembering and the role of metacognitive monitoring; and he outlines an account of the evolution of episodic memory, distinguishing it from the forms of episodic-like memory demonstrated in animals.
Memory research has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Michaelian's account, built systematically on the findings of empirical research, not only draws out the implications of these findings for philosophical theories of remembering but also offers psychologists a framework for making sense of provocative experimental results on mental time travel.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262334587 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 02/19/2016 |
| Series: | Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
I Epistemology and Human Memory 1
1 Three Questions about Memory 3
1.1 What Is Memory? 3
1.2 How Does Memory Give Us Knowledge? 8
1.3 When and Why Did Memory Emerge? 12
1.4 Overview 13
2 Situating Episodic Memory 17
2.1 Is Memory a Natural Kind? 17
2.2 The Multiple Memory Systems Hypothesis 18
2.3 A Standard Taxonomy of Memory Systems 19
2.4 The Trilevel Approach 21
2.4.1 The Concept of a Memory System 22
2.4.2 Generating the Hierarchy of Kinds of Memory 22
2.5 Declarative Memory 23
2.5.1 Functionalism and Multiple Readability 24
2.5.2 Avoiding Overgeneration 25
2.6 Nondeclarative Memory 26
2.6.1 Implicit Representation 28
2.6.2 Knowing How 29
2.7 Toward a New Taxonomy 30
2.7.1 Common Neural Mechanisms 32
2.7.2 Interacting Systems 32
2.7.3 General Theories of Learning 33
2.8 Starting with Episodic Memory 34
2.8.1 Episodic versus Autobiographical Memory 35
2.8.2 Episodic versus Semantic Memory 35
3 Memory Knowledge 37
3.1 Naturalism and Reliabilism 37
3.1.1 Normativity 40
3.1.2 Pluralism 43
3.2 The Reliability of Episodic Memory 48
3.2.1 The Generality Problem and Memory 48
3.2.2 Metamemory and Belief 51
3.2.3 Episodic Content and Truth 52
3.2.4 The Concept of Reliability 54
II Episodic Memory as Mental Time Travel 57
4 The Commonsense Conception 59
4.1 The Experience Condition 61
4.2 The Current Representation Condition 62
4.2.1 Direct Realism 62
4.2.2 Indirect Realism 64
4.2.3 A Compromise View 64
4.3 The Previous Representation Condition 65
4.4 The Appropriate Connection Condition 66
4.5 The Content-Matching Condition 67
4.6 The Factivity Condition 68
4.7 Distinguishing between Memory and Imagination 70
4.7.1 Degree of Flexibility 71
4.7.2 Level of Detail 72
5 The Causal Theory 75
5.1 The Causal Condition 75
5.2 The Memory Trace Condition 76
5.2.1 Traces in Philosophy and Psychology 77
5.2.2 Local versus Distributed Traces 78
5.3 The Continuous Connection Condition 79
5.4 Properly Functioning Memory Systems 80
5.5 Content Similarity 81
5.6 Constructive Memory 82
5.6.1 Encoding 86
5.6.2 Consolidation and Reconsolidation 87
5.6.3 Retrieval 87
5.7 Approximate Content Similarity 89
5.8 A Causal Theory of Constructive Memory 91
5.8.1 Remembering and Updating 92
5.8.2 Remembering and Fastness 92
5.8.3 Remembering and Acceptance 93
5.9 The Epistemology of Constructive Memory 93
5.9.1 Preservationism 94
5.9.2 Moderate Generationism 94
5.9.3 Radical Generationism 95
6 The Simulation Theory 97
6.1 The Changing Concept of Episodic Memory 97
6.2 Remembering as Mental Time Travel 99
6.2.1 Constructive Episodic Simulation 100
6.2.2 Scene Construction 101
6.3 Remembering as Simulating the Past 103
6.3.1 Nonexperiential Information 103
6.3.2 Properly Functioning Episodic Construction Systems 104
6.4 The Episodic Construction System 105
6.5 The Personal Past 106
6.6 Remembering and Merely Imagining the Past 107
6.7 Beyond the Causal Theory 110
6.8 Related Approaches 113
6.8.1 Remembering and Imagining 113
6.8.2 Remembering and Mindreading 113
6.8.3 Remembering and Episodic Counterfactual Thought 115
6.9 Objections to the Simulation Theory 116
6.9.1 The Metaphysics of Mental Time Travel 116
6.9.2 The Phenomenology of Mental Time Travel 117
6.9.3 Memory without Experience 118
6.10 Remembering as Imagining the Past 120
III Mental Time Travel as a Source of Knowledge 123
7 The Information Effect 127
7.1 The Misinformation Effect: Harmful Incorporation 128
7.2 Helpful Incorporation 129
7.2.1 The Contamination View 130
7.2.2 Interactions between Testimony and Memory 131
7.3 Explaining the Appeal of the Contamination View 133
7.3.1 Incorporation and Reliability 133
7.3.2 Incorporation and Truth 134
7.3.3 Incorporation and the Anti-Luck Condition 135
7.4 Skeptical Implications of the Contamination View 136
7.5 Initial Attempts to Avoid Skepticism 138
7.6 Incorporation and Epistemic Luck 140
7.6.1 The Modal Conception of Epistemic Luck 140
7.6.2 The Honesty Bias 142
7.7 The Information Effect 145
7.8 Avoiding Skepticism 147
8 Metamemory and the Source Problem 149
8.1 The Source Problem 149
8.2 Metacognitive Belief-Producing Systems 150
8.2.1 Two-Level Systems 150
8.2.2 Metacognition 152
8.3 Reliability in Metacognitive Systems 154
8.4 Power and Speed in Metacognitive Systems 158
8.5 The Source-Monitoring Framework 162
8.5.1 Effects on Reliability 163
8.5.2 Effects on Power and Speed 165
8.6 Metacognition in Internalism and Externalism 166
9 Metamemory and the Process Problem 169
9.1 The Process Problem 169
9.2 Do Agents Face the Process Problem? 174
9.3 How Hard Is the Process Problem? 175
9.3.1 Mental Time Travel 176
9.3.2 Mindreading and Related Processes 178
9.3.3 Pure Forms of Imagination 178
9.4 Do Agents Need to Solve the Process Problem? 179
9.5 Do Agents Solve the Process Problem? 180
9.6 Formal Process-Monitoring Criteria 181
9.6.1 Flexibility 181
9.6.2 Intention 182
9.6.3 Spontaneity 184
9.7 Content-Based Process-Monitoring Criteria 185
9.7.1 Vivacity 185
9.7.2 Coherence 188
9.7.3 Affective Valence and Intensity 189
9.8 Phenomenal Process-Monitoring Criteria 190
9.8.1 The Feeling of Prior Belief 191
9.8.2 The Feeling of Familiarity 191
9.8.3 The Feeling of Pastness and the Feeling of Futurity 192
9.9 Toward a Process-Monitoring Framework 194
9.10 Process Monitoring and Mindreading 198
IV The Evolution of Mental Time Travel 201
10 The Puzzle of Conscious Episodic Memory 203
10.1 When Did Episodic Memory Evolve? 204
10.2 From Episodic-like Memory to Conscious Mental Time Travel 206
10.2.1 Contextual versus Phenomenological Definitions 206
10.2.2 The Phenomenology of Episodic Memory 207
10.3 Subjective Time 210
10.4 Consciousness of Subjective Time 213
10.4.1 Anoetic Consciousness 213
10.4.2 Noetic Consciousness 214
10.4.3 Autonoetic Consciousness 214
10.4.4 Chronesthesia 215
10.5 Why Did Episodic Memory Evolve? 216
11 Consciousness and Memory Knowledge 219
11.1 Past-Oriented Explanations 219
11.1.1 Episodic versus Procedural Memory 219
11.1.2 Episodic versus Semantic Memory 220
11.2 Social Explanations 221
11.2.1 Impression Reevaluation 221
11.2.2 Other Social Factors 222
11.3 Future-Oriented Explanations 222
11.3.1 Niche Construction 223
11.3.2 Simulating the Future 224
11.3.3 Reducing Delay Discounting 226
11.4 Toward a Metacognitive Explanation 227
11.5 Consciousness, Metamemory, and Subjective Certainty 228
11.5.1 Consciousness and Source Monitoring 229
11.5.2 Consciousness and Process Monitoring 231
11.5.3 Interactions between Source Monitoring and Process Monitoring 232
11.6 The Accuracy of Episodic Phenomenology 234
11.7 The Necessity of Metamemory 235
12 Conclusion 237
Notes 241
References 253
Index 285
What People are Saying About This
In Mental Time Travel, Kourken Michaelian calls into question the intuitive assumption that memory is strictly about the past. In so doing, he offers a fresh multidisciplinary perspective into memory's constructive nature. Psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who study the concept of memory should consider this volume essential reading.
—Karl Szpunar, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Kourken Michaelian's book will be a milestone in the study of memory. This systematic investigation covers an impressive span of philosophical and psychological work on memory, and is both well-informed in cognitive science and nuanced in its conceptual treatment of the topic. Michaelian's treatise provides a framework that will shape the debates on memory and mental time travel in the years to come
—Jordi Fernández, Department of Philosophy, University of Adelaide, AustraliaIn Mental Time Travel, Kourken Michaelian calls into question the intuitive assumption that memory is strictly about the past. In so doing, he offers a fresh multidisciplinary perspective into memory's constructive nature. Psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who study the concept of memory should consider this volume essential reading.
—Karl Szpunar, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at ChicagoIn Mental Time Travel, Kourken Michaelian calls into question the intuitive assumption that memory is strictly about the past. In so doing, he offers a fresh multidisciplinary perspective into memory's constructive nature. Psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who study the concept of memory should consider this volume essential reading.