Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past

by Kourken Michaelian

Drawing on current research in psychology, a new philosophical account of remembering as imagining the past. 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

Published February 5, 2016

Reviews

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good exposition of modern thinking on memory...

Liked the organization and approach by which the author set out the idea of simulation as the mechanism for episodic memory and time travel. It can be a little rough going if you don't have a good grasp of the philosophical fundamentals, which, alas, I did not.

[Brian Cham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interenting topic and comprehensive book but written in a way that is very dense, pedantic and repetitive. If Michael sees a stop sign, but then misremembers it as a yield sign, then gets hit by a bus and loses his memory, then gets told that he once claimed it was a yield sign, then decides that his original memory is unreliable and it was actually a stop sign, does Michael now actually remember seeing a stop sign? Apparently, yes.