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Mental Time Travel

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

Abstract

6w?>Mental time travel research has given rise to an ongoing debate between causal and simulation theories of memory, which has, in turn, triggered a debate between continuist and discontinuist views of the relationship between remembering experienced past events and imagining possible future events. Section “Introduction” of this entry describes the concept of mental time travel and reviews both debates, distinguishing between processual and attitudinal forms of continuism. Section “Processual (Dis) Continuism” reviews empirical evidence and metaphysical and epistemological arguments for processual continuism and discontinuism. Section “Attitudinal (Dis) Continuism” reviews the emergence of attitudinal continuism and discusses its relationship to processual continuism and discontinuism and to causalism and simulationism. Section “Summary” provides a brief summary of the entry.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In addition to episodic future thought, episodic memory is related to episodic counterfactual thought, in which the subject imaginatively experiences possible events that did not but could have occurred (De Brigard 2014). As counterfactual thought does not appear to raise any issues not raised by future thought, this entry focuses on the relationship between memory and future thought.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the French National Research Agency in the framework of the “Investissements d’avenir” program (ANR-15- IDEX-02) and by CAPES-COFECUB (Grants 88881.370955/2019-01 and Sh 967/20).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Philosophy of Memory, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France

    Kourken Michaelian, Denis Perrin & André Sant’Anna

  2. Institut de Philosophie de Grenoble, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France

    Kourken Michaelian & Denis Perrin

  3. Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

    Kourken Michaelian

  4. Department of Philosophy, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    André Sant’Anna

  5. Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Programme, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    André Sant’Anna

  6. MemLab-UFSM, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil

    César Schirmer dos Santos

  7. Department of Philosophy, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil

    César Schirmer dos Santos

Authors
  1. Kourken Michaelian
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  2. Denis Perrin
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  3. André Sant’Anna
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  4. César Schirmer dos Santos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kourken Michaelian .

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    Sergio Agnoli

  2. Marconi Institute for Creativity, Sasso Marconi, Italy

    Sergio Agnoli

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Michaelian, K., Perrin, D., Sant’Anna, A., Schirmer dos Santos, C. (2022). Mental Time Travel. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_222-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_222-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98390-5

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