-
778The past, the present, and the future of future-oriented mental time travel: Editors' introductionIn Kourken Michaelian, Stanley B. Klein & Karl K. Szpunar (eds.), Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-18. 2016.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).
-
123Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2016.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 lea…Read more
-
6The two selves: their metaphysical commitments and functional independenceOxford University Press. 2014.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.
-
979Be Careful what you Wish for: Acceptance of Laplacean Determinism Commits One to Belief in PrecognitionPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 11 (1). 2024.Laplacean Determinism (his so-called demon argument) is the thesis that every event that transpires in a closed universe is a physical event caused (i.e., determined) in full by some earlier event in accord with laws that govern their behavior. On this view, it is possible, in principle, to make perfect predictions of the state of the universe at any time Tn on the basis of complete knowledge of the state of the universe at time T1. Thus, if identity theory, epiphenomenalism or any other insta…Read more
-
78A Theory of Autobiographical Memory: Necessary Components and Disorders Resulting from their LossSocial Cognition 22 460-490. 2004.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…Read more
-
49The nature of the semantic/episodic memory distinction: A missing piece of the “working through” processBehavioral and Brain Sciences 38. 2015.
-
771Going Out of My Head: An Evolutionary Proposal Concerning the “Why” of SentiencePsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. forthcoming.The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What a…Read more
-
317Quantification, Conceptual Reduction and Theoretical Under-determination in Psychological SciencePsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 8 (1): 95-103. 2021.I argue that academic psychology’s quest to achieve scientific respectability by reliance on quantification and objectification is deeply flawed. Specifically, psychological theory typically cannot support prognostication beyond the binary opposition of “effect present/effect absent”. Accordingly, the “numbers” assigned to experimental results amount to little more than affixing names (e.g., more than, less than) to the members of an ordered sequence of outcomes. This, in conjunction with the…Read more
-
290Consider the Source: An Examination of the Effects of Externally and Internally Generated Content on MemoryPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. forthcoming.Drawing on ideas from philosophy (in particular, epistemology), I argue that one of memory’s most important functions is to provide its owner with knowledge of the physical world. This knowledge helps satisfy the organism’s need to confer stability on an ever-changing reality so the objects in which it consists can be identified and reidentified. I then draw a distinction between sources of knowledge (i.e., from physical vs. subjective reality) and argue—based on evolutionary principles—that bec…Read more
-
1082The Phenomenology of REM-sleep Dreaming: The Contributions of Personal and Perspectival Ownership, Subjective Temporality and Episodic MemoryPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 6 55-66. 2018.Although the dream narrative, of (bio)logical necessity, originates with the dreamer, s/he typically does not know this. For the dreamer, the dream world is the real world. In this article I argue that this nightly misattribution is best explained in terms of the concept of mental ownership (e.g., Albahari, 2006; Klein, 2015a; Lane, 2012). Specifically, the exogenous nature of the dream narrative is the result of an individual assuming perspectival, but not personal, ownership of content s/he…Read more
-
1228Thoughts on the Scientific Study of Phenomenal ConsciousnessPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 8 (74-80). 2021.This Target paper is about the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness (i.e., how is subjective experience possible given the scientific presumption that everything from molecules to minerals to minds is wholly physical?). I first argue that one of the most valuable tools in the scientific arsenal (metaphor) cannot be recruited to address the hard problem due to the inability to forge connections between the stubborn fact of subjective experience and physically grounded models of scientific e…Read more
-
5027Memory and the Sense of Personal IdentityMind 121 (483): 677-702. 2012.Memory of past episodes provides a sense of personal identity — the sense that I am the same person as someone in the past. We present a neurological case study of a patient who has accurate memories of scenes from his past, but for whom the memories lack the sense of mineness. On the basis of this case study, we propose that the sense of identity derives from two components, one delivering the content of the memory and the other generating the sense of mineness. We argue that this new model of …Read more
-
1130An Essay on the Ontological Foundations and Psychological Realization of ForgettingPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 6 (292-305). 2019.I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting thi…Read more
-
2988Remembering with and without Memory: A Theory of Memory and Aspects of Mind that Enable its ExperiencePsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 5 117-130. 2018.This article builds on ideas presented in Klein (2015a) concerning the importance of a more nuanced, conceptually rigorous approach to the scientific understanding and use of the construct “memory”. I first summarize my model, taking care to situate discussion within the terminological practices of contemporary philosophy of mind. I then elucidate the implications of the model for a particular operation of mind – the manner in which content presented to consciousness realizes its particular ph…Read more
-
752Making the case that episodic recollection is attributable to operations occurring at retrieval rather than to content stored in a dedicated subsystem of long-term memory.Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 7 (3): 1-14. 2013.Episodic memory often is conceptualized as a uniquely human system of long-term memory that makes available knowledge accompanied by the temporal and spatial context in which that knowledge was acquired. Retrieval from episodic memory entails a form of first–person subjectivity called autonoetic consciousness that provides a sense that a recollection was something that took place in the experiencer’s personal past. In this paper I expand on this definition of episodic memory. Specifically, I…Read more
-
2327Autonoetic Consciousness: Re-considering the Role of Episodic Memory in Future-Oriented Self-ProjectionQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69 (2): 381-401. 2016.Following the seminal work of Ingvar (1985. “Memory for the future”: An essay on the temporal organization of conscious awareness. Human Neurobiology, 4, 127–136), Suddendorf (1994. The discovery of the fourth dimension: Mental time travel and human evolution. Master’s thesis. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand), and Tulving (1985. Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26, 1–12), exploration of the ability to anticipate and prepare for future contingenci…Read more
-
1271The Two Selves: Their Metaphysical Commitments and Functional IndependenceOxford University Press. 2014.The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily…Read more
-
762Sameness and the self: Philosophical and psychological considerationsFrontiers in Psychology -- Perception 5 1-15. 2014.In this paper I examine the concept of cross-temporal personal identity (diachronicity). This particular form of identity has vexed theorists for centuries -- e.g.,how can a person maintain a belief in the sameness of self over time in the face of continual psychological and physical change? I first discuss various forms of the sameness relation and the criteria that justify their application. I then examine philosophical and psychological treatments of personal diachronicity(for example,Locke's…Read more
-
1363A Defense of Experiential Realism: The Need to take Phenomenological Reality on its own Terms in the Study of the MindPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (1): 41-56. 2015.In this paper I argue for the importance of treating mental experience on its own terms. In defense of “experiential realism” I offer a critique of modern psychology’s all-too-frequent attempts to effect an objectification and quantification of personal subjectivity. The question is “What can we learn about experiential reality from indices that, in the service of scientific objectification, transform the qualitative properties of experience into quantitative indices?” I conclude that such tr…Read more
-
2480The self and its brainSocial Cognition 30 (4): 474-518. 2012.In this paper I argue that much of the confusion and mystery surrounding the concept of "self" can be traced to a failure to appreciate the distinction between the self as a collection of diverse neural components that provide us with our beliefs, memories, desires, personality, emotions, etc (the epistemological self) and the self that is best conceived as subjective, unified awareness, a point of view in the first person (ontological self). While the former can, and indeed has, been extensive…Read more
-
1348Autonoesis and belief in a personal past: an evolutionary theory of episodic memory indicesReview of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (3): 427-447. 2014.In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hop…Read more
-
1461The Unplanned Obsolescence of Psychological Science and an Argument for its RevivalPyshcology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 3 357-379. 2016.I examine some of the key scientific pre-commitments of modern psychology, and argue that their adoption has the unintended consequence of rendering a purely psychological analysis of mind indistinguishable from a purely biological treatment. And, since these pre-commitments sanction an “authority of the biological”, explanation of phenomena traditionally considered the purview of psychological analysis is fully subsumed under the biological. I next evaluate the epistemic warrant of these pre-co…Read more
-
1798What can Recent Replication Failures tell us about the Theoretical Commitments of Psychology?Theory and Psychology 24 326-338. 2014.I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate the results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It also is a symptom of a serious issue -- the underdeveloped state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of “social priming” -- since it figures centrally in current debate -- it is not the only area of psychological inquiry to whic…Read more
-
3291The complex act of projecting oneself into the futureWIREs Cognitive Science 4 63-79. 2013.Research on future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT) is highly active yet somewhat unruly. I believe this is due, in large part, to the complexity of both the tasks used to test FMTT and the concepts involved. Extraordinary care is a necessity when grappling with such complex and perplexing metaphysical constructs as self and time and their co-instantiation in memory. In this review, I first discuss the relation between future mental time travel and types of memory (episodic and semantic). …Read more
-
448Klein and Loftus's model of trait self-knowledge: The importance of familiarizing oneself with the foundational research prior to reading about its neuropsychological applicationsFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 1-3. 2013.In this article I want to alert investigators who are familiar only with our neuropsychological investigations of self-knowledge to our earlier work on model construction. A familiarity with this foundational research can help avert concerns and issues likely to arise if one is aware only of neuropsychological extensions of our work.
-
649The Curious Case of the Self-Refuting Straw Man: Trafimow and Earp’s Response to Klein (2014)Theory and Psychology 26. 2016.In their critique of Klein (2014a), Trafimow and Earp present two theses. First, they argue that, contra Klein, a well-specified theory is not a necessary condition for successful replication. Second, they contend that even when there is a well-specified theory, replication depends more on auxiliary assumptions than on theory proper. I take issue with both claims, arguing that (a) their first thesis confuses a material conditional (what I said) with a modal claim (T&E’s misreading of what I s…Read more
-
4113Decisions and the Evolution of Memory: Multiple Systems, Multiple FunctionsPsychological Review 109 306-329. 2002.Memory evolved to supply useful, timely information to the organism’s decision-making systems. Therefore, decision rules, multiple memory systems, and the search engines that link them should have coevolved to mesh in a coadapted, functionally interlocking way. This adaptationist perspective suggested the scope hypothesis: When a generalization is retrieved from semantic memory, episodic memories that are inconsistent with it should be retrieved in tandem to place boundary conditions on the scop…Read more
-
553Images and Constructs: Can the Neural Correlates of Self be revealed through Radiological Analysis?International Journal of Psychological Research 6 117-132. 2013.In this paper I argue that radiological attempts to elucidate the properties of self -- an endeavor currently popular in the social neurosciences -- are fraught with conceptual difficulties. I first discuss several philosophical criteria that increase the chances we are posing the “right” questions to nature. I then discuss whether these criteria are met when empirical efforts are directed at one of the central constructs in the social sciences – the human self. In particular, I consider whet…Read more
-
7153What memory isWIREs Cognitive Science 6 (1): 1-38. 2015.I argue that our current practice of ascribing the term “ memory ” to mental states and processes lacks epistemic warrant. Memory, according to the “received view”, is any state or process that results from the sequential stages of encoding, storage and retrieval. By these criteria, memory, or its footprint, can be seen in virtually every mental state we are capable of having. This, I argue, stretches the term to the breaking point. I draw on phenomenological, historical and conceptual considera…Read more
-
1710The Feeling of Personal Ownership of One’s Mental States: A Conceptual Argument and Empirical Evidence for an Essential, but Underappreciated, Mechanism of MindPsychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (4): 355-376. 2015.I argue that the feeling that one is the owner of his or her mental states is not an intrinsic property of those states. Rather, it consists in a contingent relation between consciousness and its intentional objects. As such, there are (a variety of) circumstances, varying in their interpretive clarity, in which this relation can come undone. When this happens, the content of consciousness still is apprehended, but the feeling that the content “belongs to me” no longer is secured. I discuss …Read more
Santa Barbara, California, United States of America