Memory, Mental Time Travel, and Self-Control

Human beings are not stuck in time: we have the capacity to mentally project ourselves into the personal past and future. This capacity to move back and forth in subjective time is known as “mental time travel” (MTT). MTT is thought to be adaptive: using memory to think about what the future may hold enables us to make decisions in the present. Indeed, MTT might be crucially involved in overcoming the tendency to discount future rewards. We tend to want things now, rather than wait for the future, seeking immediate gratification at the expense of long-term reward, but MTT may help overcome this tendency.

In this one day workshop we will explore philosophical and psychological perspectives on memory, mental time travel, and self-control. How does memory relate to MTT? Is remembering the past qualitatively continuous with imagining the future, or are they distinct kinds of process or states? Can MTT help overcome temporal discounting? If so by what mechanisms does MTT improve self-control? Is MTT an effective means of self-control across different groups: e.g., in children, or in subjects with pathologies or developmental or behavioural conditions? Do animals exhibit self-control, and if so how does their exercise of self-control differ from that of humans? What exactly is self-control?