Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:31:30.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking about the past as the past for the past's sake: Why did temporal reasoning evolve?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Johannes B. Mahr Open the ORCID record for Johannes B. Mahr [Opens in a new window]
Johannes B. Mahr*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA02138. jmahr@fas.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Hoerl & McCormack discuss the benefits of temporal reasoning mainly with respect to future planning and decision making. I point out that, for humans, the ability to represent particular past times has distinct benefits, which are independent from contributing to future-directed cognition. Hence, the evolution of the temporal reasoning system was not necessarily driven primarily by its benefits for future-directed cognition.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e262
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boyer, P. (2008) Evolutionary economics of mental time travel? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12(6):219–24. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.03.003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, J. (1996) Human vs. animal time. In: Time, internal clocks and movement, ed. Pastor, M. A. & Artieda, J., pp. 115–26. Elsevier. doi:10.1016/S0166-4115(96)80055-0.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2000) evolution of adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation. In: Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective, ed. Sperber, D., pp. 53–115. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Demiray, B., Mehl, M. R. & Martin, M. (2018) Conversational mental time travel: Evidence of a retrospective bias in real life conversations. Frontiers in Psychology 9:2160. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Király, I., Oláh, K., Csibra, G. & Kovács, A. (2018) Retrospective attribution of false beliefs in 3-year-old children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115(45):11477–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahr, J. B. & Csibra, G. (2018) Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41:e1. doi:10.1017/S0140525X17000012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahr, J. B. & Csibra, G. (in press) Witnessing, remembering, and testifying: Why the past is special for human beings. Perspectives on Psychological Science.Google Scholar
Schacter, D. L. & Addis, D. R. (2007) The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 362(1481):773–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Suddendorf, T. & Corballis, M. C. (2007a) The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30(3):299–313. doi:10.1017/s0140525X07001975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar