Autonoetic consciousness: Reconsidering the role of episodic memory in future-oriented self-projection

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/PsychologieCanadienne, 26, 1–12), exploration of the ability to anticipate and prepare for future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty has grown into a thriving research enterprise. A fundamental tenet of this line of inquiry is that future-oriented mental time travel, in most of its presentations, is underwritten by a property or an extension of episodic recollection. However, a careful conceptual analysis of exactly how episodic memory functions in this capacity has yet to be undertaken. In this paper I conduct such an analysis. Based on conceptual, phenomenological, and empirical considerations, I conclude that the autonoetic component of episodic memory, not episodic memory per se, is the causally determinative factor enabling an individual to project him or herself into a personal future.     

Person and consciousness.

My interlocuter is Locke with his reduction of person to personal consciousness. This reduction is a main reason preventing people from acknowledging the personhood of the earliest human embryo, which lacks all personal consciousness. I show that Catholic Christians who live the sacramental life of the Church have reason to think that they are, as persons, vastly more than what they experience themselves to be, for they believe that the sacraments work effects in them as persons that can only be believed but that cannot be experienced within themselves in this life. I also show that Christians and non-Christians alike have an experience of moral good and evil in themselves that implies that they are, as moral persons, far more than they find in their conscious self-presence. It is, therefore, natural to think that if my being a person so far exceeds my consciousness, I may well have once existed as person even before the awakening of consciousness.     

The Paradox of Self–Consciousness Revisited

The so–called paradox of self–consciousness suggests that self–consciousness, understood as the capacity to think about oneself in a first–person way, cannot be explained. The author of the paradox contends that the only way to avert this result is by invoking the notion of nonconceptual first–person thought. This contention is rooted in adherence to the Linguistic Priority Principle, which dictates that pre–and nonlinguistic creatures lack concepts. I argue that the latter claim is dubious, and that the paradox of self–consciousness can be better disarmed by denying the dependence of first–person conceptual thought on first–person language.     

ON THE VERY IDEA OF CRITERIA FOR PERSONHOOD

I examine the familiar criterial view of personhood, according to which the possession of personal properties such as self‐consciousness, emotionality, sentience, and so forth is necessary and sufficient for the status of a person. I argue that this view confuses criteria for personhood with parts of an ideal of personhood. In normal cases, we have already identified a creature as a person before we start looking for it to manifest the personal properties, indeed this pre‐identification is part of what makes it possible for us to see and interpret the creature as a person in the first place. This pre‐identification is typically based on biological features. Except in some interesting special or science‐fiction cases, some of which I discuss, it is human animals that we identify as persons.     

Perception: a model comprising two modes of consciousness

A model of human perception is proposed in which conscious awareness is assumed to be the result of two separate mechanisms each involving consciousness, one outer, sensori-produced, and one inner, conceptual. By mediation of flexible memory representations the sensory data of the outer consciousness give rise to a matched "copy" in the inner consciousness which conceptually organizes the former and also serves as input to the memory store. The model is applied to some perceptual problems in vision such as ambiguous stimuli, subjective contours, space perception, a case of metacontrast, and subliminal perception.     

This time it’s personal: the memory benefit of hearing oneself

The production effect is the memory advantage of saying words aloud over simply reading them silently. It has been hypothesised that this advantage stems from production featuring distinctive information that stands out at study relative to reading silently. MacLeod (2011) (I said, you said: The production effect gets personal. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 1197–1202. doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0168-8) found superior memory for reading aloud oneself vs. hearing another person read aloud, which suggests that motor information (speaking), self-referential information (i.e., “I said it”), or both contribute to the production effect. In the present experiment, we dissociated the influence on memory of these two components by including a study condition in which participants heard themselves read words aloud (recorded earlier) – a first for production effect research – along with the more typical study conditions of reading aloud, hearing someone else speak, and reading silently. There was a gradient of memory across these four conditions, with hearing oneself lying between speaking and hearing someone else speak. These results imply that oral production is beneficial because it entails two distinctive components: a motor (speech) act and a unique, self-referential auditory input.     

In the beginning was the familiar voice: personally familiar voices in the evolutionary and contemporary biology of communication

The human voice is described in dialogic linguistics as an embodiment of self in a social context, contributing to expression, perception and mutual exchange of self, consciousness, inner life, and personhood. While these approaches are subjective and arise from phenomenological perspectives, scientific facts about personal vocal identity, and its role in biological development, support these views. It is our purpose to review studies of the biology of personal vocal identity—the familiar voice pattern—as providing an empirical foundation for the view that the human voice is an embodiment of self in the social context. Recent developments in the biology and evolution of communication are concordant with these notions, revealing that familiar voice recognition (also known as vocal identity recognition or individual vocal recognition) has contributed to survival in the earliest vocalizing species. Contemporary ethology documents the crucial role of familiar voices across animal species in signaling and perceiving internal states and personal identities. Neuropsychological studies of voice reveal multimodal cerebral associations arising across brain structures involved in memory, emotion, attention, and arousal in vocal perception and production, such that the voice represents the whole person. Although its roots are in evolutionary biology, human competence for processing layered social and personal meanings in the voice, as well as personal identity in a large repertory of familiar voice patterns, has achieved an immense sophistication.     

Do cortical midline variability and low frequency fluctuations mediate William James’ “Stream of Consciousness”? “Neurophenomenal Balance Hypothesis” of “Inner Time Consciousness”

William James famously characterized consciousness by ‘stream of consciousness’ which describes the temporal continuity and flow of the contents of consciousness in our ‘inner time consciousness’. More specifically he distinguished between “substantive parts”, the contents of consciousness, and “transitive parts”, the linkages between different contents. While much research has recently focused on the substantive parts, the neural mechanisms underlying the transitive parts and their characterization by the balance between ‘sensible continuity’ and ‘continuous change’ remain unclear. The aim of this paper is to develop so-called neuro-phenomenal hypothesis about specifically the transitive parts and their two phenomenal hallmark features, sensible continuity and continuous change in ‘inner time consciousness’. Based on recent findings, I hypothesize that the cortical midline structures and their high degree of variability and strong low frequency fluctuations play an essential role in mediating the phenomenal balance between sensible continuity and continuous change.     

Language facilitates introspection: Verbal mind-wandering has privileged access to consciousness

Introspection and language are the cognitive prides of humankind, but their interactions in healthy cognition remain unclear. Episodes of mind-wandering, where personal thoughts often go unnoticed for some time before being introspected, offer a unique opportunity to study the role of language in introspection. In this paper, we show that inner speech facilitates awareness of mind-wandering. In two experiments, we either interfered with verbal working memory, via articulatory suppression (Exp. 1), or entrained it, via presentation of verbal material (Exp. 2), and measured the resulting awareness of mind-wandering. Articulatory suppression decreased the likelihood to spontaneously notice mind-wandering, whereas verbal material increased retrospective awareness of mind-wandering. In addition, an ecological study using smartphones confirmed that inner speech vividness positively predicted mind-wandering awareness (Exp. 3). Together, these findings support the view that inner speech facilitates introspection of one’s thoughts, and therefore provides empirical evidence for a positive relation between language and consciousness.     

意识是情景记忆加工的必要条件？

在情景记忆的发展历程中,Tulving逐渐地将其与意识相联系。但是,无论来自正常被试的情景记忆中静态的视觉、语词和动态的视觉—动作加工特性方面的研究,还是来自遗忘症患者、婴儿以及动物等方面的情景记忆研究,均表明情景记忆具有无意识特性,这些均与Tulving对情景记忆的界定相矛盾。而情景记忆在人类进化过程中所表现出的自然属性和社会属性,则合理的解释了情景记忆所具有的无意识和意识属性。因此,只有结合情景记忆在人类发展历程所表现出的双重属性,才能宏观、全面地把握情景记忆的整体概貌。     

Fission May Kill You (But Not for the Reasons You Thought)

If a person, A, branches into B and C, then it is widely held that B and C are not identical to one another. Many think that this is because B and C have contradictory properties at the same time. In this paper, I show why this explanation cannot be right. I argue that contradictory properties at times are not necessary for non‐identity between descendants, and that contradictory properties at times are not sufficient for non‐identity. I also argue that the standard explanation cannot be salvaged by a shift to personal time. Appeals to a lack of continuity, or to the absence of unity of consciousness likewise fail. Rather, B and C are non‐identical simply because A branched into B and C. Why branching should be problematic for personal identity remains a deep puzzle though I offer some tentative suggestions.     

Ego consciousness in the Japanese psyche: culture,myth and disaster

With globalization, modern Western consciousness has spread across the world. This influx has affected the Japanese culture but ego consciousness has emerged through a long history and different course from that of the West. At a personal level, I have been interested in the establishment of a subject in a culture that values homogeneity and to understand this, I reflect on my own history of living in both the East and the West and on my experience practising psychotherapy. To show Japanese collective functioning at its best, I describe the human inter‐connectedness and collaboration during the 2011 disaster. I explore the ‘Nothing’ at the centre of the Japanese psyche, through a reading of Japanese myth, especially the most originary and almost pre‐human stories that come before the anthropomorphized ‘First Parents’. A retelling of this founding story, reveals the multiple iterations over time that manifest in embodied being; this gradual emergence of consciousness is contrasted with Western myths of origin that are more clear and specific. This study attempts to bring awareness of the value and meaning of Eastern consciousness and its centre in the ‘Nothing’.     

Making sense of ourselves: self-narratives and personal identity

Some philosophers take personal identity to be a matter of self-narrative. I argue, to the contrary, that self-narrative views cannot stand alone as views of personal (or numerical) identity. First, I consider Dennett’s self-narrative view, according to which selves are fictional characters—abstractions, like centers of gravity—generated by brains. Neural activity is to be interpreted from the intentional stance as producing a story. I argue that this is implausible. The inadequacy is masked by Dennett’s ambiguous use of ‘us’: sometimes ‘us’ refers to real human beings, and sometimes ‘us’ refers to selves or fictional characters. Second, I consider Schechtmann’s view that self-narratives create persons (in the sense that she calls ‘characterization’ or personality. I argue that the sense in which a self-narrative creates a person cannot stand on its own: a person must already exist (in the sense of numerical identity) in order for there to be a self-narrative. Finally, I offer my own account of persons.     

There Is But One Love We Share

SUMMARY

The spiritual void of our culture, the dependency that maintains the isolation, and gives rise to the violence that permeates from individual to personal relationships to national policy, is examined. As an antidote, the article explores development of inner lives of awareness and connectedness with all that exists that begins with each person, leads to the qualities that are the groundwork for peaceful relationships. Special emphasis is given to the moral responsibility of clinicians who hope to be serving others.     

Abortion, Personhood and the Potential for Consciousness

The view that the fetus' potential for human consciousness confers upon it the right to life has been widely criticised on the basis that the notion of potentiality is so vague as to be meaningless, and on the basis that actual rights cannot be deduced from the mere potential for personhood. It has also been criticised, although less commonly, on the basis that it is not the potential to assume consciousness, but rather the potential to resume consciousness which is morally significant, and on the basis that the fetus does not really possess the potential for consciousness. In response, I argue that these criticisms are mistaken and that the potential for human consciousness is a sufficient condition not simply of potential, but actual, personhood. Since it possesses this potential from the moment of conception, the fetus should be considered an actual person from the moment of its conception.     

Regret and the Consciousness of the Past

This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of (1) the relationship between regret and episodic memory, (2) the temporal structure of ‘regretful memory’, (3) the affective and evaluative dimension of regretful memory and (4) the counterfactual dimension of regretful memory. Based on Husserl’s phenomenology, I offer an analysis of regret’s complex structures of intentionality and time-consciousness. Husserl held that episodic memory requires two temporal orientations on one’s own experience: the past now that one relives and the present now in which one does the reliving. If memory generally entails two temporal perspectives, regretful memory brings in a third point of temporal reference: that now that could have been. Drawing on Hoerl and McCormack, I give an account of regret as a mnemic and counterfactual form of intentional consciousness that confronts an alternative past and attempts to negotiate between two essential yet conflicting features of its actual past: its contingency and its irreversibility. On this basis, I then draw on Bagnoli to offer a phenomenological theory of regretful memory as an emotional mode of valuing possibilities that belong to the past.     

Autonoetic consciousness in autobiographical memories after medial temporal lobe resection

This study aims to investigate autonoetic consciousness associated with episodic autobiographical memory in patients who had undergone unilateral medial temporal lobe resection for intractable epilepsy. Autonoetic consciousness, defined as the conscious feeling of mentally travelling back in time to relive a specific event, was assessed using the Remember/Know (R/K) paradigm across different time periods as proposed in the autobiographical memory task developed by Piolino et al. (TEMPau task). Results revealed that the two patient groups (left and right temporal resection) gave reduced sense of reliving (R) responses and more familiarity (K) responses than healthy controls. This poor autonoetic consciousness was highlighted when patients were asked to justify their Remember responses by recalling sensory-perceptive, affective or spatiotemporal specific details across all life periods. These results support the bilateral MTL contribution to episodic autobiographical memory covering the entire lifespan, which is consistent with the multiple trace theory of MTL function. This study also demonstrates the bilateral involvement of MTL structures in recalling specific details of personal events characterized by autonoetic consciousness.     

Consciousness during dreams

Two aspects of consciousness are first considered: consciousness as awareness (phenomenological meaning) and consciousness as strategic control (functional meaning). As to awareness, three types can be distinguished: first, awareness as the phenomenal experiences of objects and events; second, awareness as meta-awareness, i.e., the awareness of mental life itself; third, awareness as self-awareness, i.e., the awareness of being oneself. While phenomenal experience and self-awareness are usually present during dreaming (even if many modifications are possible), meta-awareness is usually absent (apart from some particular experiences of self-reflectiveness) with the major exception of lucid dreaming. Consciousness as strategic control may also be present in dreams. The functioning of consciousness is then analyzed, following a cognitive model of dream production. In such a model, the dream is supposed to be the product of the interaction of three components: (a) the bottom-up activation of mnemonic elements coming from LTM systems, (b) interpretative and elaborative top-down processes, and (c) monitoring of phenomenal experience. A feedback circulation is activated among the components, where the top-down interpretative organization and the conscious monitoring of the oneiric scene elicitates other mnemonic contents, according to the requirements of the dream plot. This dream productive activity is submitted to unconscious and conscious processes.