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Our attitudes towards an event may vary depending on whether the event has happened or has yet to take place. Philosophers and psychologists explore such psychological past/future asymmetries to reveal what kinds of asymmetries we exhibit, and under what conditions, and how they may reflect particular beliefs about time, or features of time itself.
List of contents
- Temporal Asymmetries in Philosophy and Psychology: An Introduction
- 1: Jairo Ramos, Eugene M. Caruso, and Leaf Van Boven: Temporally Asymmetric Psychology: Prospection, Retrospection, and Well-Being
- 2: Ed O'Brien: Look Back, Not Ahead? Time Use and the Value of Revisiting Past Experiences
- 3: Meghan Sullivan: Temporal Discounting in Philosophy and Psychology: Four Proposals for Mutual Research Aid
- 4: Craig Callender: Is Discounting for Tense Rational?
- 5: Preston Greene, Andrew James Latham, Kristie Miller, and James Norton: Why Are People So Darn Past Biased?
- 6: Ruth Lee and Teresa McCormack: A Developmental Perspective on Temporal Asymmetries
- 7: Alison Fernandes: Caring for Our Future Selves
- 8: Christoph Hoerl: Past/Future Attitude Asymmetries: Values, Preferences, and the Phenomenon of Relief
- 9: Luca Rinaldi and Luisa Girelli: The Body as a Time Machine: How the Sensorimotor System can Asymmetrically Shape the Representation of Time
- 10: Natalja Deng: On Metaphysical Explanations of Psychological Asymmetries
- 11: John Campbell: Temporal Asymmetries and Singular Causation
- 12: Felipe De Brigard, Maria Khoudary, and Samuel Murray: Times Imagined and Remembered
About the author
Christoph Hoerl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He studied Philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy and University of Sussex before completing a DPhil at the University of Oxford. Together with Teresa McCormack, he led the AHRC project "Time: Between Metaphysics and Psychology" (2017-2019).
Teresa McCormack is Professor and Head of School in the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast. She completed her undergraduate degree and PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Her work primarily focuses on the developmental psychology of time, and she has published extensively in this area. Together with Christoph Hoerl, she led the AHRC project "Time: Between Metaphysics and Psychology" (2017-2019).
Alison Fernandes is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. She attained a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University, having previously completed degrees in philosophy, physics, and chemistry at the University of Sydney. She has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Warwick, including on the AHRC project "Time: Between Metaphysics and Psychology".
Summary
Humans' attitudes towards an event often vary depending on whether the event has already happened or has yet to take place. The dread felt at the thought of a forthcoming exam turns into relief once it is over. Recent research in psychology also shows that people value past events less than future ones, such as offering less pay for work already carried out than for the same work to be carried out in the future. This volume brings together philosophers and psychologists with a shared interest in such psychological past/future asymmetries. It asks questions such as: What different kinds of psychological past/future asymmetries are there, and how are they related? Under what conditions do humans exhibit them? To what extent do they reflect features of time itself, or particular beliefs people have about time? Are they rational, or at least rationally permissible, or should we aspire to being temporally neutral? What exactly does temporal neutrality consist of?
