Mentales Zeitreisen mit Kant

Abstract

The ability to mentally travel in time is something we take for granted every day. In everyday life, we rarely or never reflect on how much remembering and how much imagining we experience in the course of a day, or on how our current thoughts and actions are shaped by past experiences and future goals. However, if this ability were damaged or even disappeared, as can happen in the case of dementia, for example, the question arises: who would we be without our memories and without our wishes, expectations, and goals? Therefore, thinking about mental time travel means thinking about an ability that defines us as human beings. However, Kant did not write much about memories and imagination, nor did he consider psychology to be a science. By referring to Kant's reconstructed theory of perception and using the transcendental philosophical theory of subjectivity (transzendentale Subjektivitätstheorie) as developed by Gerold Prauss (1990 ff.) allows us to incorporate Kant and Kantian vocabulary into a modern debate on mental time travel. Kant's theory of perception must first be extended to include the components of the past and the future. Strictly speaking, this addition is a further development of Kant's theory, as it acknowledges and incorporates empirical findings using Kantian vocabulary. The way in which we generate memories and imagination is basically the same. We need productive imagination (produktive Einbildungskraft) in both acts in order to achieve a time frame other than the present. We also need reproductive imagination (reproduktive Einbildungskraft) for both processes in order, to represent an object or event. Episodic remembering and imagination are about events in my past and future, not anyone else's. The decisive factor in my accepting of a memory or an imagination as my own is my consciousness. Based on a form of my self-awareness that is considered actual as well as the awareness that others (objects, events...) are actual (Selbst- / Fremdverwirklichungsbewusstsein, Friebe 2005) in the original perception, my remembering and imaging counts as a form of my self-awareness that can place itself and others in different times (Selbst- / Fremdverzeitlichungsbewusstsein). The latter can only be activated if there is any experience at all to which I can refer, from which I can derive something - whether as a memory or an imagination. Both acts are based on the subject's ability to reflect. This means that mental time travelling is initially only accessible to experienced individuals who consciously strive to perform these acts. However, memories are more prone to error. The possibilities for error described in this paper therefore also highlight the differences between remembering and imagining. These differences can provide new insights into the ongoing debate on mental time travel, which is currently dominated by two opposing theories: causal theories and simulation theories. The extended Kantian theory is a hybrid of the two.