Future Time Perspective and Human Cognition: An Evolutional View

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Abstract
The creation of future time perspective is one of the culminating accomplishments of the human cognitive system. For the purpose of uncovering the implications of this achievement, a hypothetical retracing of the evolutional development of biological information processing systems is attempted. The retracing goes through four stages concerning the software architecture of such a system; fixed‐I/O (reflex), flexible‐I/O (adaptive learning), motivational subprogram (typically emotions), and cognitive information processing. Through the retracing it is shown that most of the information processing modes of biological systems already emerge as early as the flexible‐I/O stage, which are subsequently developed and refined till reaching the stage of creating future time perspective as a context‐free cognitive background upon which survival‐oriented behaviors can be planned ahead of time.

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