 Future-oriented and counterfactual accounts, like past-oriented accounts, are plausible as far as the function of what-where-when memory is concerned but do not identify a function that could be performed only when what-where-when information is accompanied by autonoetic consciousness. In contrast to these accounts, metacognitive accounts focus specifically on autonoesis, suggesting that this form of consciousness may play a metacognitive role. One possibility here is that autonoesis itself directly grounds a sense of subjective certainty that an apparently remembered event really happened, enabling the subject to act on remembered information rather than floundering in uncertainty (Klein 2014; Tulving 1985a). Another possibility is that autonoesis serves as one of several criteria exploited by metacognitive monitoring processes that enable the subject to tell whether he is remembering or imagining. A related possibility is that autonoesis enables the subject to take epistemic responsibility for his assertions about the past, thus ultimately playing a communicative role (Mahr &amp; Csibra forthcoming). While these metacognitive accounts remain speculative, they at least begin to approach the function of autonoetic episodic memory.