Imagining the Actual vs. Possible Future

Abstract

In this chapter, I turn to the relationship between collective imagination and collective memory. We do not merely individually remember and imagine, but we at times remember and imagine the future together. Research on the nature of collective imagination and its relationship to collective memory is still in its infancy. At the same time, it is well-established that there are substantive metaphysical relations between individual-level properties and collective properties. This opens up a novel field of research: which continuist positions are likely to imply the existence of a unified phenomenon of collective mental time travel? How do substantive differences between memory and imagination shape the relationship between collective memory and collective imagination? Do collective memory and collective imagination merely differ in degree, or do they differ in kind? We can introduce collective continuism and collective discontinuism. According to the former, collective memory and collective future-directed imagination are highly overlapping in terms of their fundamental properties. Collective discontinuism holds that collective memory and collective future-directed imagination differ in terms of said properties. In this chapter, I argue for collective discontinuism. I first distinguish between two theories of future-directed imagination, what I call actuality-oriented and possibility-oriented theories. These are not always differentiated with sufficient precision in the literature. I then show that two different conceptions of collective future-directed imagination supervene on this distinction. According to one, collective memory and collective future-directed imagination are essentially similar; according to the other, they are not. I argue that the possibility-oriented view is preferable to the actuality-oriented view, which implies discontinuism. More specifically, as a result, collective imagination properly understood does not require imaginings to be shared between group members, while this is not so for collective memory. This goes hand in hand with further functional and epistemic differences between collective memory and collective imagination.