Temporal Perspectives In Imagination : On the Nature and Value of Imagining the Future

Abstract

Chapter 11 considers a specific form of future-directed mental time travel, namely cases in which one sensorily imagines (or “S-imagines”) future events, that is, cases in which a subject’s imagination of a future event has experiential characteristics. It addresses two questions: (1) How can one account for the nature of cases in which subjects S-imagine future events? (2) What is the value of the ability to S-imagine future events? The author shows how one can account for the specific temporal orientation of S-imaginations of future events, and develops the claim that from the subject’s own point of view at the time of S-imagining a future event, the future is open. The author shows that the ability to S-imagine future events can have great instrumental value or disvalue, because subjects can, and sometimes do, put their ability to S-imagine future events to good or bad use and can thereby shape the future for the better, or for the worse.