A post by Dorothea Debus

Sometimes, people imagine their own future selves. For example, you might imagine going on a bike ride with your friends this coming weekend; you might imagine celebrating the completion of a long-term project (getting a degree, or writing a book) in a couple of years' time; or you might imagine looking after your grandchildren in ten years, or thirty. In each of these cases, you imagine yourself, in the future, being in a certain situation, having certain experiences, doing certain things.

Sometimes, when we imagine our own future selves, the imagined future self is fairly ‘close’ to our present self, sometimes it is ’more distant’ from our present self. Relevant closeness or distance between one’s present self and one’s imagined future self can simply be dependent on the temporal relation which obtains between one’s present and one’s imagined future self. However, at other times relevant closeness or distance might also depend on differences and similarities between characteristic features the subject herself has now, and characteristic features she has in the imagined future scenario. More specifically, there might be bodily, mental, and relational similarities and differences between the subject who is currently imagining her own future self on the one hand, and that future self as it is imagined by the subject on the other.

For example, as far as bodily similarities and differences go, when you imagine yourself going on a bike ride this coming weekend, your imagined future self presumably is of pretty much the same bodily constitution as your present self. By contrast, when you imagine yourself taking care of your grandchildren in ten or thirty years’ time, if you try to imagine this situation as realistically as possible, your imagination should present your own future self as of a somewhat different bodily constitution compared to your present self.

Similarly, there are a great number of respects in which a subject might differ, or be similar, with respect to her mental life across time: There might be similarities or differences with respect to the beliefs which the subject holds, and the emotions which she is disposed to experience, just as there might be similarities and differences with respect to her ways of thinking, her desires, her character traits, the values she holds quite generally, and the values she holds regarding her own life and what matters to her with respect to how her own life develops more specifically. 

Last but not least, a person might be similar or rather different at different times of her life with respect to her 'relational' properties, that is, with respect to all the many different relations in which she might stand to her environment, and to the people, objects and events which she encounters, such as spatial relations, perceptual relations, relations of kinship, friendship, enmity or collegiality, relations of resentment, admiration or love, relations of subordination, dependency and power, relations of obligation and demand, and a huge number of other relations which we might stand in to each other and to the world we live in. And once more, it seems plausible to accept that there might be similarities and differences between a subject who is currently imagining her own future self on the one hand, and the subject’s own future self as it is imagined by the subject on the other, with respect to such relational properties. For example, when someone imagines himself taking care of his young grandchildren in ten or thirty years’ time, he imagines a situation in which he will be standing in various deep and important personal relations to people (namely, his grandchildren) who do not even exist at the time at which he is imagining the future situation now, and whom he therefore couldn’t possibly stand in any relevant ‘real-life’ relations to at the time of imagining either. In such a case, the difference between the subject’s present relational properties and his imagined future self’s relational properties is quite substantial.

Thus, in summary, we find that there is a good range of different dimensions of variation in closeness and distance between a subject who currently imagines her own future self, and that imagined future self.

Sometimes, the distance between the presently imagining subject and her imagined future self is considerable. At the same time, sometimes cases in which the distance between the imagining subject and her imagined future self is considerable seem of particular interest, because these imaginings might be of particular value for the subject. We might illustrate this with the help of a couple of simple (and, for the sake of brevity rather stereotypical) exemplary cases, as follows:

Anna is nine years old, and imagines herself being a scientist as a grown-up.        

Jane is twenty, she is currently in prison, and imagines herself working as a nurse after her release from prison in five years’ time.

Emma is in her mid-thirties, and imagines herself in her early forties, by then having left the abusive relationship she is currently in.

Sally is a successful banker in her late twenties and imagines herself becoming a novelist in her fifties.

In each of these exemplary cases, the distance between the presently imagining subject and her imagined future self is considerable - there might be a substantial temporal distance (Anna, Sally), a great bodily distance (Anna, Sally) a great mental distance (Anna, Jane, Emma, also Sally), or a great relational distance (Anna, Jane, Emma, Sally). At the same time, in each of those exemplary cases the subject's imagining her future self is arguably also of particular value, because it might be valuable for the subject to become the future self which she now imagines, while it might, given the great distance between her current self and her imagined future self, require a special effort to get there, and her imagining her future self in relevant ways might help here in bridging the gap between her current self and her imagined future self.

More specifically, her current imagining might play a particular cognitive role, or a particular motivational role, or both, which might in turn help in eventually becoming the person whom she presently imagines as her future self. Indeed, or so I think one can show, a subject’s imagining her own future self can sometimes play a particular cognitive role because it can help the subject to understand what her own future might be like in quite specific ways; and a subject’s imagining her own future self can sometimes also play a particular motivational role because it might, in quite specific ways, motivate the subject to bring it about that things will actually be (or, alternatively: that things will actually not be) as she presently imagines them to be for herself in the future. More specifically, I think we should explore the claim that a subject's imagining her own future self can play a specific cognitive and a specific motivational role, because both the understanding of what her own future might be like which the subject can gain on the basis of her imagining might not easily be gained in other ways, and the motivation to pursue certain courses of action which the subject might gain on the basis of relevant imaginings also seems characteristically provided by relevant imaginings and might not easily be provided in other ways.

These are, I think, important and interesting claims (which, incidentally, also seem related in various ways to the 'architect model' which Magdalena Balcerak Jackson has developed in her post on this blog three weeks ago, and) which do deserve careful philosophical attention. Next, we should therefore ask whether, and if so why, these claims are actually true; and if we can show that they are true, we should then ask how the specific understanding and the characteristic motivation provided by relevant imaginings might differ from other relevant forms of understanding and motivation that might be gained in other ways, that is, what precisely might make the understanding and the motivation that we can gain on the basis of relevant imaginings unique to imagining our own future selves. It is these and related questions which I currently try to answer in some of my work, and the results of this work are due to be published (as a contribution to a volume on Memory and Imagination, edited by Anja Berninger and Íngrid Vendrell Ferran) in 2021.