ABSTRACT
There has been relatively little interaction between research on collective intentionality in philosophy and research on collective memory in psychology and the social sciences. Rather than being due to a lack of mutual relevance—as this chapter will demonstrate, the two traditions are very much relevant to each other—this lack of interaction is due largely to somewhat arbitrary disciplinary barriers. But disciplinary barriers, even when arbitrary, have real consequences, and one message of this chapter is that the lack of interaction has had negative consequences for both fields. Psychologists and social scientists have tended not to take advantage of philosophical resources that might sharpen their analyses of collective memory. Philosophers, meanwhile, have often presupposed overly simple models of the interactions among group members that are at work in the formation of collective memories and collective intentional states more broadly. There are thus important potential benefits to be realized for each field through increased interaction with the other.
