Does Future Thinking Need a Philosophy?

by Stephen M. Millett and David J. Staley

Introduction Philosophy and Fragmentation

The ancients defined “philosophy” as the love
of wisdom, but we moderns are not so ambitious.
Over the last two centuries, the empiricism of sci-
ence has largely replaced the speculations of great
philosophers as the prevailing way of looking at
the universe. We have grown to love data, experi-
ments, statistics, and studies. Yet, even as we enter
the twenty-first century, speculative philosophy,
conclusions beyond our limited experiences, still
provides us the fundamental structure for under-
standing life. Even the “hard” sciences continue to
address basic questions of philosophy: “How do
we know what we know?” and “What can we say
about what we know?” Other academic and pro-
fessional disciplines ask similar questions. In con-
trast, such philosophical questions are rarely ad-
dressed in the intellectual pursuit of the future. Is
there a philosophy of the future today as there are
philosophies of physics, biology, history, and eco-
nomics? We think not. Does future thinking need
a philosophy? We think so. A strong philosophical
foundation for foresight and futuring work would
contribute much to our unity as professionals, our
coherence, and our credibility.
among Futurists
The lack of a contemporary philosophy of
the future has contributed to fragmenting the
global community of futurists, many of whom
currently go off in very different philosophical
and professional directions. Without a core phi-
losophy and shared set of values, we may even
doubt that future thinking is a profession at
all — certainly not like the professional identities
that university professors, physicians, dentists,
and lawyers enjoy. As long as this continues, our
status as professionals and the credibility of our
work will be gravely challenged.
One reason for the absence of a unifying phi-
losophy among futurists is the lack of any com-
mon educational background. Worldwide, rela-
tively few universities offer structured courses and
formal degrees in future studies. In the United
States, for example, among thousands of institu-
tions of higher education, only two universities
offer a master’s degree in future studies and none
awards the PhD. Few U.S. universities and col-
leges even offer courses on the future. With little
opportunity for formal education in future

Stephen M. Millett, PhD, is founder of Futuring Associates LLC, having retired after 27 years at the Battelle
Memorial Institute. He is the author of four books and 32 professional publications. He is currently working on a
new book on anticipating the future. His e-mail address is smillett@futuringassociates.com.

David J. Staley, PhD, is director of the Goldberg Center and an adjunct associate professor of history at The
Ohio State University. He is principal of The DStaley Group and president of Columbus Futurists, the local World
Future Society futures group. He is the author of History and Future: Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future
(Lexington Books, 2007). His e-mail address is david@thestaleygroup.com.

World Future Review   October-November 2009   23

research available, practicing futurists come from
diverse academic backgrounds and typically iden-
tify with these rather than with any academic dis-
cipline of futures study. Thus, we encounter fu-
turists whose professional training came originally
in physics, biology, engineering, systems analy-
sis, mathematics, history, economics, sociology,
political science, theology, and occasionally phi-
losophy. It should come as no surprise then that
futurists lack a common philosophy, an agreed-
upon set of ­theories, and standard methods with
which to work. One could almost conclude that
most futurists emerge through some mysterious
process of natural selection during their careers.
Besides having no common academic se-
quence of required formal training, futurists lack
any structured norms for continuing professional
education. There are, of course, many seminars
and workshops offered in conjunction with pro-
fessional conferences, especially by the World
Future Society, but there is no prescribed profes-
sional development plan for practicing futurists.
What we have now are mostly short courses and
workshops on methods and best practices, but
rarely involving much emphasis on philosophy,
or theories of time, the future, and foresight.
We also lack generally accepted professional
standards and procedures for certification or
­licensing, which could provide branding for qual-
ity work in the eyes of our potential clients and con-
sumers. Many professional and quasi-­professional
futurist organizations exist around the world, in-
cluding the World Future Society; but none of
them is backed by any authoritative professional
boards, or training institutions steeped in com-
monly shared values and models of excellence.
Another source of fragmentation among fu-
turists is the lack of a common philosophy and
agreed upon set of standard terms and definitions.
Future thinking lacks the cohesion of a shared
taxonomy, which is a major feature of other aca-
demic disciplines and respected professions. Fu-
turists don’t even agree on the words to describe
24   World Future Review   October-November 2009
what we think about and do. We may say that we
think about the future, but what constitutes
“thinking” and what exactly is the “future”? Some
want to be called “futurists,” others do not. We
struggle with misrepresentations among the pub-
lic about our being close to science-fiction ­writers,
corporate fortune tellers, and starry-eyed vision-
aries — all of which are far from how most of us
view ourselves. One might argue that futurists are
all, to one extent or another, forecasters, but many
of us object to this label because it confuses us
with statisticians, financial analysts, and weather
watchers.
In addition, no common definition exists for
our field of inquiry. We call it by various names,
including “future studies,” “strategic foresight,”
“futuring,” “forecasting,” “futures research,” and
“future thinking.” Perhaps the most widely ac-
cepted term for the product of our work is a “fore-
cast,” not a “future.” As far as most of our clients
and customers are concerned, the unique contri-
bution we provide comes from intangible strate-
gic thinking and written strategic plans; yet many
futurists do not see strategic thinking or planning
as the goal of their efforts. Another example of
professional fragmentation is that we cannot agree
on the meaning of “scenarios,” which can refer to
an outline for a theatrical script, a hypothetical
sequence of cause-and-effect events, or alternative
states of the future in a specified year. We confuse
ourselves, let alone the public, by our inconsistency
in using professional terms and definitions.
We even disagree among ourselves as to what
we do. Many of us say that we are facilitators of
strategic thinking processes, but not subject mat-
ter experts, while others say that we are experts
about the future with little or no replicable pro-
cesses. Some of us practice the methods of expert
judgment (including Delphi, interviews, surveys,
group brainstorming, and variations on group
brainstorming, and the Nominal Group Tech-
nique), while others reject such methods. Some
reject subject matter expertise as a source of fore-
sight. Some futurists embrace modeling and sim-
ulation, while others dismiss the validity of any
form of systems analysis, econometrics, and quan-
titative time-series projections.
Finally, at present, there is fragmentation
among futurists from the lack of any commonly
shared theories derived from a basic philosophy
to help us organize our thoughts and lead us to
new discoveries. Physicists, for example, have
more theories about the nature of time and the
future than futurists have. They have Newtonian
mechanics, time’s arrow, the Second Law of
Thermo­dynamics, specific and general relativity,
the Big Bang, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty prin-
ciple. But what do futurists have? What do we be-
lieve gives us any better guide to future events
than the flip of a coin?
To pursue this thought further, what theoret-
ical basis is there for trend analysis if we reject the
idea that trend projections are certain? Why
should trends provide foresight into the future at
all? Do we or do we not accept the claim that “the
past is prologue”? We respect the role of imagi-
nation in visualizing the future, but we have great
trouble separating in our minds “what could be”
from “what will be.” We lack a theoretical basis
for expert judgment as well as for trend analysis,
yet judgment is embedded in everything that we
do. Why should scenarios provide any worthwhile
guidance for the future?
Perhaps the principal value of theories arises
simply from the psychology of perception and
motivation or from the social dynamics of deci-
sion making and behavior. However that may be,
we futurists need theories to justify our methods
of inquiry.
Without theories and the philosophies that
stand behind them, the credibility of our work
will always be heavily discounted as wishful think-
ing, advocacy, or pure guesswork. Without ­theories
and the rigorous methods that come from them,
how can the quality of our work be fairly judged
and evaluated? Why would any client or customer
World Future Review   October-November 2009   25
trust our results enough to base policy decisions
and investments upon them? Why employ a
futurist in the first place if there are serious doubts
about the efficacy of such work? Clearly, a widely
shared philosophy (or philosophies) of the future
would do much to promote the cohesion and co-
herence of futures research as a profession.
The Metaphysics of the Future
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that
deals with questions of existence, relationships,
and representations. In some contexts, the word
“metaphysics” literally means “beyond the phys-
ical,” which has included some seemingly bizarre
elements of idealism, mysticism, and the occult.
However, Aristotle himself called elements of
metaphysics the “first philosophy” due to its con-
sideration of first principles, including the very
nature of time itself. That is the sense of the word
we mean here.
Thinking about the future in past times in-
volved many first principles and sweeping expla-
nations of cosmic patterns from the past into the
future (in today’s nomenclature, such explana-
tions fall under the term “metanarratives”).
One long and firmly held view of the future
was that it was predetermined by divine design.
Ancient mythology embraced beliefs that the gods
knew the future and could guide people toward
it. Occasionally the gods shared the foreshadow-
ing of the future with selected humans, but often
in the form of riddles. The God of Abraham was
all-knowing and all-powerful. He designed the
future as an aspect of his creation. God occasion-
ally revealed his will through divine signs (“the
writing on the wall”) and messengers, called
prophets. The belief in predestination reemerged
in Christianity with the concept of “the elect” re-
placing “the chosen” as those whom God loved
most and would provide for in the future. Many
Christians have long believed that salvation is ob-
tained only by the Grace of God and it was pre-
destined from the beginning of life. Others be-
lieve in salvation by good works in addition to
faith. Similar debates between the doctrines of
predestination and free will have occurred in all
the great world religions.
Today, almost no discussion takes place
among professional futurists concerning divine
predestination or revelation. We very rarely find
God’s will or even free will mentioned in the con-
temporary secular literature of future studies, and
futurists generally do not represent themselves as
prophets or oracles. Most futurists seriously ques-
tion the efficacy of extrasensory perception, clair-
voyance, and second sight. We also reject such
pseudo-scientific methods of divination as the
reading of omens, horoscopes, palms, dreams,
Tarot cards, tea leaves, etc. We continue to find
the prognostications of the occult entertaining,
but rarely predictive in any sustainable and ­rational
way. Like magic, we reject the assertion that
­divination is “real.”
Another metaphysical point of view is natu-
ral predetermination. It rested heavily upon New-
tonian mechanics. If we could just discover the
laws of economics, or history, or sociology, then
we could see signs, also called “leading indica-
tors,” of future outcomes. Such a philosophy leads
to concepts of linear progress toward a perfect state
(however defined) or of repeating cycles. Leading
proponents of a naturally predetermined future as
revealed in time projections and cycles have in-
cluded such influential thinkers as Ibn Khaldun,
Niccolo Machiavelli, the Marquis de Condorcet,
Auguste Comte, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, and Joseph Schumpeter. Their
views on the philosophy of history and of the
future have inspired mass followings.
Yet, today, with the notable exception of
Schumpeter’s concept of business and economic
cycles, nearly all of these views have been heavily
discounted if not repudiated. The philosopher
Karl Popper, for one, denounced the directional
notions of history as “historicism,” a dangerous
pseudo-science. Historians, who are generally
26   World Future Review   October-November 2009
more skeptical than economists about being able
to foresee the future by looking into the past, have
come to respect temporal cycles largely as analo-
gies and metaphors. Cycles might be seen as re-
peating variations within system boundaries.
Many futurists continue to rely on trend analysis
and projections without positing any philosoph-
ical or theoretical basis for it. No other concept,
however, has replaced linear and cyclical projec-
tions in popularity, except possibly chaos theory,
which holds that potentially deterministic sys-
tems may exhibit wide variations in outcomes due
to relatively small changes in starting conditions.
Such systems may be driven by underlying pat-
terns, but remain fundamentally unpredictable.
We call upon futurists today to develop a new
metaphysical point of view and metanarrative of
the future.
A Philosophical Agenda
We call for the systematic and collaborative
development of a coherent agenda by professional
futurists to formulate a contemporary philosophy
(or perhaps alternative philosophies) of future
thinking. This philosophy would consist of an in-
ternally consistent set of first principles: an agreed
upon set of fundamental questions that would
ground our field of inquiry. This agenda should
include the iteration of ideas through journals,
monographs, formal presentations, books, and
Web sites. We recommend that the agenda cen-
ter on the exploration of the following primary
­questions.
1. Does the future exist?
Key philosophical questions include:
What exactly are we thinking about when we
are thinking about the future?
Is there one future or are there alternative
futures? What does it mean to say there are “many
possible futures”? Can we assign probabilities to
these alternatives? On what basis?
Is “the future” a phenomenon that can be ob-
served and analyzed or is it a mental construct
of the human experience — like mathematics or
music — that nevertheless has real world implica-
tions?
The question of “existence” has been puzzling
since the ancient origins of metaphysics. Does the
thing that we think about exist beyond our own
thinking or is it our thinking itself that constitutes
its existence? Great philosophers have debated
this issue right up to our own times. Different per-
sonalities, cultures, and times often have differ-
ent approaches to solving this problem. Since
about the middle of the nineteenth century, the
material, empirical, and pragmatic philosophies
of science have dominated our modes of think-
ing about most things. In many respects, the sci-
entific approach of philosophy can be traced back
to ­Aristotle. It places an emphasis on our percep-
tion and understanding of phenomena that exist
in our environment apart from ourselves. We both
react to outside stimuli and we act in ways that in
turn impact our environment, with feedback to
us. We are a part of our environment, but the en-
vironment exists, at least for other people and
things, apart from our individual abilities to ex-
perience it. Likewise, we can anticipate the future
and be purely reactive to it or we can prepare for
it and take actions that will influence, to one ex-
tent or another, the things that will emerge in the
future.
The future can be seen as an aspect of time,
one of the most fundamental constituents of our
universe. We can see the effects of time and we
can measure its passing, although we cannot ob-
serve it directly in the three-dimensional space of
everyday life. In addition, time has the unique
property of moving in only one direction, hence
the metaphor “time’s arrow.” Scientists are not cer-
tain why time moves in only one direction, but
they have speculated that the phenomenon is re-
lated to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (in-
creasing entropy) and the exponential expansion
of the universe since the Big Bang.
World Future Review   October-November 2009   27
The future, for the sake of discussion, does
not literally exist in the sense that it is a time we
can experience today. The future is defined as
time that comes after the present. We have ob-
served the past through its artifacts and our own
memories and we experience the present, but we
cannot perceive something that does not yet ex-
ist. On the other hand, we can project the regu-
larities of everyday life into the future, though
never with absolute certainty.
2. Can we know and speak about the future?
Key philosophical questions:
What is the proper role of trend analysis in
future thinking?
What are the proper roles of intuition, expert
judgment, and imagination in future thinking?
If the future does not exist and is beyond our
ability to experience today, then what can we say
about the future, based on what reasons?
Is future thinking merely a kind of language
game? Or can we affix our statements about the
future to some external referent (the “future”)?
Can futurists attain, in the words of the Ameri-
can philosopher John Dewey, “warranted assert-
ability”?
One philosophical approach is that we can
never know the future because that future does
not exist. We have no way to know the future
through observation or experimentation today.
One could even go so far as to assert that think-
ing about, planning, and preparing for the future
is utterly futile; thus we can only deal with the
challenges of the future when that future becomes
the present. We may reply that we do not accept
a fatalism that makes us merely reactive — vic-
tims of future events. But we need a philosophy
to justify why we prefer one approach to another
when we think about the future.
In a strict sense, science addresses only ques-
tions that can be validated by data and replicated
by experience. Other questions, like the ultimate
question of whether God exists, may be valid from
other perspectives, but not within the world of
scientists. Many scientists will say that “science”
concerns what they can say about the universe
and with what degree of confidence based upon
both data and logical inferences.
Another approach is to argue that we can say
a great deal about the future, but we must frame
it as expectations, not predictions, with varying
degrees of uncertainty. Scientists, for example, will
admit that “laws” have a high probability of oc-
curring again in the future, but rarely with 100%
certainty because of possible variations in circum-
stances and measurements. They will concede
that “theories” are more speculative than “laws,”
but even “laws” are rarely absolute.
As mentioned before, theories rest upon phil-
osophical first principles. They serve to organize
information and guide us toward new discover-
ies in knowledge. Theories contain logically con-
sistent speculations, too, which operate as work-
ing hypotheses for future work. Theories are not
wholly factual, but neither are they entirely imag-
inary. “In theory” is an expression that we com-
monly use to express our recognition that some-
thing might exist or could happen, even if it has
never happened in the past, because it is logically
consistent with what we know from experience.
Theories can be used in future thinking, too, but
right now we have very few commonly accepted
theories to support the value and reliability of
most of our methods and results concerning the
future.
The product of our work, whether we call it
a forecast or something else, can only be well con-
sidered expectations for the future packaged as
working hypotheses with a judgment as to the
probability of their occurrence. These probabili-
ties may reflect the psychology of uncertainty in
ourselves rather than the elements of chance in
any given statistical distribution. Bayesian prob-
abilities, which are very relevant to the judgments
that futurists typically make, rest upon precondi-
tions (which is why they are called “conditional
28   World Future Review   October-November 2009
probabilities”). These preconditions may include
the past and the present. Trends may provide us
evidence for a priori expectations for the future.
But we still need to explain why we assign judg-
ment probabilities so that others can follow our
logic. We must be very explicit in our language to
distinguish what we know with high confidence
from what we merely regard as possible or likely
in a theoretical sense.
We certainly can talk about trends as patterns
of replicable human behavior over time — and we
do. Trend tracking and analysis form a large part
of the practical work of most futurists. They pro-
vide the only empirical data that we can use. But,
as we asked above, why are trends reliable indi-
cators of the future? We might also argue in the
style of the eighteenth-century British philoso-
pher David Hume that just because trends have
existed in the past does not guarantee that they
will occur again in the future.
Most futurists today agree that we are not
trying to predict the future. Today is the end point
of several possible histories and tomorrow will be
the end point of several possible futures. Only one
future may actually happen, but we cannot know
this for certain in advance because it is beyond
our ability to “know” in the context of a materi-
alistic and empirical philosophy. Yet, we can an-
ticipate the future in the sense of thinking about
multiple plausible, even likely, futures. Our intu-
ition counts for something, as does our knowl-
edge of trend momentum, systems behavior, and
cause-and-effect sequences.
Studies have demonstrated that with the well
developed frontal lobe of our brain we can think
about the future and plan as no other animals can.
We have a unique capacity to anticipate the future,
but having the physical capacity does not auto-
matically give us the intellectual capability to do
so. Many talents contain innate possibilities, but
they must be developed through imitation, in-
struction, and practice. The same may be true of
our capabilities to think about the future.
 There may be disciplined ways to think about
the future in parallel with scientific methods. We
know from experience that it is possible for us to
anticipate the future with varying degrees of cer-
tainty. We also know from experience that there
are best practices in logic, organizing informa-
tion, making convincing arguments, and effective
presentations. These can be used for more sophis-
ticated thinking about the future. The rules of
epistemology and ontology apply to future think-
ing as well as to all other types of thinking.
We must also be humble enough to recognize
that we are making educated guesses about the
future with the conviction (maybe someday proven
by events) that our methods are prescient. As busi-
nessmen often say, even when we are not entirely
certain of our facts and expectations we can be
“directionally correct.” For many kinds of practi-
cal decision making, close is good enough.
In addition to empiricist rules of science,
there may be alternative philosophical points of
view that should also be explored. Perhaps the
ways by which we perceive the passage of time
also include the ability to anticipate if not predict
the future. Perhaps we should reexamine the phi-
losophies of innate knowledge dating back to
Plato and seek a new appreciation for how we pre-
perceive the future. Maybe what we loosely call
“second sight” or “intuition” or “imagination” is
based more than we have yet realized on psychol-
ogy, brain functions, body chemistry, evolution,
DNA, and other factors that can be studied and
explained by new discoveries from cognitive
­science.
3. What is the purpose of future thinking?
Key philosophical questions:
What are the implications of statements
about the future that may change behaviors in
such a way as to alter the path of events the state-
ment sought to predict, thus rendering the state-
ment “false”?
Is the goal of future thinking accuracy or per-
World Future Review   October-November 2009   29
suasion? Is future thinking a rhetorical act? (That
is, is the goal of future thinking to ensure accu-
racy — and is thus to be judged as an intellectual
enterprise by a scorecard of accurate state-
ments — or is it to persuade an audience in the
present about the future, and thus shape their be-
havior and expectations?)
To what degree is future thinking “objective”
or “subjective”? Can we separate thinking about
the future from our personal biases, wishful think-
ing, and self-interest?
Should futurists be advocates for a particu-
lar future? Is there such a thing as “nostalgia for
the future”?
This area of philosophical exploration is
likely to become very controversial, since futur-
ists can strongly disagree among themselves as to
what social or economic purposes they want or
need to serve. Consulting futurists presumably
want what is best for their customers and clients,
but need to separate their own biases from those
of their clients. What are the proper ethics of fu-
turists relative to both the subject matter and the
end-user? These will be very difficult topics upon
which to reach agreement, but the foundation of
a philosophy with a set of theories is likely serve
us well in this regard.
Most futurists would agree that their mission
is not to predict a future and then wait to see
whether they were correct. They would argue
rather that a view of the future today (also called
“a forecast” or “expectation”) is a living thing that
continues to change over time as new informa-
tion causes us to revise our expectations.
In addition, most futurists today share at least
one philosophical tenet, whether they realize it or
not; namely, that the purpose of thinking about
the future is to better prepare ourselves to survive
and thrive in it. Most futurists advocate a proac-
tive stance relative to the future. They would say
that sound futures thinking tries to anticipate
likely, possible, and preferred futures in order to
try to make “good” futures happen. In this way,
the futurist is helping to shape the future by in-
fluencing behavior today that will in part lead to
the results of the future. But do we do this analyt-
ically or rhetorically? Are we directing people to-
ward realizing their own best interests relative to
existing trends and emerging opportunities, or
are we agents of change trying to save everybody
else from their own worst instincts? At the mo-
ment, we tend to favor the former over the latter,
but the question remains unresolved.
Conclusion
The authors of this paper are developing their
own thoughts about a philosophy of the future,
and we have inserted some of them here primar-
ily for the sake of discussion. It is not our posi-
tion, however, that the two of us can produce a
fully developed philosophy of the future. Nor
should we. A philosophy of the future that ad-
dresses the questions posed above and unifies a
worldwide profession of futurists ought to be
achieved collectively so that all who participate
to whatever degree will also feel they have a stake
in the end result. Toward this end, we strongly
urge other futurists to present papers, write ­articles,
and discuss with one another their ideas as steps
toward a unifying philosophy of the future, for all
futurists to become “philosophers of the future.”

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30   World Future Review   October-November 2009