Pamięć zbiorowa (Collective Memory). Przegląd Uniwersytecki, 10-12, 2016, 10-14.

Abstract

The article examines whether talk of collective minds, knowledge, and memory can be given a naturalistic interpretation without postulating supra-individual mental entities. Drawing on Popper’s theory of objective knowledge, Putnam’s semantic externalism, Searle’s account of collective intentions, and Tomasello’s research on human cooperation, it identifies the cognitive and communicative mechanisms underlying collective knowledge. Particular attention is devoted to Wegner’s model of transactive memory, according to which a group can function as a distributed memory system whose nodes include individual minds and external information stores. Such a system can acquire, store, and retrieve information that no individual member possesses independently. Its effective functioning depends on communication, division of cognitive labour, adequate metaknowledge, specialisation, and pluralism. Collective memory can thus be understood as a natural, evolutionarily grounded cognitive achievement that enables human groups to know and remember more than any of their individual members.