Philip K. Dick is certainly a scary writer, but when I think of the movie adaption of this into Total Recall, I can't help but laugh as I recall the sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger's eyes just ready to burst open when he was thrown into the airless atmosphere of Mars. Poor quality science fiction films aside, one of the most interesting features of this writing and this particular branch of doubting the real is the fact that it really incorporates the world of the philosophical and the biological. If we do believe that our memory is nothing more than electrical or chemical impulses sent into our brains, then there really can be considerable doubt about the thing we remember doing having ever actually happened. Memory has always seemed for myself to be something with considerably more importance. Memories are things that my mind has chosen to plant upon itself from actual things I've done. It seems dirty if well, they aren't necessarily based upon reality. But few things in science fiction are, eh?
Science fiction has a funny way of running through with the cinematic world. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which posed this similar question in a reverse situation. Here, they wouldn't be adding new memories to your brain, but rather, removing specific painful ones. The result, as you can imagine, is that reality really starts to fall apart when you come into contact with things that remind you of the memories that were erased. It suggests that our minds are resilient to change through scientific processes, which is pretty relieving if you're in my boat and feel totally violated by the concept of having your memory erased.
Vis a vis Descartes - how are we certain that God is not a deceiver? All sorts of weird and unexplainable things happen to us day to day - things that don't feel real. I'm still not certain that well, I can be certain of certainty.
We need some definitions, and I for one say we dust off the old Oxford tomorrow morning.
Science fiction has a funny way of running through with the cinematic world. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which posed this similar question in a reverse situation. Here, they wouldn't be adding new memories to your brain, but rather, removing specific painful ones. The result, as you can imagine, is that reality really starts to fall apart when you come into contact with things that remind you of the memories that were erased. It suggests that our minds are resilient to change through scientific processes, which is pretty relieving if you're in my boat and feel totally violated by the concept of having your memory erased.
Vis a vis Descartes - how are we certain that God is not a deceiver? All sorts of weird and unexplainable things happen to us day to day - things that don't feel real. I'm still not certain that well, I can be certain of certainty.
We need some definitions, and I for one say we dust off the old Oxford tomorrow morning.
posted by Graham Rosby at 8:01 PM
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