We Can Remember it For You Wholesale

I remember seeing the trailer for the Colin Farrell movie, Total Recall, in theaters last year and being intrigued by the premise of memory implantation. So when I read the Philip K. Dick story, “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale,” I knew it reminded me of something familiar and it wasn’t until the class discussion where the professor mentioned that the movies were based off of the story that I realized where I had seen this idea before. Reflecting on the story and movie, I started thinking about a concept I learned about in a philosophy course on what constitutes reality and knowledge. The concept of justified, true, belief was a way to define knowledge, and I feel as if it can be applied to this story context as well. Essentially it meant that something is true, if a person believes that it is true and has justification for believing it. Therefore, in the story because Doug’s memory was implanted and he remembers his trip to Mars, but also his trip to REKAL, he is not sure of which reality is justifiably true.