Maybe the Governator really was changed into a new man.
I could swear I've dealt with this week's thought experiment before. But it's getting harder and harder to remember for some strange reason...
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Arnold Conan had just made an unpleasant discovery: he wasn't Arnold Conan at all. Or rather, he used not to be. It was all rather confusing.
This is the best sense he could make of his unusual autobiography. He was born Alan E. Wood. Wood was, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant man: egotistical, selfish, cruel, and ruthless. Two years ago, Wood had got into deep trouble with the State Bureau of Investigation. He was given a choice: spend the rest of his life in maximum security prison, where they would make sure he was victimised by the other inmates; or have his memory erased and replaced with that of an entirely fictitious creation of the spooks at the SBI. He chose the latter. And so it was that Alan E. Wood was put under a general anaesthetic, and when he woke up, he had forgotten all about his life to date. Instead, he remembered an entirely fictitious past, that of Arnold Conan, the man he now believed he was.
Conan had established that these were the facts. But he still did not know who he was: Wood or Conan?
Sources: Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 1990; "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick, 1990.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 262.
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What do you think? Is this character Wood or Conan now? How do you think identity is formed and sustained? On Friday...I'll be back...with my answer.
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Arnold Conan had just made an unpleasant discovery: he wasn't Arnold Conan at all. Or rather, he used not to be. It was all rather confusing.
This is the best sense he could make of his unusual autobiography. He was born Alan E. Wood. Wood was, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant man: egotistical, selfish, cruel, and ruthless. Two years ago, Wood had got into deep trouble with the State Bureau of Investigation. He was given a choice: spend the rest of his life in maximum security prison, where they would make sure he was victimised by the other inmates; or have his memory erased and replaced with that of an entirely fictitious creation of the spooks at the SBI. He chose the latter. And so it was that Alan E. Wood was put under a general anaesthetic, and when he woke up, he had forgotten all about his life to date. Instead, he remembered an entirely fictitious past, that of Arnold Conan, the man he now believed he was.
Conan had established that these were the facts. But he still did not know who he was: Wood or Conan?
Sources: Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven, 1990; "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick, 1990.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 262.
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What do you think? Is this character Wood or Conan now? How do you think identity is formed and sustained? On Friday...I'll be back...with my answer.
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