Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity

Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2019, is an extended thought experiment on the nature of memory, minds, and persons. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in the film—and its implications for pers...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal:	Giorgina Samira Paiella
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Alfredo Mac Laughlin 2020
Materias:	Philosophy (General) B1-5802 Literature (General) PN1-6790
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/dcdd4afa18b6415eafc1a0b7fc605f66
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:dcdd4afa18b6415eafc1a0b7fc605f66
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:dcdd4afa18b6415eafc1a0b7fc605f662021-11-15T19:11:00ZEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity2573-881Xhttps://doaj.org/article/dcdd4afa18b6415eafc1a0b7fc605f662020-03-01T00:00:00Zhttps://jsfphil.org/vol-3/eternal-sunshine-and-personal-identity/https://doaj.org/toc/2573-881XMichel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2019, is an extended thought experiment on the nature of memory, minds, and persons. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in the film—and its implications for personal identity—raises poignant questions for the ethicist, epistemologist, neuroscientist, metaphysician, and cognitive scientist. In this paper, I explore the rich insights the film has to offer interdisciplinary studies of memory, providing a case study in how narrative can uniquely contribute to memory research, while also maintaining philosophical rigor and fidelity to scientific discoveries about memory. Turning to the philosophical implications of memory erasure, I consider memory erasure in the context of several leading views of personal identity and proposed answers to the persistence question of personal identity, assessing the challenges and complications that the memory erasure thought experiment brought to life by Eternal Sunshine poses to these theories. I argue that the psychological continuity view of personal identity—in its various iterations—does not allow an individual to truly survive the memory erasure procedure. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in Eternal Sunshine—and its metaphysical and epistemological consequences—reveal how we establish the relationship between memories and selfhood, how to define personhood in the presence of both hypothetical and real-world memory loss, and what experiences we value in human life.Giorgina Samira PaiellaAlfredo Mac LaughlinarticlePhilosophy (General)B1-5802Literature (General)PN1-6790ENJournal of Science Fiction and Philosophy, Vol 3, Pp 1-16 (2020)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Philosophy (General) B1-5802 Literature (General) PN1-6790
spellingShingle	Philosophy (General) B1-5802 Literature (General) PN1-6790 Giorgina Samira Paiella Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
description	Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2019, is an extended thought experiment on the nature of memory, minds, and persons. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in the film—and its implications for personal identity—raises poignant questions for the ethicist, epistemologist, neuroscientist, metaphysician, and cognitive scientist. In this paper, I explore the rich insights the film has to offer interdisciplinary studies of memory, providing a case study in how narrative can uniquely contribute to memory research, while also maintaining philosophical rigor and fidelity to scientific discoveries about memory. Turning to the philosophical implications of memory erasure, I consider memory erasure in the context of several leading views of personal identity and proposed answers to the persistence question of personal identity, assessing the challenges and complications that the memory erasure thought experiment brought to life by Eternal Sunshine poses to these theories. I argue that the psychological continuity view of personal identity—in its various iterations—does not allow an individual to truly survive the memory erasure procedure. The memory erasure thought experiment presented in Eternal Sunshine—and its metaphysical and epistemological consequences—reveal how we establish the relationship between memories and selfhood, how to define personhood in the presence of both hypothetical and real-world memory loss, and what experiences we value in human life.
format	article
author	Giorgina Samira Paiella
author_facet	Giorgina Samira Paiella
author_sort	Giorgina Samira Paiella
title	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
title_short	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
title_full	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
title_fullStr	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
title_full_unstemmed	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity
title_sort	eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, memory erasure, and the problem of personal identity
publisher	Alfredo Mac Laughlin
publishDate	2020
url	https://doaj.org/article/dcdd4afa18b6415eafc1a0b7fc605f66
work_keys_str_mv	AT giorginasamirapaiella eternalsunshineofthespotlessmindmemoryerasureandtheproblemofpersonalidentity
_version_	1718426874571390976

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Memory Erasure, and the Problem of Personal Identity

Ejemplares similares