SPA Faculty Discussant: Nellie Wieland

the STUDENT PHILOSOPHY ASSOCIATION  &  the COMPARATIVE LITERATURE CLUB
Present:

A student mixer with Faculty Discussant Nellie Wieland (Cal State Long Beach)

‘A perfect memory’
Tuesday January 29th   •  5:00pm–6:00pm  •  LA1–312

Abstract: Most of us wish we had a better memory. Sometimes we are embarrassed when we forget something, even if that’s not within our control. Other times we wish we could forget things and think that would provide us with some relief. Memory is centrally implicated in our understanding of learning, perceiving, concept formation, personal identity, and self-knowledge. But it is also central to our understanding of the ability to use words, form beliefs, and have knowledge. We will talk briefly about some of the connections and we will reference the movies Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, philosophical work on memory from Augustine, Locke, Hume, and Parfit, and we’ll read passages from Borges’s story ‘Funes the Memorious’.