TOTAL RECALL | Epistemology; what is knowledge, what can be known, and what does Quaid know?

Verhoeven’s 1990 film “Total Recall” explores the field of epistemology, presenting a situation that questions the concept of knowledge and one’s ability to determine what they know, if anything. At the end of the film, the protagonist, Quaid, believes that he is on Mars, but it is not possible for this belief to be promoted the status of knowledge.

A sceptic of sensory knowledge denies that one can know anything because it is not possible to know for certain that one is not dreaming or delusional – as such, the senses that suggest otherwise cannot be trusted to supply the truth. However, the idea that it is possible to know something because it is entailed does not always stand up to scrutiny. In order to it to do so, it presupposes closure: if a person knows P and also knows that P entails Q, then that person knows Q.

Consider two important models for knowledge; the Dretske model and the Standard model. Both require that one believes something to be true, and that it is true. The third component of the Dretske model is that if that thing were not true, it would not be believed. This allows the closure principle to be challenged by giving more credit to one’s ability to track the truth of their external status; and without closure, the sceptic’s argument can be refuted.

With this criteria for knowledge, Quaid does know he is on Mars, because if he was, in fact, on Earth going about his business as a construction worker, he would not believe he was on Mars. Quaid is competent at tracking the truth of his external status. Yet he still on occasion doubts this hypothesis, and has good reason to. As it was put in a line of Dr Edgemar’s, it is quite unlikely for Quaid to be “an invincible secret agent from Mars who’s the victim of an inter-planetary conspiracy to make him think he’s a lowly construction worker” compared to the alternative that he is merely suffering from a schizoid-embolism. Dretske’s model holds some clout, but if there are good enough reasons to doubt that a belief is false, regardless of whether or not one would believe it if it were not, then it doesn’t make sense to raise the belief to knowledge. It is counterintuitive to say that one knows something, yet they should doubt its verity. At that point it can become paradoxical (Cox & Levine, 2011). Attributions of knowledge cannot be based purely off of one’s ability to track their external status – it must take into account one’s reasons for believing that what they are tracking is true, and Quaid’s are not sufficient.

The Standard model of knowledge subscribes to a different third criteria; that a true belief must be backed by fair evidence or good reason in order to be classified as knowledge. Quaid believes that he is on Mars, and the moment he comes to this conclusion is seen when he shoots Dr Edgemar in the head, eliminating his last chance at escaping the schizoid-embolism if that were the truth of the matter. Quaid’s confidence in this decision comes from the bead of sweat that he sees trickle down Dr Edgemar’s forehead. He deduces that if Edgemar were telling the truth, the gun pointed at his head would not be a threat and would therefore not induce nervousness. He does not, however, consider other equally potential causes for Edgemar’s uneasiness – it is completely conceivable that the bead of sweat could have been a virtual reflection of what the real Edgemar was feeling that had nothing to do with whether or not he was telling the truth. Furthermore, the possibility that Quaid was in a delusional state – and such is the nature of delusion, he could not disprove this definitively – prevents him from being in a position to rule it out based on such decidedly indecisive evidence.

The Dretske model for knowledge (while a respected one) does not seem to produce an intuitive result. In this instance, the Standard model for knowledge is far more persuasive. Quaid’s belief that he is on Mars is entirely unjustified, and as such, he cannot and does not know that he is on Mars.