ABSTRACT
The idea of ‘Film as Philosophy’, film as a medium in which genuine philosophical work can be done and philosophical understanding thereby advanced, has been promoted recently by a number of philosophers namely, Noel Carroll, Stephen Mulhall and Thomas Wartenberg. In the world of Blade Runner, memories provide a ground for something like moral agency by allowing an individual to develop a historical self-conception, a sense of an individual life, and thus of acting in a way that is true to that conception. Memories can act as a control on action, provide, in Tyrell’s words, a 'pillow' for the emotions. The chapter describes a theoretical question raised by the foregoing analysis of the thematic content of Blade Runner and a novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (DAD). Artistic cognitivism with respect to literature and cinema is compatible with the acknowledgement that they may differ in their potential to perform various kinds of cognitive functions.
