The most similar thing I have found so far is Thursdayism. Even though this idea doesn't reflect completely the paradox of free will when reality can be altered and fully made up and one decides to remove his own past actions.

Another idea is the paradox of self-deception. You can lie to others but can you really deceive yourself? That's explained quite well in this article.

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies

One could say that the world and ego according to Buddhism are of the same illusory nature so Total Recall from a Buddhist point of view is just the consciousness no-self attached to the ego or illusory idea of the universe.

If you could remove your identity or your past how could you know that you chose to do that in the past if that past and that choice could potentially be faked? — pbxman

so presumably you mean, how can one rely upon one's own memory when classifying false memories?

Firstly it has to be asked: What does it mean for a memory or a photograph to refer to something past?

In other words, how is a memory or photograph different from a mere image?

Can an individual photograph without any additionally provided context be meaningfully said to refer to anything past?

Or is the concept of a 'past referring photograph' a holistic concept involving the use of an image, for example it's comparison to other images?

Other clarifying example would be:

Suppose I'm a hypothetical murderer. I know that I have killed somebody and I decide to use a new technology that removes memories and personality traits. I get a new identity and years later the police charges me with murder. The police only shows as prove a videotape which could have been done in a studio and I feel like I have been framed with murder.

How can I define myself if reality can be faked?

How can I define myself if reality can be faked? — pbxman

what is the difference between faking something versus changing something?

Does the past necessarily have to be viewed as being fakeable but not changeable?

Consider Orwell's 1984, where all documented history is destroyed or altered. We should say that the real past remains the same. But what if all potential evidence of the past was lost? Are we still forced to conceptualise the past as unchanged?

You'd never know with certainty, but that's a truism about empirical claims period. That's why empirical claims aren't provable. And that's why falsificationism is the party line for the sciences as a demarcation criterion, at least as a "pledge"--folks don't always follow through with it.

You'd have to just go by the best evidence available.

Re free will, I have a difficult time conceptually connecting this dilemma to free will, because I'm one of those folks who see the free will issue as a matter of whether it's possible to make a (real) decision (where there really are at least two possible avenues that one could take ontologically).

you'd never know with certainty, but that's a truism about empirical claims period. — Terrapin Station

Are there non-empirical claims we can know for certain by way of proofs that do not rely on empirical claims? Sorry if this does not make sense.

Are all claims either directly or indirectly dependent on empirical observations? And is this also a truism?

Are there non-empirical claims we can know for certain by way of proofs that do not rely on empirical claims? — Nils Loc

Yes, all mathematical and logical proofs are an example.

In 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic... Johnny the protagonist is faced with that paradox. He removed part of his brain to accommodate a huge electronic device that stores digital data. Part of Johny's brain that was removed consisted of his entire childhood memories as well as the part that consented to the procedure. However it may have been the part that did not consent... We never find out. That leaves us with Johnny Mnemonic a walking paradox.
However Johnny Mnemonic is different from Douglas Quaid in Total Recall, Johnny actually has undergone a procedure that was in more literal terms more traumatic to his brain, as his brain was altered by surgery.
Douglass Quaid has undergone something more akin to a shell schock, or combat fatigue. His VR ride makes him question the validity of his decision in the first place, whereas Johnny can never even be sure if he made the decision at all. Is Johnny perhaps closer to a true face of what pbxman describes?

I don't know about paradox but the 'voluntary ignorance' idea is present in Advaita Vedanta (an Indian Philosophy), which hypothesises that every conscious being is actually a dream of Brahman, in which Brahman forgets their identity during the dream in order to fully experience the consciousness of the subject of the dream.

There was a Doctor Who episode - I think with Matt Smith - in which he forgot he was the Doctor and lived in a country village in the late nineteenth century. It was something to do with hiding himself from his enemies, and in order to completely hide, he had to forget that he was the Doctor.

Thanks for your answer. I'm trying to find out where exactly in Vedanta that is mentioned (Brahma Sutras, Upanishads or Bhagavad Gita) also why Brahman decided to do that? Was he deceived or self-deceived? Didn't he know about the paradox? Why is knowledge lost reincarnation after reincarnation? Doesn't that make Karma very sadistic?
I have not found any literature that calls that choice to "voluntary ignore" who you are, were do you come from and where are you going, a "paradox" when in fact its even more paradoxical than self-deception which is considered a paradox that would be more like an oxymoron if it wasn't for the recent discoveries in modern psychology.

Are there non-empirical claims we can know for certain by way of proofs that do not rely on empirical claims?
— Nils Loc

Yes, all mathematical and logical proofs are an example. — Terrapin Station

Don't we ultimately define the correctness of a proof by it's agreement with consensual opinion or with the output of an implemented computer program?

Consider 2+2 = 4. We can take it as being a necessary truth, in which case we are not making an epistemological claim, but are asserting our attitude in relation to our intended use of the formula.

But if we do not take it to be a necessary truth, then it is a truth contingent upon our actual use of the formula. In either case, in what sense is our actual use, or intended use of the formula, not empirical?

My source for this was originally the talks of Alan Watts.
When I went searching for it in Indian scriptures, I found myself mostly pointed towards the Gita. I find the Gita pretty hard to understand, but the interpretation I get from this series of podcasts is in line with Watts' "Brahman's Dream" rendition. The guru giving those talks is from this spiritual community, which appears to be Vedanta.

Thanks for the Johnny Mnemonic example. I think it's the same paradox. As for Total Recall I'm afraid it's you or perhaps me the one who did not make an accurate interpretation of the movie.
We are talking of course about the original 1990 version stared by Arnold Schwarzenegger and yes the guy from Rekall could have been created by the AI machine as well even the drop of sweat!
Remember the technician quote "Blue sky on Mars!, that's a new one" at the beginning also remember the blue sky at the end:

QUAID
I just has a terrible thought...What
is this is all a dream?
MELINA
Then kiss me quick...before you wake
up.

That movie has references to the real spiritual concept underlying such us the "EGO TRIP". The trip of the self. Some religions believe our existence is one. Then again you face the paradox. How can I know that I made the choice to forget my identity when reality can be faked?

A man is defined by his actions, not his memories — Kuato

Don't we ultimately define the correctness of a proof by it's agreement with consensual opinion or with the output of an implemented computer program? — sime

Proofs work relative to the systems we've set up. That's different than inventing proofs wholesale --in other words, we can and do discover them a la discovering things that can be done with the systems/tools we've set up, given the exact ways we've set them up.

Would you mind having this discussion in another thread, please?

I'd mind not having it here, too, if anyone else wants to have it here.

But sure, I might have it in another thread as well.

If we neglect the concept of time as a medium and instead directly define a position in time in terms of the phenomena associated with it, then what are the resulting implications for the interpretation of false memories?

It seems to me that if one accepts this conceptual deflation of time in terms of phenomena, that a false memory would only be false in terms of convention.. For the time referred to by a memory would then be identical to the memory content, say the memory-image. Therefore to say that the memory was 'false' would be equivalent to saying that the position in time previously associated with this memory-image was to be redefined in terms of a different memory-image.

If you could remove your identity or your past how could you know that you chose to do that in the past if that past and that choice could potentially be faked? — pbxman

X
You can't. Any possibility of memory being modified for a person would make it impossible for the person to know anything about him/herself. Not even an external reference point, like another person, can do anything about it since the person whose memory's been modified would have to rely on his memory which is, well, no longer reliable.

If reality can be faked, does that mean my act of thinking my cogito is faked too? If the answer is yes, then we somehow live in a world where everything is possible as sort of Harry Potter world where in an Aristotelian sense everything is ordered by its relation to other things, we have unmovable movers and all that... In this world inanimate objects if broken or destroyed are able to walk back the entropy and reassemble with just some help from a magical wand.
If the answer is no, and I think that it is no, then we live in a world where we basically agree with Graham Harman and his OOO...Here my cogito remains as Descartes would have imagine it but everything else orbits the ( objects, or essences, or forms) nothing can walk back the entropy and we keep on living our life forward. Think of our world right now as if it was exact opposite of the world where John Murdoch awakens in Dark City a 1998 film.
Therefore, I think we cannot know if I made that choice to change my identity. At best I can like John Murdoch and question my reality.

Descartes got it wrong and Buddha got it right centuries before him. You are
consciousness, infinite awareness having an experience. You can't really be sure of anything apart from that even if that thought makes you feel uncomfortable.

"I think therefore I am" Descartes identified himself as an independent thinker and also with his ego. He didn't realized that his Evil Demon could have created the doubt in his mind, even induce thoughts in his mind or knowing his decisions even before himself. Check neuroscience of the free-will here He didn't even realized that his persona or ego could have been created by the demon himself.
Descartes himself even doubt his own conclusion. "if the Evil Demon deceives me, there is still an 'I' to be deceived".

There is no way to prove the existence of God or the Simulation Hypothesis. Even top engineers like Elon Musk believe this world is a simulation. So if this is all a computer simulation and we cannot disprove it perhaps tomorrow you will see flying pigs or Harry Potter flying on his broom. As long as you have witnesses you should be fine.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. — Albert Einstein

I think that the "simulation hypothesis" takes the 'credible witness' out of the equation. The point that interests me here is your line of fake reality vis-a-vis identity... I think that I fail to see the connection to the simulation. Could you elaborate?

Most religions are based on the idea of possible future worlds. You can call them bardos, you can call them heaven, hell, etc. They all are based on the illusory nature of existence. With new tech instead of calling reality "a dream" we can call it a "computer simulation" which is not exactly the same concept but it's closer to Descarte's Evil Demon.
Some sects use Near Death Experiences by people to conclude that you chose to incarnate on this earth for spiritual purposes an also you chose to remove your existential knowledge for the same reason. As in the movie Total Recall or Johnny Mnemonic you face this paradox whose name is vaguely known as voluntary ignorance.
Let's presume that those people were right and when you die you see the tunnel of light, you remember your pass lives, you are even told why you agreed your shitty life on earth and you see your can even see a video of your "real" spiritual self doing that, and then they try to convince you to reincarnate again with the condition of course that you should remove all your memories. From the very moment you have technology to create fake realities (we have it now) and somehow you can't remember your past you get this paradox.(eg. possible murderer with amnesia) If we take this approach this means the "ego" or idea of the self is also illusory just like Buddhism says. Not only yours but everybody else's. You don't even need to remove your memories for that. Your whole body renews it cells and the brain changes the synaptic connections of the neurons therefore therefore just like in the Ship of Theseus you are not who you were time ago but the illusion of it. The ego or idea of the self is illusory.
The question i'm asking here is not related to the ego but to the idea of freewill that seems also to be illusory because if freewill exists it can only exist in the spot that is to say here and now.

okay I like that... One knows that one is a Ship of Thesus but one does not know if one is original or not. But would you agree that this places the "I" so where other than in our reality... If that is the case, and the presence that I expirience in our reality cannot reach the "I" at the keyboard of the simulation. Does that lead infinite regress where each I could be at a keyboard of the simulation?

The point is that "I think therefore I am" is not entirely right. Even the idea of the "I" or self or ego is a creation of the mind. You are the consciousness! The silent watcher not the thought. You don't even need a thought to know that. Experienced meditators know this by creating huge gaps between thoughts. (Research emptiness meditation)
If you like Sci-fi take for instance the Series "Altered Carbon" They could transport their personality and consciousness into many different avatars. Vedanta goes beyond that it tells you that you are not your personality (psychology, ego etc) because those are learnt along the way and they are subjected to impermanence. After all we are all one like drops of water reaching the ocean. Buddhism goes even further an tells you that the realization of "we are one" it's also a creation of the mind and invites you to go even further...If idea and experience of all being one is correct then there is no birth, no death, no time, the whole universe is one the rest is illusory. My question is why the universe decided to split up in trillions and trillions of pieces and disguise it's true nature. I'm afraid that's impossible to answer.

If we neglect the concept of time as a medium and instead directly define a position in time in terms of the phenomena associated with it, then what are the resulting implications for the interpretation of false memories?

It seems to me that if one accepts this conceptual deflation of time in terms of phenomena, that a false memory would only be false in terms of convention.. For the time referred to by a memory would then be identical to the memory content, say the memory-image. Therefore to say that the memory was 'false' would be equivalent to saying that the position in time previously associated with this memory-image was to be redefined in terms of a different memory-image. — sime

I'm not sure I understand this. Say we define a position in time, say "August 3, 2004, 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time" in terms of the phenomena associated with it: "I was in Paris with my mistress, Beulah." And say that was defined at the time, when I wrote it down (so we could include the phenomena of writing it down as part of the definition, too, I suppose).

So then re February 21, 2019, 9:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time, the phenomena I'm associating with that is "I'm writing this post and thinking about my past." One of the things I think here is "August 3, 2004, 2:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time is defined/associated with the phenomena of my trip to Fiji with my wife, Bubbles."

You're saying that that's only false--that I went to Fiji, by convention somehow? (Who else is participating in this?) Why wouldn't the fact that I never went to Fiji not matter?

I think you may be giving too much to the Buddhist, Meditation and alike.... Remember that Cogito ergo sum = I am thinking therefore I am... The act as you mention itself is that expirience of self. Where my problem with meditation and Buddhism and other such paths lies is that it is rather subjective... Earlier you mentioned Elon Musk and his belief in simulation hypothesis, yet here you mention Buddhists and their meditation as a proof of futility of cogito... What if they just lie to me and say that meditation is this or that... Perhaps they are all evil demons tring to turn me away from my true without the need for simulation what if they lie?

Total Recall is essentially a global skeptical hypothesis. Every global skeptical hypothesis is fundamentally the same in form. While you can't disprove it, you can show that the situation it describes breaks all processes of reason so that you no longer have justification for believing or disbelieving anything (since anything could've been an implanted memory and there's no way to distinguish).

If a scenario renders all knowledge claims void, then it's fair to say that it's irrational to believe in the scenario -- because believing in it would make reason inaccessible.

Except, of course, if you're actually Quaid living in the movie. In his case, his reality has already broken down repeatedly, so he has a rational basis to believe that he no longer has any rational way to evaluate whether knowledge claims are valid. Sucks to be him.