The physical similarities between humans and androids are quite plain. Both of them are capable of thinking and acting upon people’s will. Yet we are always reminding ourselves of the obvious. In the end, we just are not the same. Because androids lack empathy and they are not capable of producing emotions the same way we humans advocate them. Some take this argument to mean that we actually have much more in common with mammals than androids despite our physical resemblance. That is because both humans and mammals are both subject of our cultural values: sex, menstruation, pregnancy, birth, feeding, defecation, urination, bleeding, illness, and dying, traits where that androids are incapable of doing. But androids have higher standards of critical thinking, they are deemed superior to the mammal. Because we humans are capable of all the things listed that we have in common with mammals and are also capable of critical thinking, we place our species as the highest authority. Therefore, we, as a society, would deem it perfectly normal to terminate an android. And because the android is not capable of having human emotions, there is no case for a crime to be had. One could simply commit even the most heinous crimes against an android and not found guilty of murder on any case. Also, since the android is a product of the human, the android is designated as property and does not retain any reasonable right. But we should accept that there are those who would argue that androids are, in fact, capable of being side-by-side with humans. Proponents of the idea that androids and humans are not all that different tend to point to human history, as well as how the process of empathy works. Here, we will use the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
Even though the obvious answer as to why humans are justified in destroying an android is that we are the ones who have two arms, two legs, a body, and a brain that can do math, understand language, and work a computer. Yet, this does not quite hold up when you point to human history. Look specifically at colonial times. Not even 200 years ago, a vast majority of Europeans and Americans considered Africans to be less than human and therefore had no empathy towards them. Why, because most of them thought they lacked empathy, even though they still had two arms, two legs, a body, and a brain which, as time has proven us wrong, can do math, understand language, and work a computer. Even in the present, there are plenty of us that act as though people who live in different countries or lower lifestyles are deemed less than human. Many would argue today that empathy is a topic that cannot be taught in schools since humans generally are not fully empathic in their everyday lives. People who work in a city usually pass by homeless people without handing them money, often because they are too rushed to get to work on time. But the counterargument is literature, since fiction focuses on the psychology of characters and their relationships. The fiction genre helps the reader imagine the characters’ introspective dialogues, which in turn carries over into their psychology in the real world especially since it is full of problematic individuals that contain inner lives some might deem complicated. After all, most humans would agree that Harper Lee delved into what it takes to be empathic in To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it”. Thus reading can be a valuable influence on people’s sociability. Philip K. Dick’s novel offers a parallel between the relationship between whites and blacks in colonial times and the relationship between humans and androids in its futuristic setting.
In the novel, androids are deemed as property and do not hold any rights. The reason for this is because they supposedly lack empathy, which is the main theme of the novel and the crux of Dick’s metaphysical reflection on the meaning of life. Humans are taught to express no empathy towards the androids, which may have caused them to possess fewer feelings in general, something they are fighting to preserve. Each and every character deals with what it means to be empathetic and whether that allows someone to be valued as a living thing. Deckard hates his electric sheep only because he believes it cannot feel any love for him even though he cares for it. This feeling allows Deckard to perform his work as a bounty hunter because he is of the prominent belief that androids are incapable of true human emotion and are not worthy of life in a society in which life is the highest ideal. He even notes early on that herbivores or omnivores are the only creatures with the empathetic impulse and that empathy is what allows humanity to survive. John Isidore, the most empathic character in the novel, on the other hand, has an incredible sense of empathy for the androids. Not just because he finally has someone to talk to when the escaped androids move into his apartment, but because to him it’s clear that the androids strive for freedom so that they can live their own lives like humans are free to do. Since the androids killed their masters, the androids are seemingly capable of understanding the concept of freedom. But later on in the story, their beliefs are challenged.
Deckard soon learns that androids can, in fact, be capable of empathy and humans may be able to be devoid of empathy upon his encounter with Phil Resch who enjoys killing simply for killing’s sake; causing a severe shift in Rick’s understanding even of himself. Rick finds that the lines between what one can call living or what once can call not living are blurred. Androids find their empathetic abilities with each other just as humans find the ability to be empathetic in a collective group. Humans are also capable of a loss of empathy. Whereas John becomes horrified that the androids show disrespect towards a spider, which humans value greatly after all living things nearly became extinct in World War Terminus. The fact that androids tarnished something that humans greatly value shakes Isidore’s empathy for the androids heavily. Such concern for animals would seem to distinguish the humans from the androids to be sure, given the way in which they torture the poor spider, but there is nothing essentially human about such a caring attitude.
Dick’s science fiction is not deeply rooted in philosophy. He was interested, from the time that he read Plato when he attended Berkeley High School, in the core problem of philosophy: Is the world as it appears, or is it a mere appearance? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? can be seen as a product of the author’s skepticism about the apparent world. For the novel imagines a world in which androids and humans are apparently the same, so that much of the novel is concerned with the problem of telling them apart from reality. That is because the implication of the novel is that the distinction between the two kinds of being, android and human will eventually become if not unreliable then at least undetectable. That can mean robots are very much like humans after all. But it can also mean that humans are very like robots.
The ability to empathize is imagined as being an exclusively human faculty. The Voight-Kampf Test is designed to determine whether the tested subject is an android look for an empathic response to questions that typically involve the mistreatment of animals. The reliability of the test depends on human attachment to animal life following a war that caused mass extinctions. With living animals harder to find, humans grew more and more fond even for living organisms such as toads and ostriches, chickens, sheep, even spiders. This love of animals is linked to the religion of Mercerism, which is believed to be some kind of cosmic entity, one apparently exposed as a fraud by Buster Friendly, a popular TV host. But to Rick and John Isidore, Mercer is actually neither a cosmic entity nor a mere fraud. Furthermore, we are told of other humans who might make the task of distinguishing between human and android quite difficult. These humans who might be mistaken for androids if given the empathy test exhibit what is called a flattening of affect; they have a diminished empathic faculty, which means that they are humans with some form of mental disorder such as schizophrenia. If they were stopped by a routine police check, they could very well be mistaken for androids and be killed mistakenly. But this is only one of the more obvious ways in which Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? broaches the problem of determining the difference between human and android. There is also the question of Deckard’s response to the problem of empathy. He starts to feel empathy for the android Luba Luft, and feels nothing for Phil Resch. At one point, the novel briefly raises the possibility of Deckard himself being an android, when Luba asks him if he has taken the empathy test. But the novel does not really pursue this possibility; it does not so much question whether Deckard is human as much as it questions whether the fact that he is biologically human is enough to distinguish him. The androids lack empathy, but they do not seem to be wholly without any emotional responses in the novel, and they do not seem to be wholly without desire either. The answer to the question that the title poses is unclear. When the last three survivors meet at Isidore’s apartment, their conversation is full of passion because they experience a range of emotions, including joy, shock, and fear. Yet, Isidore senses that there is something different, something “peculiar” or “malign” about these characters. It means that in the end, we do not know if the androids experience desire after all. More important still in terms of the difference between androids and humans is the fact that the androids’ lack of empathy is not something that androids inherently lack. Quite the opposite. It’s the result of a built-in defect.
The built-in defect is a lack of empathic ability. This is important because it means the one attribute in the novel on which the distinction between human and android is based, even it is a reliable distinction for the moment, is only artificially missing from androids. If the defect were not created, the implication is that the androids would have an empathic faculty just as healthy humans do. So the deprived condition of the androids cannot be said to be a natural condition. And if that is the case, then the distinction between android and human cannot be said to be a natural distinction too. Consider the novel’s opening. We find human characters having an argument about the use of the Penfield artificial brain stimulator. Humans might want to call androids artificial, and to see their lack of empathy as a measure of their distance from being human, but with the brain stimulator, one can never know if the emotional responses of even apparent human characters are natural or just a product of artificial stimulation.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? looks at the issues of human versus non-human and hypothesizes that empathy, not language or the number of arms and legs, is the key trait determining humanity. But how far does that humanity extend? Is Phil Resch still human despite his lack of empathy? Is Luba Luft a human in her ability to empathize through art despite being born factory-made chattel? Deep down, we really believe that the people that make our products are full human and act as though they are. For if we do not, that makes us less than full human.
WORKS CITED
- Dick, Philip K. Blade Runner: (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). New York: Del Rey, 1996. Print
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- Chiaet, Julianne. “Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy.” Scientific American. Springer Nature, 04 Oct. 2013. Web.
- Anonymous “The Meaning of Being Human In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And Blade Runner (I)” Essay Judge. N.p., 1970. Web.
