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Illustration of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”[1] is a science fiction novel written in 1968 by Philip K. Dick. It centres on protagonist Rick Deckard, who makes a living as a bounty hunter – hunting renegade androids – in a dystopian future San Francisco. The blurred distinction between humans and androids and ethical considerations thereof is a crucial plot devise throughout the novel as Deckard seeks to preserve his own humanity in a quite inhumane line of work taking place in an even more inhumane world. While the book can hardly be said to support Searle’s thesis – after all the androids in it are quite intelligent – there are nevertheless several ideas that can be said to predate him and can be used to illustrate some of his points. In the book the androids are (nearly) indistinguishable from human beings in all aspects save for the fact that they are utterly incapable of empathy. As a part of his job Deckard therefore is required to issue an empathy test in order to identify suspected androids before “retiring” them. However as increasingly more sophisticated androids are put into production they also become continually more apt at simulating the “correct” empathical response, without actually possessing any genuine understanding of the emotion. In other words in regards to empathy they are merely manipulating symbols on a syntactical level without any inherent semantics. This can be best seen in a quote from chapter five: "You are watching an old movie on TV, a movie from before the war. It shows a banquet in progress; the guests are enjoying raw oysters." - "Ugh," Rachael said; the needles swung swiftly. "The entree," he continued, "consists of boiled dog, stuffed with rice." The needles moved less this time, less than they had for the raw oysters. "Are raw oysters more acceptable to you than a dish of boiled dog? Evidently not."
Rachael, being an android, has been preprogrammed to express emotions to expected scenarios, but lacking understanding of the underlying meaning, she is unable to simulate the same emotions when confronted with an altered version of the same scenario. An analogy can also be drawn between Searle’s insistence that the neurophysiology of a brain is an important prerequisite for intelligence and that this cannot be achieved through mere computation – as we today understand it – alone and the fact that the androids in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” are biological constructs. To a statement Rachael makes about her not being alive in chapter seventeen, Deckard responds:
"Legally you're not. But really you are. Biologically. You're not made out of transistorized circuits like a false animal; you're an organic entity."
[1] Dick, Philip K.: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York 1968. |