Philip K. Dick and Philosophy

by D. E. Wittkower

  Now, how can your mind make an external object? For Kant, the mind is like a car factory. Raw materials, like rubber, glass and metal, go in one end of the factory. They’re shaped and manipulated in very well-described ways and out the other end rolls a car. In this analogy, the car is your actual, everyday experience, with its ordinary, everyday objects that give rise to our ordinary, every sense of self. You never experience the inner workings of your mind nor the raw materials, just the finished products. Your mind plays a partial role in the construction of the reality that you experience. But it can’t play the whole role since your mind can’t cook your experience up out of nothing, any more than the factory builds cars without raw materials. How could you know about the inner workings of the factory? Well, you would have to dissect the car and work backwards. Today we would call this “reverse engineering.”

  Reverse engineering is why militaries don’t want their latest technological toys to fall into enemy hands. Kant reverse engineers experience. We understand the inner workings of our mind by examining so-called outer objects. After all, they were partially made by us so they should, like any created thing, bear the stamp of their creator.

  Reverse engineering only gets you back into the workings of the factory, not right out the other end into the raw materials. Likewise, Kant says, whatever stuff comes in from the outside prior to any workings of the mind, forget it; you can’t know anything about it. This raw material, Kant calls the “thing in itself.” It is truly and completely outside of us and so is forever and completely unknowable.

  The Scanner-Self

  If Dick and Kant are right that the mind shapes the objects that it experiences, and that those objects in turn give rise to a self, then what does this shaping? This is a horrifically complex question for Kant, one he answers in slightly different ways. To keep it simple, Kant thinks that there is a deeper self that lives inside the mind, shaping objects and eventually shapes that everyday self that depends on and experiences those objects. The deeper self wouldn’t have an identity like the everyday self. This deeper self just exists, deep in the factory of the mind, collecting and organizing data so that eventually you have a regular self that can experience objects. This deeper self doesn’t have experiences like you and I do. So you can’t know this deeper self in the way you know an everyday person. You know your everyday self and the everyday self of others. This deeper self is just like a pure observer, gathering data: a Kantian scanner.

  As the novel progresses, Arctor’s deep self, devoid of identity, is eventually revealed. The authorities secretly plant numerous scanners throughout Arctor’s house and it’s Fred’s job to spy on himself. This constant surveillance (and the drugs, too) takes its toll on Arctor. Later in the novel Arctor asks, “Just what does a scanner see?” A frightening amount it turns out.

  We all dislike being watched, treating anyone staring at us with hostility. But why do we do this? Jean-Paul Sartre describes a scene in which you’re observing the park around you. Suddenly another person appears and everything changes; you’re no longer an observing-subject but an observed-object. You have been subordinated, downgraded by this person’s gaze. But you still have your private mental life, exterior to this person’s gaze. So you have some subjectivity left. Now bring in God, Sartre’s ultimate gaze. God’s all-penetrating stare leaves nothing about you unseen, stripping you entirely of your subjectivity. Your future, too, lies open to God’s stare. Any decision that you’ll ever make, God already knows what it will be. Your freedom is gone; it was always just an illusion anyway.

  Like God, the scanners are ravenous and relentless in their surveillance of Arctor. They see increasingly deeper, eventually recording everything, even his hallucinations. Arctor becomes less of person and more like a pure observer. By the end of the novel Arctor becomes Bruce, who only watches things around him, repeats what he’s heard, and lacks all identity. That deep Kantian self, the scanner-self, is what Bruce is now.

  Were Dick alive today, he would be fascinated by the Internet’s effects on subjectivity. People logging hours on Facebook, uploading and living their lives checking out others’ walls, would have struck him as another version of becoming a scanner. Dick would rewrite Saint Paul’s famous line “now we see ourselves through a glass darkly” as “now we see ourselves through a profile darkly.”

  The Valuable Self

  What’s a self? How many selves are you? Can selves be counted? These are metaphysical questions. But despite A Scanner Darkly’s numerous, quirky, metaphysical themes, its central point is a moral one. Here Dick reveals that he’s a moral philosopher, and a follower of Kant to boot.

  Kant based his ethics on the importance of the self. The most valuable thing in the world, Kant says, is a self. Other things are valuable, but they’re means to our ends. Using something as a means to an end makes that something into an object, like a tool. But Kant says that a self is not an object. A self is a subject. To use a self as a means to an end turns that self into an object. Kant tells us that we’re immoral if we use someone to get something else; we must never treat other people as means to an end.

  So Bruce is just a scanner, not a real subject. Dick insists that that most fluid and volatile thing, the self, was the object that deserved the most respect. To violate it is to commit the ultimate crime. The novel’s end reveals the authorities’ master plan: to remake Arctor into a hollowed-out junkie shell so that he can anonymously infiltrate the inner circles of the drug world and rat on who was trafficking Substance D. One of Arctor’s junkie friends, Donna, who is also an undercover agent, bemoans the price paid for the plan:

  “I think, really, there is nothing more terrible than the sacrifice of someone or something, a living thing, without its ever knowing. If it knew. If it understood and volunteered. But—” She gestured. “He doesn’t know; he never did know. He didn’t volunteer—”

  What makes us human, what makes us valuable, is the self ’s fuzziness, which includes its mystery of freewill. To clear this all away is makes the self into an object, a scanner, and there is nothing as dreadful as the transformation of the self—whatever and however many it may be—into a mere thing that just watches and never chooses.

  06

  Will You Survive a Trip to Rekall, Inc.?

  G.C. GODDU

  What would you do for ninety-two million dollars? In the movie Paycheck (based on the Philip K. Dick story of the same name), Michael Jennings agrees to give up three full years of his life—kind of. He loses three years of his mental life.

  To ensure confidentiality for his current client, the Rethrick Corporation, Jennings agrees to have all his memories of the three years he will work for the company removed. In return, Jennings will receive a large quantity of company stock options worth approximately $92 million.

  A good deal? Maybe, but I suspect most of us would be extremely nervous about trading three years of our mental lives for any sum of money. Why be nervous? Because our mental lives are a fundamental part of who we are. As Dr. Rachel Porter puts it to Jennings, “All we are is the sum of our experiences.” To willingly give up our joys, and even our sorrows; to remove our recollections of what we did and why; to lose all our experiences is to commit mental suicide.

  Follow the Psyche

  Just how fundamental are our mental lives, our psyches, to our continued existence? Many of Dick’s stories suggest we do not need much else. In “Rautavaara’s Case,” the alien Proxima Centaurians save the severely damaged human Agneta Rautavaara by using the rest of her irreparable body as a nutrient source to sustain her brain. The humans who learn how Rautavaara has been saved are horrified. Misconstruing the source of the horror, the Centaurians ask: “Was it not right to save her brain? After all, the psyche is located in the brain, the personality.”

  In one of Dick’s early short stories, “Mr. Spaceship,” Professor Michael Thomas, who is dying, agrees to donate his brain to be the control center of an experimental spaceship. The designers plan to use T
homas’s unconscious brain “working on reflex only.” But Thomas gets the builders to make a few wiring alterations. As a result, shortly into the test flight, Thomas’s brain regains consciousness and Thomas takes over control of the ship.

  Rautavaara and Thomas both survive even though they lack most of their original bodies. Rautavaara survives as just her brain—fed on a nutrient bath derived from her former body. Thomas survives as just his brain and gains a spaceship as his new body. So the stories suggest that, in the right circumstances, a person could survive as long as his or her brain survives. But perhaps even the brain is not necessary for personal survival.

  In Dick’s first published work, “Beyond Lies the Wub,” Captain Franco is determined to eat the strange pig-like wub acquired on Mars. The wub, in the most polite way, tries to convince Franco to refrain. Franco will not be deterred. Reasoned argument having failed, the wub at least convinces the captain to look him in the eyes before pulling the trigger. The wub’s body gets eaten, but the wub survives by transferring his consciousness into Franco.

  In another Dick story, “Human Is,” Jill Herrick faces a challenging decision. Her cold and abusive husband has returned from Rexor IV a changed man—so changed that the authorities believe Lester Herrick’s consciousness has been removed and replaced with that of a (warm and caring) alien Rexorian. The authorities assure Jill that her husband is still alive, his consciousness stored in suspension somewhere on Rexor. She merely needs to testify to the radical change in personality, so a judge will give them permission to “vibro-fry” the Rexorian consciousness. Then, once Lester’s consciousness is found and reintegrated, the authorities are confident that “he’ll be back with you. Safe and sound. Just like before.”

  John Locke, a seventeenth-century English philosopher, provides yet another example in his Essay Concerning Human

  Understanding. Locke writes: “Should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince’s actions.” According to Locke, the person now in the cobbler’s body is the prince. Of course, the prince may have a tough time convincing everyone of his true identity. In current science-fiction movies this convincing usually involves lots of guns, at least one kick-ass chase, and some really cool unexplained technology.

  So do we need our bodies or our brains to survive? According to Locke, and many other philosophers, these sort of bodyswapping examples show that we do not. (Locke also asks us to imagine our little finger separated from the rest of our body, while our consciousness inhabits the little finger. “It is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person; and self would have nothing to do with the rest of the body.”) Locke concludes that “consciousness makes personal identity.” If Locke is right, our psyche constitutes ourselves as persons. The prince, the Rexorian, Lester Herrick, and the wub (alas, we do not know what became of poor Captain Franco), all survive because, even though they leave their bodies behind, their consciousness survives.

  We can summarize our thoughts in these various cases using the following rough and ready rule of thumb:

  Psyche Continuity Rule: If you want to keep track of the person, follow the psyche.

  Notice that even the cases of Rautavaara and Thomas conform to the Psyche Rule. In both cases the brain is only important as a vessel for the psyche. Without the resumption of Thomas’s mental life, we would say he merely donated an organ to be part of the ship. But because his mental life resumes we say he survived to take control of the ship. If Thomas’s psyche could have been transferred to take over the ship without his brain, he still would have survived. The brain may be a convenient storage device for the psyche, but it is the psyche that is ultimately crucial to our survival.

  So far so good, but Dick isn’t finished messing with our minds yet.

  The Perils of Rekall, Inc.

  If psychological continuity is necessary for you to survive, what are we to make of the radically disjointed mental lives depicted in A Scanner Darkly or Total Recall? In the previous chapter, Richard Feist took us through the strange divisions and (dis-?) continuities of Bob/Fred/Bruce in A Scanner Darkly, so I’ll focus on Total Recall.

  There are several possibilities for tracing the life of “Douglas Quaid.” The moviemakers deliberately keep us in the dark as to which possibility is accurate. Here is the most complicated one: Hauser and Vilos Cohaagen, the tyrannical governor of Mars, are very good friends. Together they hatch an intricate plot to infiltrate and eliminate the heart of the Martian resistance. Hauser pretends to have a falling-out with Cohaagen and defects to the resistance. He is a member for a short time, but to avoid having his mind read by the telepathic mutant leaders of the resistance, Hauser gets himself ‘captured’ by Cohaagen. Cohaagen then has Hauser’s memories of being Hauser replaced with the personality of mild-mannered Terran construction worker Douglas Quaid.

  Quaid, now on Earth, is obsessed with Mars and so visits Rekall, Inc. to buy a virtual trip to Mars, complete with fake memories. While preparing for the insertion of these fake memories, the Rekall technicians discover that Quaid has already undergone significant memory erasure and implantation. They erase Quaid’s memories of having come to Rekall and send him home. But the trip to Rekall prompts Cohaagen’s agents (who were posing as Quaid’s wife and closest friend and were not told all the intricacies of Cohaagen’s plan) to try to kill him.

  Quaid escapes (with the aid of Hauser’s abilities, which apparently had not been removed) and gets himself to Mars. On Mars, Quaid gets enough of Hauser’s memories re-implanted to make Quaid believe that he has really defected and that he now contains, buried in the recesses of his mind, information crucial to the resistance. The original Hauser memories are never re-implanted.

  In another version of Quaid’s life, Hauser really is a defector with information crucial to the resistance, but erases and replaces his memories in an effort to protect himself from Cohaagen. In this version, Cohaagen’s tale that Quaid did not get all of Hauser’s memories back is merely a trick. The so-called ‘memories’ of Hauser installing false memories of being a defector are fictions, just like Rekall’s fake memory trips. In yet a third version of his life, construction worker Quaid is the real person, and everything from his trip to Rekall, Inc. forward is actually a part of the fake memories implanted by Rekall to give his virtual trip to Mars more spice.

  Ultimately which version is accurate does not matter, because all three cause problems for the Psyche Rule. All three versions are supposed to describe what happens (or could happen in the case of the third version) to one person. But no single psyche is linking Hauser/Quaid from one part of his life to the next. Instead what is continuous through all the various changes is not his psyche, but his body.

  So, to make sense of Total Recall being about the trials and tribulations of one person, we need to use something like the following rule:

  Body Continuity Rule: If you want to keep track of the person, follow the body.

  For all of us in our everyday lives, whether we use the Psyche Rule or the Body Rule does not matter. The two rules march in lockstep with each other and give the same answer. But the various circumstances of Dick’s stories show that the rules could give conflicting advice. To make sense of some of Dick’s stories we have to use the Psyche Rule, while to make sense of others we need to use the Body Rule.

  So what are we—our bodies or our psyches? Is there no way to give a unified explanation of what happens to Douglas Quaid and the wub? Perhaps we need a more complicated rule that combines both the Psyche Rule and the Body Rule, such as:

  Combined Psyche or Body Rule: If you want to keep track of the person, then in the case of a unified mental life, follow the psyche; but in the case of a sufficiently disjointed mental life, follow the body.

  According to the Combined Rule, the wub, since his mental life i
s unified, goes where his psyche goes. Hauser, on the other hand, since his mental life is so disjointed, goes where his body goes.

  One potential problem with the Combined Rule, however, is trying to decide, in at least some cases, whether a mental life is unified or sufficiently disjointed. Recall Michael Jennings’s voluntary memory removal in Paycheck. Is Jennings’s mental life disjointed or unified? If something splits Jennings’s body from his psyche in the future, which should we follow? In the short story version, Dick has Jennings start referring to his earlier self in the third person. Does that mean Dick thinks Jennings’s mental life is disjointed enough that we need to follow his body to keep track of him? But if Jennings now has his consciousness stolen by the Rexorians, should he not worry since “he” goes with his body?

  The problem of determining whether a mental life is unified enough or too disjointed has vexed philosophers for centuries. But perhaps we can sidestep the problem. Maybe personal survival depends on something completely different from the body or the psyche.

  Gotta Have Soul?

  Locke’s body-switching example involved the prince’s soul moving into the cobbler’s body. Perhaps it is the persistence of the soul that explains personal survival. Here’s the rule: