Philip K. Dick and Philosophy
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PETER MURPHY is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Indianapolis. He is most interested in applied ethics and epistemology. Unlike Steven Spielberg, he’s looking forward to a future with a Division of Precrime.
JUSTIN NICHOLAS is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in philosophy at York College of Pennsylvania. He is rather notorious among friends for owning a cat that he vehemently hates. When asked why he keeps it, he simply mumbles something about a strange religion and complains that the township code prevents the keeping of animals on roofs.
A Rexorian who replaced TRAVIS PATERSON—years ago, probably—is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Assuming, at least, that that Rexorian has not himself been replaced by an Outspace Imposter.
JEREMY PIERCE is a PhD student at Syracuse University and teaches at Le Moyne College. He works in such diverse areas as metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of race and has previously written popular culture and philosophy pieces on Harry Potter, X-Men, and Lost. Jeremy spends much of his free time trying to figure out how to make use of the prophetic abilities of his two autistic children, so far to no avail.
BEN SAUNDERS is currently Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirling in the UK. His research interests include democracy, lotteries and, in particular, their intersection. He has previously written about the relation between lotteries and penalty shoot-outs in Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game (2010). Unfortunately, he can’t see the future, or he’d be a retired lottery winner by now.
ALF SEEGERT is Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of English at the University of Utah. In addition to teaching and publishing on nature and virtuality, he designs internationally published Euro-style board games themed on trolls and The Canterbury Tales. His cats are still not sure if he’s a real human being or a cunningly contrived simulation. His homepage is at www.alfseegert.com.
PETER SIMONS is Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. He has worked in England, Ireland, and Austria, researches in metaphysics and logic, has written two books and over two hundred articles. When not sleeping or philosophizing he likes hill walking and choral singing.
BENJAMIN STEVENS teaches literature and languages at Bard College as well as music history and theory around the country. Having witnessed the end of the Cold War, he wonders whether it was by human, machine, or extraterrestrial action . . . or all three, each in its own parallel universe. When not writing about literature—including the classics, science fiction, and comics—or writing his own poetry he organizes curricula at a cappella music festivals.
JOHN SULLINS putters about in the small land of Sonoma County California, an area Dick described as: “a well settled farm area, and very hot. A very dull area. Just right for a barbershop.” He lives there with his wife and two daughters. He’s an associate professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University where he lectures about the ambiguous distinctions between humans and robots, a problem his students don’t seem to be all that worried about.
DAVID SVOLBA earned his PhD in Philosophy in 2008 from the University of Chicago. He taught philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago between 2006 and 2010, and is currently a visiting lecturer in Philosophy at the Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education in Krakow, Poland. Although he saw Blade Runner in his youth, he didn’t really discover the world of Philip K. Dick until recently and has no plans on leaving that world anytime soon.
GEORGE TESCHNER teaches courses in Philosophy of Technology, Human and Machine Intelligence, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, and Philosophy and Literary Theory at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He teaches with the conviction that language speaks us, rather than we speak language, and is expecting to get rich quick by designing the Teschner Artificial Thought Simulator modeled after the Penfield Artificial Mood Simulator of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
RICHARD VISKOVIC is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, where he is completing a thesis on Philip K. Dick and Philosophy. He hopes that in an alternate universe, Philip Dick is writing a thesis about Richard D.D. Viskovic, but suspects such a thing is beyond the bounds of even the most speculative fiction.
DENNIS WEISS is Professor of Philosophy at York College of Pennsylvania where he teaches courses on and writes about human nature, technology, film, and science fiction, exploring those ubiquitous themes of Dick’s science fiction but alas in far more mundane ways. But, wait, isn’t the mundanity of life a Dick theme too?
D.E. WITTKOWER exists simultaneously in multiple timelines: one in which he is a father-thing to two exceptional children and four wonderful cats; another in which he teaches philosophy of technology and computer ethics as an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University; another in which he has edited iPod and Philosophy, Mr. Monk and Philosophy, and Facebook and Philosophy; and yet another in which he has written articles and book chapters on topics including business ethics, copyright law, friendship, and online culture. He may or may not be from the future.
SARA WORLEY is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. She works mostly in philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychiatry. She doesn’t think she’s planning on committing any crimes, but apparently you never know. She’s hoping the Adjustment Bureau will come and do some adjusting.
Index
Abram, David
action: causes of; and memory; tools for
Acts of the Apostles
Adam and Eve (Gnostic)
The Adjustment Bureau (movie); fate in; and free will; precogs in; and short story, differences between
Adorno, Theodor
Affleck, Ben
agape
alternate worlds
American Gangster (movie)
anamnesis
Anderton, John (character)
Anselm, Saint: De Concordia; on free will
Anton, Uwe
Arctor, Bob (character); and Deckard, comparing; and nausea; split personality of; struggle with society
Arendt, Hannah: The Human Condition
Aristotle; on free will; on human abilities; on nature
artificial intelligence (A.I.): and soul; strong; weak
Asimov, Isaac
authenticity, manufactured
autism
The Bachelor (TV show)
Bachmann, Michelle
Basham, Lee
Batty, Roy (character)
Baudrillard, Jean
Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever,”
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Before Sunrise (movie)
Benjamin, Walter
Bergson, Henri; on duration; on the future; “The Possible and the Real,” ; on prediction; Time and Free Will
Berkeley, George: Human Knowledge; on reality; Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Bertrand, Frank
Bibleman, Bob (character)
Black Hawk Down (movie)
Blade Runner (movie) ; and book, differences between; Director’s Cut; empathy in; ensoulment in; Final Cut; happy ending; and human uniqueness, question of; irony of; photographs in; technology in; Voight-Kampff (V-K) test in
blobs
Blunt, Emily
Bodily Continuity Rule
Bogen, Joseph E.
Bohlen, Jack (character)
brain hemispheres
brain-scanning technologies
Brunner, John
Buddha
Buddhism
Byron, Lord: “The Darkness,”
Cain and Abel (Gnostic)
Callenbach, Ernest: A Citizen Legislature
Campbell, John W.
capitalism, logic of
CAPTCHA
Cassini, Giovanni
cause, Aristotelian types: efficient; final; formal; material
celebrity, as industrially manufactured
Cermak, Anton
Chamberlain, Neville
>
Charles XII, King
Chip, Joe (character)
Christianity, on reality
Churchill, Winston S.
Clarke, Steve
Coady, David
Cohen, John
coincidence
Combined Psyche or Body Rule; problems of
Communist Control Act of 1954,
communitarianism, problems of
conspiracies
conspiracy theories
Craig, Daniel
Cruise, Tom
cultural colonialism
cultural hegemony, and drug use
cultural inclusion, problem of
cybernetics
Damon, Matt
Dazed and Confused (movie)
deception: detecting; epistemology of; ethics of
Deckard, Rick (character); and Arctor (character), comparing
Deep Ecologists
degenerating research program
Delphic oracle
DeLuca, Kevin
democracy in ancient Greece
Dennett, Daniel; on behavior stances
Descartes, René; cogito argument; critique of; Meditations; soul-body dualism in
determinism; critique of; in everyday life; and freedom; hard; soft
d’Holbach, Baron
Dick, Philip K.: “Adjustment Team,” ;—prediction in; alienated labor in; alienation in; “The Alien Mind,” alternate realities in; “The Android and the Human,” autism in; “AutoFac,” “Beyond Lies the Wub,” character of; compassion in; conspiracy in; The Cosmic Puppets; “Cosmogony and Cosmology,” ; Counter-Clock World; deception in; dehumanization in; dialogue and drama in; dehumanization in; The Divine Invasion; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; —acceptance in;—and alienation;—animals in;—and empathy;—human-android distinction, breaking down of;—human-android similarities in;—and human uniqueness, question of;—Penfield Mood Organ;—and problem of other minds;—real-artificial distinction in;—technology and alienation in; on drug misuse; drug use of; dystopianism in; “Electric Ant,”; empathy in; on evil; Exegesis; “The Exit Door Leads In,”; Eye in the Sky; “The Eyes Have It,”; fake lives in; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said;—competition in;—empathy in; —on eugenics; on free will; “The Golden Man,”; “The Gun,”; on heroes; and Hollywood’s story changes; “How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,”; “Human Is,”; on human salvation; human-machine dichotomy in; “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others,”; “Impostor,”; in interviews; “Jon’s World,”“King of the Elves,”; Lies, Inc.; “Man, Android, and Machine,”The Man in the High Castle; Martian Time-Slip ; A Maze of Death; mechanization in; on Mind; “The Minority Report,”—precogs in;—prediction in; “The Mold of Yancy,”; “Mr. Spaceship,”; multiple universes in; Next; Now Wait for Last Year ; orthogonal time in; paranoia of; “Paycheck,” ; as philosopher; “The Piper in the Woods,” ; Platonic form in; precogs in; prediction in; “A Present for Pat,”; pursuit of self-knowledge in; Radio Free Albemuth; “Rautavaara’s Case,” reality, questioning of in; “Roog,” A Scanner Darkly;—as autobiographical;—dominant community in;—drug culture in;—means-end in;—and social norms; “Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes,”; and science fiction; on self-knowledge; shifting points of view in; The Simulacra; skepticism in; as social critic; Solar Lottery; technology in; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; time in; Time Out of Joint; Tractatus; as twin; Ubik; VALIS;—Gloria’s suicide in; visions of;—pink light; “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” The World Jones Made ; “The World She Wanted,” ; “Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday,”
Dickian worldview
Downey, Robert Jr.
Echo
Edelstein, David
Edgemar, Dr. (character)
Eisenhower, Dwight D.
elections: by lottery; and rotation of office
Electoral College
Elijah
Ellison, Harlan
Emerson, Ralph: “Fate,”
empathy
Empedocles
eternalism
eugenics; benefits of; dark side of; and ethical questions; and health; Nazi; personal costs of; and relative values; and value judgments
Evernden, Neil
Fallis, Don
Fancher, Hampton
Fat, Horselover (character); tragedies of
Faulkner, William
Flash Gordon
Fletcher, Ed (character)
Ford, Harrison
foreknowledge: and free will; models of; and prediction
Foucault, Michel
Frank, Scott
Fred (character)
freedom; in everyday life
free will; and desire; and foresight; problem of; and nature
Freud, Sigmund
Fuchs, Werner
Gaita, Raymond
Garner, John Nance
Genesis, Book of (Biblical)
George VI, King
Gibson, William
GI Jane (movie)
Gladiator (movie)
Glaub, Dr. Milton (character)
Gnosticism
Gnostic texts, of Nag Hammadi
God, as outside time
Godfrey, J.E. Drexel
Golden Rule
Goldman, Jan: Ethics of Spying
Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Truth
growing block theory of world
Guinier, Lani
Gumm, Ragle (character)
Halifax, Lord
Hamlet
Haraway, Donna
Harrelson, Woody
Harris, Robert: Fatherland
Hauser (character)
Hawking, Stephen
Hayek, F.A.: The Road to Serfdom
Heidegger, Martin; on the Other; The Question Concerning Technology; on technology
Heraclitus
Hinduism
Hitler, Adolf
Hobart-Phase
Hollywood, and media technology
“Holly-worldview,” ; on free will
Holmes, Sherlock
Hoover, J. Edgar
Horkheimer, Max
House Un-American Activities Committee
humans: Aristotelian causes of; identity, as relational; uniqueness, question of
human-machine dichotomy
Hume, David; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Treatise of Human Nature
Husak, Douglas
Hussein, Saddam
Husserl, Edmund
The Hypostasis of the Archons
I Ching
identity: and consciousness; and memory; problem of; and psyche; questions of
idios kosmos
the Imaginary (Lacan)
Impostor (movie)
inpsychation
intentional stances
Iran (character)
Isadore, Jack (character)
Jackson, Stonewall
Jayarāśi
Jennings, Michael (character)
Job, Book of (Biblical)
Johnson, Cris (character)
Jones, Shadrach (character)
Judd, Phineas (character)
Kandel, Eric
Kant, Immanuel; categorical imperative; on reality; on self
Kardashians