Keeley, Brian
kleroterion
“know thyself,”
koinos kosmos
Lacan, Jacques
Lakatos, Imre
Langan, John
Laplace, Pierre-Simon
Leary, Timothy
Leibniz, Gottfried; Discourse on Metaphysics
Lem, Stanislaw
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa
Leontius
Levinas, Emmanuel; existing/existents distinction; on God; on the Other; thought experiment
Lewis, David
liar’s paradox
Linklater, Richard
Locke, John; Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Lohan, Lindsey
Lucretius
Luft, Luba (character)
Mackie, Anthony
Madison, James
manipulation: levers for; as moral problem; and organizational culture
The Matrix (movie)
McCargar, James: A Short Course in the Secret War
McCarthy, Joseph
McCarthyism, return of
McEwan, Ian
McLuhan, Marshall; on narcissism; on technology; Understanding Media
memory, manipulation of
Mercer, Wilbur (character)
“middle knowledge,”
military-industrial complex
Mill, John Stuart
Mills. Wright: The Power Elite
Minority Report (movie); precogs in; and short story, differences between
MISE
Mlodinow, Leonard
Molina
Molinari, Gino (character)
monism
Moore, Ward: Bring the Jubilee
Morton, Samantha
M-Theory
Munch, Edvard: “The Scream,”
music/melody, experience of
Nader, Karim
Nagarjuna
Nag Hammadi
Narcissus
“Narcissus as Narcosis,”
narratives, dreams in
necessitarianism
Next (movie)
Nietzsche, Friedrich; on eternal recurrence; on free will; The Gay Science; Genealogy of Morals; Human, All Too Human; “Our New Infinite,”Twilight of the Idols
Noë, Alva: Out of Our Heads
Nolfi, George
Norea (Gnostic)
Norris, David (character)
Obama, Barack
Oedipus
Olham, Spencer (character)
On the Origin of the World
the Other
Palin, Sarah
Parmenides
Paul, Saint
Paycheck (movie); and short story, differences between
personal survival, and soul
phenomenology
Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament
Philips, Michael: A Citizen Legislature
philosopher
Pike and Church Committees
Plato; cave metaphor; Charmides; on Forms; Gorgias; on reality; Republic; on rule by philosophers; on self-mastery
Plotinus
pluriverse
Poole, Garson (character)
Popper, Karl R.
positivism
possible worlds
posthumanism
postmodernism
precognition
precogs, as predictive
Precrime: guide to; guilt in; evidence for; and errors of commission; and errors of omission; and human error; and information leaks; and precog error
presentism
Pre-Socratic philosophers
protention
Psyche Continuity Rule
Pythagoras
Quaid, Douglas (character); and freedom
Reagan, Ronald
the Real (Lacan)
reality: as construction; and dreams, difference between; empiricist view; and experience; question of
reality-illusion, in religion
Reeves, Keanu
replicants: empathy in; and moral personhood
Resch, Phil (character)
Rickman, Gregg
Rogers, Buck
Ronstadt, Linda
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roquentin
Rosen, Rachael (character)
rule: by election; question of
Ryder, Winona
Samael
Sartre, Jean-Paul; on bad faith; Being and Nothingness; on being watched; on freedom; Nausea
A Scanner Darkly (movie); technology in
science fiction
Science Fiction Review (magazine)
Schumpeter, Joseph A.
Schwarzenegger, Arnold
Scott, Ridley
Screamers
Searle, John
Sebastian, J.F. (character)
self
self-deception
self-determinism
Seth (Gnostic)
Sextus Empiricus
Shakespeare, William: Hamlet; Romeo and Juliet
Sheckley, Robert
Silverman, Sarah
skepticism; in ancient Greece
Skinner, B.F.: Walden Two
Slacker (movie)
Snooki
Socrates
solipsism
Sontag, Susan: “On Photography,”
Sophia (character)
Soul Continuity Rule; problems of
Spielberg, Steven
Spinoza, Baruch; Ethics; on God; on modes; on substance; on suffering; on suicide
Stamp, Terence
Stapledon, Olaf: Last and First Men
Star Wars (movie)
Stein, Gertrude
Stein, Manfred (character)
subcultures
substance
Sutin, Lawrence; Divine Invasions
the Symbolic (Lacan)
syzygic pairs
Tartaros
Taverner, Jason (character)
Taylor, Charles
technology, and treating others as means
techno-narcissism
Thelma and Louise (movie)
Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
time travel
Tolstoy, Leo
tools of distraction and control
Torah
Total Recall (movie); and Bodily Continuity Rule; deception and manipulation in; and Psyche Rule
tree-pruning model of reality
Truman, Harry S
The Truman Show
Turing, Alan
Turing Test
utilitarian action, and risk controls
Van Gogh, Vincent
Verhoven, Paul
Waking Life (movie)
Weil, Simone
Wells, H.G.; The Time Machine
Whitehead, Alfred North
Wiener, Norbert: Cybernetics; The Human Use of Human Beings
Wigan, A.C.
Williams, Hank
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Woo, John
Xenophanes
X-Men series
Yaltabaoth
Zangara, Giuseppe
Zen
Žižek, Slavoj; “The Matrix,” on reality, breakdown of
Zoe (Gnostic)
1
Raimond Gaita. A Common Humanity (Text, 1999), pp. 259–260.
2
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (Routledge, 2002), p. 5.
3
Friedrich Nietzsche. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” in Philosophy and Truth (Humanity, 1990), p. 79.
4
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1999), p. 178.
5
Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (Harper and Row, 1977), p. 28.
6
Alf would like to thank Natasha Seegert, Bryan Carr, Paul Hartzog, Lance Olsen, and Melanie Rae Thon for their inspiration and helpful suggestions. He would like to dedicate his article to Friida the Cat (1995–2010), who
taught him much about empathy.
7
Thanks to Speakeasy, The Wall Street Journal’s blog about media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts, and to Speakeasy senior editor Christopher John Farley for permission to reprint portions of my 3/5/11 article, “Can ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ Save Your Life?”
8
Thanks to Mindy Peden, Dylan Wittkower, and an audience at the University of Stirling Philosophy Society (November 2010) for helpful comments.
9
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life (Bantam, 2010), p. 9.
10
In referring to Spinoza’s Ethics, I follow the procedure usual among Spinoza scholars. “1d3” means Book 1, definition 3.
11
Necessary thanks to Juan Garcia, Walter Ott, Gabriel Schneider, and Dylan Wittkower for helpful comments on earlier drafts.
12
Many thanks to Dana Harrison and Dylan Wittkower for comments on earlier drafts.
13
Thanks to Maureen Musker for feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.
14
Dick seems to treat schizophrenia as the adult version of autism and autism as the childhood manifestation of schizophrenia, while sometimes calling an autistic child’s traits schizophrenic and a schizophrenic adult’s traits autistic. Autism and schizophrenia have now been shown to be distinct conditions with unique sets of symptoms, though they have related genetic causes. In the early 1960s, when Martian Time-Slip was published, the connection between the two was exaggerated.
Volume 63 in the series, Popular Culture and Philosophy ®, edited by George A. Reisch
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Philip K. Dick and philosophy : do androids have kindred spirits? / edited by D.E. Wittkower.
p. cm.—(Popular culture and philosophy ; v. 63)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-0-812-69739-1
1. Dick, Philip K.—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Philosophy in literature. 3. Science fiction, American—History and criticism. I. Wittkower, D. E., 1977-
PS3554.I3Z794 2011
813’.54—dc22
2011021040
Table of Contents
Praise
Popular Culture and Philosophy Series Editor: George A. Reisch
Title Page
Through a Screen Darkly
Chapter 01 - Hollywood Doesn’t Know Dick
We Can Conceive It for Ourselves Wholesale
Free Will at the Box Office
Determinism’s Bounty on Free Will
Skepticism for Fun and Profit
What’s So Bad about Determinism?
What’s So Bad about Skepticism?
A Happy Ending?
Chapter 02 - A Quintessence of Dust
Show Me What You’re Made Of
Have You Ever Retired a Human by Mistake?
The Lung-less, All-Penetrating Masterful World-Silence
Do You Think Androids Have Souls?
The Cardinal Mystery of Creation
Chapter 03 - Dick Doesn’t Do Heroes
You’ve Been Adjusted
We Can Endorse That for You Wholesale
Nagging Spouses and Robotic Home-Wreckers
Scott versus Linklater
Deckard versus Arctor
From Hover Cars to Substance D
Through a Screen, Darkly
Chapter 04 - Ewe, Robot
How Animals Make Us Human
Narcissism in a “More Human than Human” World
Empathy in a “More Human than Human” World
The Shock of Being Alive
The Lives of Electric Others
Identity Crises
Chapter 05 - Just Who and How Many Do You Think You Are?
The User Illusion
In a Mirror, Darkly
You Don’t Always Get Along
The Outer Workings of the Mind
The Scanner-Self
The Valuable Self
Chapter 06 - Will You Survive a Trip to Rekall, Inc.?
Follow the Psyche
The Perils of Rekall, Inc.
Gotta Have Soul?
Future Selves and Imposters
Selfless?
Is It Live or Is It Memorex?
Chapter 07 - Scan Thyself
How Do You Know You’re Not an Android?
The Art of Knowing Arctor
What Does A Scanner See?
Phil Chews the Fat
Chapter 08 - Human or Machine, Does It Mind or Matter?
Don’t Think about It
. . . You Ever Take That Test Yourself?
I Love You, My Artificial Construct
. . . Because My Furnace Believed the House Was Cold
Shaky Theological Foundations
The Right Stuff
Soul Against the Archons
Chapter 09 - Matt Damon Is a Vast Sinister Conspiracy
A Variety of Free Will Worth Having
Terrible Freedom
Pre-Crime and Pre-Punishment
Freedom and Madness
Chapter 10 - How to Build a Democracy that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Hundred Years Later
Rule of the Wise
Spinning a Bottle
Throwing the Rascals Out
Checks and Challenges
How Can Random Machinery Be Rational?
Giving and Selling
Chapter 11 - We Can Manipulate You Wholesale
Sure I Deceived You, but What about Me?
Finding a Lever for Manipulation
Categorically, We Have an Imperative Problem
Utilitarian Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Coveralls
Only Remembered as the Blonde Shot in the Head
Like People, Like Organizations
Chapter 12 - Grow, My Dears, the Eugenicist Said
The Bad
The Good
The Ugly
And the Next Step
The World Is Fake
Chapter 13 - Things Are Seldom What They Seem
How Are Things in Glocca Morra—or Anywhere Else, for That Matter?
Ma or Machine?
What’s Really Real?
Philip K. Dick and Philosophy Page 38
