requires obedience. And most of all,
predictability"
(Ibid).
In the novel, We Can Build You (1972), the
plot is partly based on
the manufacturing of
"simulacra" or synthetic beings. The
main
character, Louis, operates a "mood organ"
business. Pris, the
schizophrenic daughter of
one of his business partners, Maury,
designs
first an Edward M. Stanton, then an Abraham
Lincoln
simulacrum. In We Can Build You, the
main character, Rosen, falls in
love with Pris.
Pris is in possession of part of what it is to
be
human for Philip K. Dick. She possesses the
ability to be creative,
which is connected to
Philip K. Dick's autonomy criterion which I
will
discuss in more detail later. However, she
lacks paranoia and
the capacity for empathy: "in
a crisis she is even colder, more
efficient,
more in command than ever" (p. 138). Again,
Philip K.
Dick trades on the functionalist
position when he gives the synthetic
Lincoln
being empathy, spontaneity, and other human
traits. Rosen
says "I had a natural trust and
like for Lincoln and this was certainly
the |
opposite to what I felt towards Pris" (p. 182).
Rosen
likes the ‘human’ Lincoln and dislikes the
biological human Pris.
Earlier in this work the
Lincoln gives business advice to the
Rosen
factory. In fact, the Stanton is made president
of the company
because of his hard headedness
and his ability to make tough decisions.
This
is an attempt to show that the synthetic human
knows more about
human nature than the
biological humans, because the synthetic
humans
are more human.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is
based on the premiss that
off-world androids
that look exactly like humans return to an
Earth
advanced in entropic decay, and where it is
illegal to be an
android. The crime is
punishable by death. In this novel as well
as
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick exploits the
relationship
between human and android in
relationship to the idea of testing.
The
Turning Test1 is based on an operational testing
procedure. If
the computer or android, as in
this context, behaves like a human, it
is said
to be intelligent or, in this case, empathetic.
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