#mscedc What is “human”? Philip K Dick – The Blade Runner Interview: http://t.co/VGWtldHRds via @YouTube

— Miles Prowse (@mychioiles) January 13, 2015

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January 14, 2015 at 02:04AMvia IFTT

There is much in this interview, just in the first couple of minutes which accords with what Hayles (1999) says following on from the previous post with respect to the importance of a literary  narrative alongside a scientific one  (1999, p22), but specifically as Dick says in the interview, what he is interested in is not the ontology or ethics of androids, but the epistemological issue of , are we what we think we know we are? Dick in this interview gives examples of highly intelligent, educated people, who believe even though they are doing terrible things, morally, believe that they are right. Similarly therefore, might not it be the case that even if a person was an android, as ontological fact, they may not know, and how could we perhaps ever know? Dick makes it explicit here that what he is interested in is the apparent lack of apparently human characteristics in many people who understand themselves as being ‘human’, and the historicity  of this. This is the purpose of the android ‘metaphor’ it seems.