Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
The title of this article is one that’s been on my mind for a week or so now. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is the title of a novel written by Philip K Dick. When I read the book a few years ago, I became enthralled. I enjoy stories that imagine different possibilities in life.
One of the central themes of Dick’s famous work is that there may soon be only a blurry line that separates man and machine. The type 6 androids that had been created on Mars to serve the humans, had become indistinguishable from humans in many respects, and perhaps more interestingly, the book’s central characters have trouble discounting the humanity even of those they know to be androids. They desire and intimately interact with these machines created in human likeness.
Starting in 1960, Jane Goodall conducted a study of the wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. Goodall observed that there were many similarities in behaviors of chimpanzees and humans, especially the young. She also discovered that chimpanzees use primitive tools and hunt smaller animals and insects. These and other observations led Goodall to believe that using the definitions of many philosophers, chimpanzees may be considered human. This realization caused her to state what was largely considered unpopular at the time, that there is a blurred line separating humans and other animals.
Goodall’s announcement was taken as an affront and considered to be radical by many conservatives.
However, beliefs such as Goodall’s aren’t really new. Friedrich Nietzsche came to believe through observation that the idea of a line separating man and the animals was an amateur philosophy, one developed more to support other philosophical notions than a result of actual observation of animals.
The philosophical notions that mark a clear line of distinction among humans and other animals are often used to create a basis for human equality. Many philosophers have looked out at the world, with the intention of understanding what makes humans different. For many, these supposed differences form the basis for individual and societal ethics. Many use them to justify the enslavement and rampant slaughter of other life forms, due to the fact that they aren’t sentient, or aren’t human. These same individuals also often purport that enslaving or killing other humans crosses a moral line. Is this line created by the notion of human superiority to others?
Among those that argue for human superiority, there are many factions, one of the potential factions is that which believes that human superiority comes from our abilities, from the things that we can do that other animals cannot.
This line of thinking should cause us to ask another question — If a race of individuals with superior physical strength, technology, and many times our intelligence came upon humans, would arguments of sentience allow them to then treat humans as we treat other animals?
Also, does this first faction of thought cause us to believe that human beings that do not possess the same physical and mental capabilities that other “average” humans do, are inferior, not deserving of the same rights given to those who are more sentient?
Others form a faction that believes that being human is intrinsically valuable. They might believe that this value comes from a god that created us, or simply may believe in some difficult to express value that sets humans apart. In any case, this faction believes that anything that exhibits a human form, regardless of its abilities is deserving of certain rights.
In my view, many human beings spend too much time theorizing about their superiority, failing to spend time on that which allows us the greatest capacity for understanding, observation. One of Nietzsche’s most emphatic concepts is that observation is more important than systematization. We should seek to actually understand the world, insofar as we can, without trying to fit it into our pre-conceived or even “specially” conceived notions.
There is an abundance of wonder in this world, in the stars, and in our own thoughts. I feel that any honest observer is compelled to believe that a great deal out there is beyond current human understanding.
Dylan Finch
