This paper analyzes the blurred boundaries between human and artificial intelligence in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. A postmodern theoretical and critical approach that employs Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra and hyperreality and Jaques Derrida’s deconstructive theory provides the conceptual framework for the analysis. The primary focus is on the main character, Rick Deckard, as he grapples with identity, ethics, and the very nature of humanity in a world where androids are indistinguishable from humans. The essay identifies two focus points in the novel. The first analyzes and deconstructs the real versus artificial (human/android) dichotomy in the book and shows how isreconstructs the essence of identity and reality. The second focus point is the novel’s portrayal of empathy, supposedly a defining human trait and yet one mimicked by androids so well that it is practically useless as a criterion for distinguishing androids from humans. The conclusion drawn by this analysis is that Rick Deckard and the characters he meets may indeed illustrate Baudrillard’s hyperreality, depicting a world where humans are willfully stunting their own emotions and autonomy, lost in the false reality that society has constructed. Furthermore, the ethical dilemmas raised by playing God with life, even if it is artificial, align with Derrida’s deconstructive views of how non-binary all life is. This is especially seen in the contrasting depictions of Rachael (android) and Resch (human). Derrida’s views on humanity’s dissimulation of the cruelty of its exploitations, justified by humanity’s own parameters for what is deemed right and wrong, is also seen in Deckard’s moral struggles and the cruelty androids must endure as described by Rachael. This is lastly compared and contrasted with the contemporary development of AI and its potential dangers, shedding light on ethical considerations. While the AI available to us today is far from the kind of artificial intelligence Dick presents in the form of androids, it is, perhaps, not too soon for us to begin considering the moral and ethical implications now so that should the day come, we will be ready and avoid the crisis humanity has fallen into in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

In my thesis, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is examined using French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. In the novel, humans have built androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans except that they lack a sense of empathy, or so the humans believe. The Voigt-Kampff Machine is a polygraph-like device used to determine if a subject shows signs of empathy in order to confirm if one is an android or a human. Yet, should empathy be the defining quality of determining humanity? In his article "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the ‘I’ as revealed in psychoanalytic experience," Lacan refers to a particular critical milestone in an infant's psychological development. When the baby looks in a mirror, they come to the realization that the image they are seeing is not just any ordinary image; it is actually themselves in the mirror. This "a-ha" moment of self-realization is what Lacan's Mirror Stage Theory is based on. According to Lacan's theory, the image that the child sees in a mirror becomes an "Other" through which they will always scrutinize and pass judgment on, for it is not how they have pictured themselves to be in their mind’s eye. I hypothesize that the androids are humans' artificial and technological Other. It is my thought that Dick uses the conflict of determining the biological from the artificial, the effort to differentiate humans from androids and biological animals from artificial ones, to illustrate Lacan's psychoanalysis of the mirror stage and its importance in our continual search for determining what humanity is and who we really are.

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