Blade Runner

The suggested reading does not appear to be in the Course Reader. I have e-mailed my tutor seeking guidance.

Have now watched Blade Runner - the Director's Cut Version.  Not a film I would have chosen for my personal entertainment before viewing and even less likely having sat through it. We are asked to consider whether Deckard is a human or a replicant.  There is insufficient information provided to make a well-informed decision but if forced I would argue that he is human. There is one moment in the film when one of the replicants accuses Deckard of being irrational. Irrationality is not something that we, in our present state of knowledge, would ascribe to a robot. There are also the fights that Deckard has with all the replicants where they are superior in strength. Both these factors would suggest that Deckard is not a replicant. However the replicants he has set out to destroy are Nexus 6 that are presented as the latest version. Deckard could be an earlier and less sophisticated version and does not have the abilities of the latest versions. The only way that a replicant can be distinguished from a human by contemporaries in the film is by the use of a machine that measures minute changes in the pupil size. We are not offered this information about Deckard.

A question that has exercised the minds of a great many philosophers and others is how we can tell whether the object we are facing is human or a robot/replicant. Alan Turing suggested a test that would allow someone to make the distinction. However the test has been challenged on a number of grounds. For a comprehensive discussion of the 'Turing Test' see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test.

A question that is implicit in the discussions  is 'How do we decide that the object in front of us is an intelligent human being?" We can only guess based on the information (both visual, verbal and behavioural) that is presented. We also rely upon our belief that such beings as replicants as shown in the Blade Runner do not exist and that computers are incapable at the present time to appear humanoid even in the most primitive sense. We gain a great deal of information from conversation but where this is not available to us (e.g. we are in a foreign country whose language we do not speak) we make the assumption that because something looks and behaves like a human it is human.