Toward a Holistic Definition of Self

Blade Runner is a cult classic for the primary reason that it a gnawing question which intrigues and haunts any person who long enough to think about it:  is the Self an illusion?   Is the Self defined by individual experience, faith, philosophy and freedom?  Or is it merely a convulsion of spiritual life, a rehearsal from some higher Order’s fragmented drama?  For all the apparent autonomy and maturity and intelligence and accompanying swings from exhilaration to despair that we seem to possess and develop,  it is ironic that we remain, essentially, no different from one another.   Philip Dick , in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, offers an unnerving explanation that perhaps we are simply supplied with mood machines and pleasure to keep an artificial and futile hope alive for the duration our purpose.    In order to derive any holistic definition of Self, various definitions should be examined, especially if they answer Dick's initial questions, "If the only constraint is self-consciousness,   why aren’t these androids considered Selves?  How do they really differ from humans?"
      We could respond that we are substantially different because:

 1.  we have different primal ancestors than androids
 2.  we have proofs (pictures, memories, etc.)
 3.  divine revelation forbids us to raise the question of authenticity at all.
 4.  we think and feel.

These definitions, however, as shown in Blade Runner, are specious.  The fallacy in definition one, for example, is the fallacy of tradition.  We ought to believe ourselves free and unique simply because our forefathers believed? Who were our forefathers?  Maybe they were replicants not nearly as aware as ourselves and we are only now beginning to raise the of essence.  To assume the validity of their belief system simply  because or heritage or oral tradition is begging the question.      The second definition is a bandwagon fallacy;  just because each individual has memories of a supposedly unique past and we, out of consensus agree that this proves freedom and identity, is a blatant error, and Dick sees through it.  Isn't Rachael given memories which sheascribes as her own?   To believe because of tradition or the concurrence of mankind and group consolation is a rationalization.

Again, the third definition, like the question of Mercerism's religion, begs the question because it stands above and assumes some Authority figure whose very existence is nebulous at best.  To consider the question impotent because we cannot prove one way or the other  is not to prove the question unimportant, and to say we cannot even contemplate the question because some accepted ruling says we cannot think it is fallacious; as Freud writes, "Ignorance is ignorance; no right to believe anything is derived it....No reasonable man would behave so frivolously in other fields of thought or rest content with such feeble grounds for his opinions for the attitude he adopts; it is only in the highest of  things that he allows this."

The fourth definition is reminiscent of Jung's analysis of the subconscious, in which we know we ARE when we gaze inward upon the mind's recesses, only to discover chaos and darkness, a place of fear and contradiction.  Yet this is just as true for the "andys" who yearn for and seek to diminish doubt and uncertainty. Is it man's Form which creates the Self, defined because it is lonely and anxiety-ridden? This question, like Question three, begs all important questions, such as:

 P1.  If our idea of Self is dependent on an inner experience, how about those  who don't have an original thought in lives, who have no epiphanies?

 P2.  Does this mean they are not human?  Aren't these people
 still our brothers, and don't we have in each of us at least one voice which is  their voice also?

 P3.  Aren't we each part of this psychic life, even if only unconsciously?

Therefore, what IS the relation between the body and the soul?  The Self, like religion, psychologically speaking, is an illusion.    If this is where psychology leads us, it is certain that psychology and philosophy do not derive the same ends.  Certainly the spiritual need we manifest for Self definition creates the field of psychology, the study of he Self, but in Dick's text we see this field reducing itself  to the question of Self via stress release gadgets, osmosis, technical wizardry.  Dick raises an intriguing question for today’s psychoanalysts, for heretofore the Self has not been as problematic in and of itself; it has been normal and abnormal behaviors that has dominated this science's interest.  Phillip Dick asks, "If these behaviors are manufactured and implanted, do we still have a Self?"    This is a question many have either assumed an answer to or have never even contemplated.  Do we have a Self and do we know what it is?  Is it possible to ever adhere to Socrates' command, know thyself?  Isn't this the very crisis of modern man?  We think we're aware because of our immediate present; however, to be wholly present means to be fully conscious of one's existence as a Self,  and therefore this requires the most intense and extensive deliberations.  What happens when the medium has lost this consciousness?  What is lost  when there is no longer the ability to establish a common ground?

     Dick’s setting, far from celebrating man’s superioirty, demonstrates the mass Unconscious.  Here we have a world where there is no mystique, no synchronicity, no celebration of diversity, a world where beings are killed because they somehow have a different Maker and are programmed differently.  The question is:  How different is this than racial or gender bias?  How is it moral,  considering that only The Killer androids are criminal and deserve execution,  much like capital punishment for humans?  If this is the scene in 2021 and this is the exhausting result of thousands of years of evolutionary development, then certainly we are watching the results of the hopes and expectations of the ages.     So let us, for a moment, take Dick's paradigm of the human seriously.  What are the commonalties between Self as and Self as automaton?  First, both are encased in amoral personas; much like the tramps in Waiting for Godot,  the replicants are caught between hope and despair in finding their Maker and Ruler.  Secondly, Dick's question of the Self becomes even more poignant if we credit the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; i.e., if there no neat fit between cognition and reality, then Meaning comes from simply ordering situations, and the replicants can order just as efficiently, if not better than, humans.  Thirdly, how can we assume that these machines are different than us just because they are created with certain salient characteristics?  Don't we also have archetypes?  Don't people assign certain particularities and patterns a value dependent upon their learned responses and their ordering of universal truths?  Don't we have "pleasure models" in our culture, and archetypes such as the Pleasure-Giver (Rachael), the Warrior (Deckhard, Leon, Eldon Rosen), the Ruler Kings (Mercer, policemen, blade runners)?  If the Self is not defined by essence but by projection, the ability to ascribe, thoughts, and attitudes of oneself to externals, isn't this precisely why Roy doesn't kill Deckhard?  At least the movie concludes with the idea that the android realizes he is to die and he loves life enough that it doesn't matter the life saved is, in fact, not his.  In honor of Pris, he offers the continuation of life, for we are all one, or, as Dick writes, "there is only Rachael Rosen, over and over again"(197).

     If Dick constructs such a convincing text concerning the death the Self as we know it, how can we possibly argue?

      Well, for one, I am unwilling to accept the death of a Self, and think there are several aspects of the Self Dick doesn't examine.  First, there is a large difference between patterning ourselves and being patterned. We are part of Becoming; the androids simply ARE.  We shift forever from archetype to archetype, depending on the myths with which we surround ourselves at any given moment, but they are completely programmed.  Perhaps we are too, and just need to be stimulated into projecting into consciousness what has been pre-programmed in the unconscious, but I see people changing from relationship to bonding, from epiphany to contra-epiphany, from experience to wisdom.  The strongest argument for the idea of a transcendent consciousness is that we can and do change ourselves based on new input, not pre-programming. We can and do transform ourselves and create symbols to correspond with our constantly changing roles; atonement, baptism, being "born again," communion, marriage, etc. are all constructs pointing to a transcendent, spiritual Self.  This contrasts with Dick’s replicants, caricatures of human personalities based on stereotype and exaggeration.  They are, ultimately, computer images,  parodies of the Self - they are NOT Selves.  Due to our ability to willingly (or unwillingly) change in form, nature, character,  there is more to the Self than behavioral patterns or instinct.  Freedom, in whatever restricted definition, keeps the value of Self alive.  Granted, humans base their meanings on his/her own story or history, but also through  group association and, through the use of symbolism, prototype and individual telos, we continue to synthesize experience and shift values and meanings.  We are constantly changing not because of what we read or the family we're given or the major we're plugged into but rather our personality.  Our Personhood is above all environmental influences.  In contrast to Leon, and Roy, our ultimate search isn't simply for more life; we yearn for sense, for individuation.  We search for wholeness that integrates all our virtues and senses of goodness (for we are psychologically incapable of choosing a known evil) that creates complete Personality above and beyond whatever we aspired to or even wanted.

     This is why the Voigt-Kampff scale is so important to Dick’s police force.  Remember:  through language tests, replicants are always discovered.  This is an important insight; it's not enough to know each person is connected to every other person via a unconscious.  Our language must SHOW these unions, especially through allusion, metaphor, and symbol.  Rather than the replicants’ feelings of alone-ness and isolation, we have the ability to tell mini-myths expressing universal truths tying us to each other,  which is more important to who we are  than each of our individual external settings.  These deeper truths are not apparent in the replicants' conversations.  There is a large difference between synthetic and analytic truth.  The latter ("all unmarried men are bachelors") can be learned and programmed in Logic 101.  Synthetic truth("all bachelors are happy") can only be proven by experience and association, so it is the continual external influences, not pre-constructed programming, that create a more, related, "real, existential" world.  In other words, the replicants' intentional world is rather unhelpful if they don't see how the world is relating to itself. "Intention" in terms  of what it is that allows us to "pick out" extensions seems to beg the ultimate question of the Self, for surely we need to have an idea of what the world is like before we attempt to describe it.  This is precisely why the androids get caught.  If taught that children ought not kill, for example, what does Rachael have in her background to help her synthesize?  What can she do but say she would take her son and his jar to the doctor?  "Intentional" reality grows not by intelligence but with language and experience.  Language shows not only relationships from idea to idea but should empower the speaker to address these relationships with some sense of transcendence, magic and might.

     In conclusion, it seems that, though intriguing, Phillip Dick does not prove that the Self is a mind game, an imposed construct.  The Self, on the other hand, is a supraordinate totality embracing both individual and a collective unconscious, the latter which, because of intention, culture, and experience over the ages, cannot be reproduced.  Certainly the Ego may be manufactured, but the Self  is the transcendent, objective awareness of the limitations of the Ego and what it can create.  I believe in the psychic value of the Soul, which is in opposition to matter, and is the vehicle of psychic self-definition, or even life itself.  The Soul is the relationship between Consciousness and the Self, an important and impenetrable experience.    Furthermore, no psychic value disappears without a cultural effect, and it seems to me that science fiction is just that a  replacement for the very religion it disregards.  We wear nihilism like temporary Sunday attire, a faddish conviction flaunting the death of Self , but in all this trendy intellectual schematism, we have somehow glossed over the fact that the Self, like Beckett's world, though absurd, may not be without meaning.  The world may indeed be an austere place, and we in fact may be mere marionettes, but if there's that glimmer of genuine initiative or power to decide our own destiny, then the Self becomes based on Faith (not programming), Meaning (not wizardry), and Genuine-ness, albeit  our Form mandates a certain restricted freedom of will.