Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Empathy, religion, war, and social hierarchies in Dick's 1968 sci-fi classic.

The purpose of this Substack is to reflect on the ways fiction authors express their philosophical ideas in their works. Where possible, I will integrate those themes with other ideas and evaluate them. Though I may occasionally comment on various aspects of the writing, these articles are not reviews. For those who are unfamiliar with the works discussed, I will include the relevant details from the story in the “context” section, so if you are familiar with the work, I recommend you skip that section. I will try to avoid the most important spoilers, but there will be some, as it is often impossible to properly analyze the meaning of a story without accounting for how it ends.

Context 

Catastrophic wars have wiped out all animal life and destroyed the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to a constant shower of radioactive debris. Those who had the means to escape now live on other planets, served by humanoid robots (called androids, or “andys” for short) who do much of the hard labor. It is illegal for these robots to go to Earth; those who do are hunted down and “retired” by police agents, such as the book’s protagonist, Rick Deckard. The androids look and act almost exactly like humans, except that they feel no empathy for any living being (nor for any other android), leading them to horrify humans with their casual cruelty. One, for example, shocks a man by cutting four legs off of a spider to see if it can still walk afterward.

The human characters in the book revere empathy, and practices that encourage it are embedded in their society. They consider it immoral not to own and care for an animal, so those who can’t afford one to purchase “electric,” i.e. robotic, animals to care for. There’s even a whole religion—Mercerism—built around the idea of empathy, featuring “empathy boxes” through which followers of Mercerism experience each others’ emotions. This empathy, however, doesn’t extend to “specials”—unfortunate individuals whose intelligence and reproductive ability has been damaged by the constant radiation exposure. Specials aren’t allowed to emigrate to colonies on other planets or have children, in addition to facing significant social stigma.

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Major Ideas

• Organized religion is a means of control

• War has devastating consequences, including some which are unpredictable

• Social hierarchies penalize people for factors outside their control

• Empathy is fundamental to human nature

Religion

Though it’s not the focus of the book, Dick uses Mercerism to subtly critique organized religion in a couple of ways.¹ Most dramatically, the religion is revealed to be based on a fraud—which rattles hardly any of its followers and barely affects its social influence. The cynical implication that most believers don’t actually care about the truth of their faith, combined with the depiction of most humans as warmongering bigots (more on that later), reflects a low view of people as such, somewhat confusing Dick’s theme that empathy (a positive capacity) is what makes us human.

Second, though Dick doesn’t develop the idea, there are hints that religion can be used to manipulate people for nefarious ends. For example, one of Mercerism’s key tenets is “you shall only kill the killers,” but who the “killers” are is kept nebulous, such that the idea could be stretched to encompass anyone (28). It is a perfectly moral principle to say that you should never initiate force against another (but can use self-defense if someone else initiates its use against you)—but that is a much more precise and objective formulation than the followers of Mercerism embrace.

War

Dick also sets out a couple of criticisms of contemporary American society (he lived 1928-1982). He opposed the Vietnam War (ongoing when the book came out in 1968), and it’s likely that the conflict, as well as the wider Cold War (also ongoing at the time, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was only a few years prior), inspired the fictional war that created the book’s dreary backdrop.² People only took the consequences of that conflict seriously when many species of animals started going extinct. Note the pessimism and slight contradiction of the prediction: People will be intelligent and collaborative enough to achieve incredible technological progress (able to create advanced robots and travel to other planets), but stupid and hateful enough to destroy Earth as a habitat for ourselves and other species.

Social hierarchies and bigotry

In the book, a person’s status depends on his income as well as on factors outside of his control. One of Deckard’s main motivations is to be able to afford a real animal, as opposed to an electric sheep, thereby climbing the social ladder. Though he admires the animal he eventually acquires (a beautiful goat), he didn’t get it because he wanted the goat for its own sake, but for the prestige it brings him. This is a second-handed motive (one based on others’ values rather than one’s own), and Dick shows that the pressure to be able to afford payments on the goat causes Deckard even more stress than his police work would normally create. Pursuing your own values is rewarding; pursuing values to impress others causes stress and burnout. 

But income is something a person can influence through his career and spending choices (in the book as well as most of the real world). By contrast, those who are “specials” through no fault of their own are considered only slightly more valuable than animals or androids. These unfortunate individuals lack various legal rights and are often mocked with such degrading nicknames as “chickenheads” or “antheads.” The fact that these individuals have no control over their fate suggests that this depiction of a hierarchized society is a subtle criticism; though he doesn’t emphasize the point, he portrays one of the specials as a sympathetic, if somewhat pitiable, victim. 

Empathy as fundamental to human nature

In the book, Dick describes a test for empathy—the Voigt-Kampff test– that characters use to tell androids apart from humans. This becomes more and more important as companies develop androids that are smarter, physiologically closer to humans, and better at mimicking empathetic behavior than earlier robots. Some worry that even that test won’t be sufficient eventually, but even the most advanced robots haven’t thwarted it yet.

Among the humans in the book, empathy is considered universally positive and morally important. For example, caring for an animal gives one a sense of connection and responsibility—to the extent that those who don’t have an animal are ostracized for not practicing this important form of empathy. Deckard shows empathy to his wife, which strengthens their bond (though not enough to stop him from being guiltlessly unfaithful later on). But there are limits; the empathy boxes of Mercerism help some characters feel connected to others and manage their emotions, but not everyone is able to enjoy those benefits, perhaps because feeling a group of strangers’ emotions out of context is not enlightening but bewildering. In the climactic scenes, Deckard’s newly developed empathy for certain female androids doesn’t change his decisions and makes him vulnerable. Through the story we can see that empathy is important in some aspects of life (such as intimate relationships), but (whether the author intended to convey this or not), out of context it has shortcomings, and alone cannot be the essence of humanity.

However, Dick misses the opportunity to thoroughly explore empathy as the defining feature of humanity by never testing the premise that androids couldn’t develop the capacity for empathy. For example, there are never any attempts to make it possible for the androids to empathize, either by teaching them to do so or by programming it in.

My Evaluation of the Idea of Empathy as Fundamental to Human Nature

For a particular capacity to be fundamental to our humanity, it would need to be both unique to humans and something all normal humans possess. Empathy fits neither category. Some studies suggest that animals experience something resembling empathy; many pets, for example, are aware of and respond to their owners’ emotions. Further, many mild conditions, such as personality disorders, manifest as difficulty developing empathy (a fact Dick seems to be aware of, as he mentions schizoid people in the book)—but it would be absurd to suggest that autistic people or those with borderline personality disorder are less than human.³ Empathy is clearly important to human relationships (and those who suffer from personality disorders often struggle to develop healthy relationships), but it isn’t what makes us human.

Side Note

Sadly, the widely known and visually impressive film that’s loosely based on the book, Blade Runner (1982), lacks most of the book’s explorations of these ideas. In the film, Harrison Ford portrays Deckard as a reluctant, grumpy bounty hunter being pushed to do his job and without any motivations of his own. Empathy is barely mentioned. Mercerism, specials, and electric sheep are entirely absent. Though many regard it as a cinematic masterpiece, it’s significantly different from the source material.

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In Conclusion

Although both are set in a dystopian world, the book is less depressing and more thought-provoking than the movie. Its protagonist, though not exactly a hero, is at least somewhat likable, with understandable (yet, as we learn, ultimately counterproductive) motives. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? raises questions about empathy, war, social status, and religion, and though it doesn’t explore them thoroughly, it still gets you thinking.

1.  Dick described himself as a “religious anarchist” but said he was opposed to organized religion; see “THE PHILIP K. DICK / PUNK ROCK CONNECTION,” https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_philip_k._dick_punk_rock_connection.

2. Dick so opposed the Vietnam War that he joined a writers’ and editors’ protest of it that refused to pay taxes; see Ramparts magazine ad in “1960s,” National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, https://nwtrcc.org/war-tax-resistance-resources/international-history-of-war-tax-resistance/1960s/.

3. I use the term “disorder” to mean a psychological condition that hinders one’s ability to live a full, flourishing life;  see Kimberly Drake, “Is It Possible to Lack Empathy?” Psych Central, July 21, 2021,  https://psychcentral.com/lib/why-do-some-people-lack-empathy.