BladeRunner

Since we have been talking about essences I haven’t been able to stop thinking about BladeRunner. Besides it being a really good movie for the time, it brings up a lot of what we have been discussing. It’s set in the future, and robotic technology has gotten to the point were just by looking at “someone” you can’t tell whether they are human or a robot. Harrison Ford’s job in the movie is to seek out robots that are posing as humans and destroy them, but it turns out that he is a robot too. Now from what I can remember the reason that robots had to be hunted in the first place was because some of them had been flagged as dangerous and had a predisposition to kill. The reason I’m bringing all this up is that in addition to our ability to use both physical and mental tools problem-solve setting us apart from other animals, I think this possibly makes us stand out just as much. In a round about way we discuss this ability all the time in class, like when we talked about pragmatics in language. The most successful among us, with some exceptions, knows to take what they are presented with a grain of salt and not be fooled by outward appearances. Lower animals clearly don’t have this, that monkey that clung to a wire frame its mother with a cloth wrapped around it is a good example. Or maybe it’s just that we are a lot more sensitive differences. I say more sensitive because there are clearly situations where we can be fooled, even by ourselves. Movies touch on these sorts of themes all the time. The Matrix was a whole world that perfectly mimicked the real thing, but the reality for those people was horribly different. All of this is interesting because it seems like we may have at least one part instilled in our biology, and that’s the longing for honesty, and genuine interactions. The reason that Picasso’s paintings are so valued above a copy is because it’s scary to think that we too could be replaced. Being self-aware we know that we are one of a kind, so we transfer this to the important things and people around us. Maybe the reason we are this way and we have this ability is because it makes us more conserving and protective of what we value the most.