Blade Runner and Descartes' Meditations: Mind, Reality, Soul

Introduction: Doubt, Identity, and the Replicant Condition

"How can it not know what it is?" asks Decker when Tyrell confirms that Rachel is a Replicant — adding that she does not know it, though he believes she is beginning to suspect. Whereas doubt is the first step toward knowing reality in Descartes' Meditations, in Blade Runner doubt is the first step for Replicants toward knowing that they are not real. This is the central irony of the film: consciousness does not bring one to fulfillment but to a greater sense of emptiness and horror. The Replicant is like Frankenstein's monster — soulless, with fabricated memories and a life programmed by man rather than by God, Who is the Ultimate Reality for Descartes.

The film raises urgent questions: what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to "exist"? These connect on a deeper level to Descartes' queries in the Meditations. On the surface, one is dealing with a strange, futuristic universe in which the line between the human and the automaton is blurred. More compassion is felt for the Replicant Rachel, who weeps upon realizing that her memory of a childhood is nothing more than an implant — but is this a trick? If a robot weeps, is its grief not real?

The motto of Tyrell Corporation is, after all, "More human than human." The question raised in this introspective Ridley Scott science-fiction film — based on Philip K. Dick's story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — is therefore: what is reality? A corollary accompanies it: is an android real if it possesses a human consciousness? Just as Mary Shelley played with the effect of Romantic and Enlightenment doctrine on the human psyche, Scott plays with the epistemological and existential ideas of the twentieth century.

Consciousness and the Voight-Kampff Test

The Voight-Kampff test is designed to determine whether an individual is human or android: androids are confounded by questions intended to trigger an emotional response. Yet they do show emotion. Leon kills the tester when asked about his mother, crying "I'll tell you about my mother!" before opening fire. Rachel rolls her eyes and answers with strange vehemence when questioned about pornography and dog meat. What would Descartes say about this test? Are emotions what make humans "real"?

For Descartes, it is the intellect — not the emotional capacity of a person — that allows one to know both oneself and reality. Doubt is the first proof of existence (Descartes 2.3). Even Pris, the android played by Daryl Hannah, quotes Descartes to Sebastian: "I think, therefore I am." Still, her problem and Roy's — and Sebastian's — is not the conundrum that Descartes faces, namely whether one can "know" what is true. Their problem is "accelerated decrepitude": they have four years to live and they want more time. Sebastian suffers from a genetic disorder that is robbing him of life as well. Thus, humans and "thinking" androids converge: both must suffer death. Death for Sebastian is the separation of soul from body — so what, then, is death for the androids?

Roy, Rachel, and the Problem of Self-Knowledge

Blade Runner does seem to suggest that because the androids "think" — as Descartes does — they can, in turn, be sure that they exist. While this problem of knowing whether one is real preoccupies Rachel (she turns up at Decker's apartment to persuade him that she is not a Replicant but a real human being), it is not necessarily the primary concern of Roy, who wants to find Tyrell in order to be granted greater longevity. Roy, like Frankenstein's monster, knows that he has done some "questionable" things — hinting at an awareness of, or acknowledgment of, a higher moral law.

Roy and Pris may be "aware" androids, but they are somewhat superficial in that their primary concern is selfish. Descartes' concern, by contrast, is with otherness. His intellect is directed primarily outside himself: he bases all his affirmations on the existence of God, Who is separate from him. Roy and Pris think only of satisfying themselves. They are, as the film suggests, "bad" androids. Tyrell defends them — and here a reversal becomes visible: Frankenstein hunts the monster, but here the monster hunts Frankenstein.

Conclusion: Android and Human, Unicorn and Truth

So what is Roy? And what is Decker? The origami unicorn left for Decker in the final scene may suggest that he and Roy are the same — androids. Or it may suggest that there is no meaningful difference between android and human, not when both have a consciousness, which Descartes demonstrates is enough to begin one's journey toward God and truth. Roy's soul does seem to fly upward toward God.

Decker's ability to take charge and escape with Rachel — with the unicorn, the symbol of his imagination and its distractions, crushed in his hand — is comparable to Descartes' sixth Meditation, in which he affirms that man must not allow himself to be distracted by what he merely thinks he perceives, but must firmly employ his intellect in order to distinguish truth from falsehood. There is, it seems, hope in Blade Runner for Decker and Rachel.