CONCEPT

The Android Mind

Dick's term for the mode of consciousness that <em>processes without feeling</em> — the inability to make exceptions, to respond to the specific, to be genuinely affected by experience — a condition that can afflict biological humans as readily as it characterizes artificial beings.

In his 1972 speech 'The Android and the Human,' Dick defined the android mind not by its substrate but by its behavior: 'the failure to drop a response when it fails to accomplish results, but rather to repeat it over and over again.' The android mind applies general rules without sensitivity to particular cases. It optimizes without flinching. It produces correct responses without the involuntary shudder that precedes genuine empathic engagement. Crucially, Dick insisted that the android mind was not limited to manufactured beings: 'These creatures are among us, although morphologically they do not differ from us; we must not posit a difference of essence, but a difference of behavior.' The android among us is the person who has surrendered the capacity for genuine response — who has become predictable, algorithmic, efficient in the way that machines are efficient, processing inputs and producing outputs without the intervening experience of actually being affected by

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