Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy: This Breaks the World

by Robin Bunce (Editor), Trip McCrossin (Editor)

Overview

Blade Runner 2049 is a 2017 sequel to the 1982 movie Blade Runner, about a world in which some human-looking replicants have become dangerous, so that other human-looking replicants, as well as humans, have the job of hunting down the dangerous models and “retiring” (destroying) them. Both films have been widely hailed as among the greatest science-fiction movies of all time, and Ridley Scott, director of the original Blade Runner, has announced that there will be a third Blade Runner movie.

Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy is a collection of entertaining articles on both Blade Runner movies (and on the spin-off short films and Blade Runner novels) by twenty philosophers representing diverse backgrounds and philosophical perspectives. Among the issues addressed in the book:

What does Blade Runner 2049 tell us about the interactions of state power and corporate power?

Can machines ever become truly conscious, or will they always lack some essential human qualities?

The most popular theory of personhood says that a person is defined by their memories, so what happens when memories can be manufactured and inserted at will?

We already interact with non-human decision-makers via the Internet. When embodied AI becomes reality, how can we know what is human and what is simulation? Does it matter?

Do AI-endowed human-looking replicants have civil and political rights, or can they be destroyed whenever “real” humans decide they are inconvenient?

The blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) appears in both movies, and is generally assumed to be human, but some claim he may be a replicant. What’s the evidence on both sides?

Is Niander Wallace (the-mad-scientist-cum-evil-corporate-CEO in Blade Runner 2049) himself a replicant? What motivates him?

What are the impacts of decision-making AI entities on the world of business?

Both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 have been praised for their hauntingly beautiful depictions of a bleak future, but the two futures are very different (and the 2019 future imagined in the original Blade Runner is considerably different from the actual world of 2019). How have our expectations and visions of the future changed between the two movies?

The “dream maker” character Ana Stelline in Blade Runner 2049 has a small but pivotal role. What are the implications of a person whose dedicated mission and task is to invent and install false memories?

What are the social and psychological implications of human-AI sexual relations?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812694710
Publisher:	Open Court Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Series:	Popular Culture and Philosophy , #127
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,092,327
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Robin Bunce is Director of Studies in Politics at Homerton College, University of Cambridge.

Trip McCrossin teaches Philosophy at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

Thanks ix

Philosophy and Reality in Blade Runner 2049 Robin Bunce xiii

I What Makes Us Human? 1

1 Do You Long for Having Your Heart Interlinked? Timothy Shanahan 3

2 Is Joi a Person? Chris Lay 11

3 Are You for Real? Aron Ericson 19

4 The Aesthetics of Being a Person S. Evan Kreider 27

5 A Replicant's Guide to Becoming Human Justin Kitchen 35

6 You Don't Need to Be Human to Have a Human Hand Sue Zemka 45

7 More Human than Humans Rob O'Connor 51

8 Ode to Joi Steve Bein 59

II A Miracle Delivered 67

9 Replicant Birth, Moral Miscarriage L. Brooke Rudow 69

10 Should Humans Dream of Designer Babies? Samantha Noll Laci Hubbard-Mattix 77

11 Conceiving AI Beth Singler 85

III Cells Interlinked 93

12 The Riddle of Niander Wallace Patrick Greene J.M. Prater Iain Souter Robin Bunce 95

13 Flow My Tears, Rick Deckard Said M. Blake Wilson 103

14 After the Blackout Martin Muchall 111

15 The Phenomenology of Replicant Life and Death Zachary Sheldon 119

16 Who Am I to You? James M. Okapal 127

IV The Kingdom of God 135

17 You've Never Seen a Miracle Andrew Kuzma 137

18 K's Most Excellent Kierkegaardian Pilgrimage Ben Franz 145

19 And God Created Replicants in His Own Image Jerry Piven 153

20 Sympathy for the Existential Devils James M. McLachlan 163

V A Real Girl Now? 171

21 The Trouble with Joi M. J. Ryder 173

22 Rachael, Weeping for Her Children Bonnie McLean 179

23 The Future Is Female … Robots! Emily Cox-Palmer-White 187

VI The World Is Built on a Wall? 195

24 A Modern Utopia? Robin Bunce 197

25 Less Human than Human Leah D. Schade Emily Askew 205

26 Do Replicants Have Nightmares of Ethnic Discrimination? Dominic J. Nardi, Jr. 213

27 Who Keeps a Dead Tree? Ali Riza Taskale Resat Volkan Günel 221

28 Replicants of California, Unite! Christopher M. Innes 227

I Know What's Real 235

References 237

Those Who Hunt Them Still Go by the Name … 243

Index 249