Philip K. Dick, which I'm ashamed to say I haven't read.

Bro. Dick is a master at taking a small premise, applying it to an entire universe, and then telling a story about the human condition which uses that premise as a backdrop. Let me start you off easy, and I'll work you up to the truly high concept pieces:

- The Man in the High Castle. This is Dick's award winning novel about what the USA would be like if the Nazis won. Some will call it his best work, but I argue that it may actually be his lowest-concept and most accessible novel.

- The World Jones Made. Higher concept about a psychic who, much like Vonnegut's main character from Slaughterhouse 5, can see and remember his own future. He knows the major events of the future and is able to take actions to change them. Told from the perspective of someone who is definitely not psychic, this is presented well as a lay person's look at higher concept and serves as an excellent bridge to Dick's other work.

- We Can Build You. Androids, action, and some interesting thought-provoking bits about what makes you real. If any of these books is skippable, it would be this one, and yet it's still a fun read and sketches the outlines of some of the more dense works.

- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. This is the basis for Blade Runner, and is a more complete exploration of the themes found in We Can Build You. How do you know if you are real? How do you know if someone else is? In a world where your very job may be to know the difference, and you fear you're only good at your job because you don't know about yourself, how do you go on with the day to day drudgery of simply existing?

- Galactic Pot Healer. God I love this novel. It may have the second most perfect ending of any book I've ever read (China Mieville's 'Iron Council' is my favorite by a wide margin). This is a less than serious romp through a universe which contains, among other things, an immortal blob-god whom the main character joins forces with purely because the main character is in love with a hot chick who also joins forces with the blob-god. Did I mention that the ending is perfect? It's PERFECT.

- Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said. My favorite Dick. A well known and popular TV host wakes up in a world where he no longer exists. How, why, and what happened to him are the main plot drivers, but the world is also a darker one than ours where racism and fascism have taken the lead and cynicism and escapism have become the gods to which people pray. It resonates with me more today than the day I first read it. Seriously just thinking about this book right now is bringing tears to my eyes.

The Sirens of Titan, A Maze of Death... There are so many other brilliant novels this man put forth into our world. Do yourself a kindness and read him. No one I've ever read has been able to deliver such brilliantly simple and human feelings through such complicated and conceptual worlds and situations.

Is it still up for grabs?

Yes. Those who hold either belief can find confirmation in the sequel if they are looking for it. Nobody ever comes out point-blank and asks the question, and nobody ever makes a definitive statement on the matter.

The credits are the giveaway.

The actors who play replicants have their names flicker in with an effect, while the actors who play humans have heir names appear solid. Harrison Ford’s name? Solid.

From the root philosophical questions the film asks it only truly works if you accept that he can be either and that it is actually not important either way.

I substantially agree although I'd phrase it perhaps a little differently.

I'd perhaps say that humanity is a characteristic not necessarily granted to each member of homo sapiens at birth, nor necessarily denied any self-aware intelligence not born a member of homo sapiens.

I think this isnplacing too much value on the suggestion that Deckard needs to be human for the story to make sense. Roy was designed as a tool of war, Deckard is an opponent. It does not matter of what make, he is showing mercy to an enemy which is both proof to himself that he is more than what he was made for and to show Deckard. It does not require Deckard to be human or a replicant for Roy's actions to matter.

Roy doesn’t know the audience is watching! He’s not trying to demonstrate this to US, but to someone who is human. This display of his humanity completely goes to waste if Deckard isn’t human. He doesn’t need to prove this to a replicant, because they’d be like, duh dude.

Roy is a fictional construct acting as an author insert, just as Deckard is a fictional construct functioning as an audience proxy.

A character doesn't need to comically break the fourth wall in order to function that way, or to act in a way that is symbolic.

I honestly doubt Roy wants or needs to "prove" anything to Deckard. I think he believes what he believes, and is being threatened by someone who clearly believes differently-- as the entire system does.

I think my interpretation is pretty similar to yours right up until the end, and differs from Kermit's. You can only get from any work what you agree to take from it, and all he was interested in taking from it was a stylish noir-styled detective yarn. I agree that the style is excellent and something in many ways the sequel absolutely fails to match, but as a detective story it's thoroughly mediocre, and taken as a whole in this view is insignificant except for its visuals (which are obviously very significant).

Ford and others pushing the Deckard-as-human narrative, as I understand it, need and want the confrontation that occurs in the climax to be between a human and a replicant so, as you put it, Batty can "prove" to the human Deckard, and through him the audience, that the distinction set up in the early part of the film, starting with the text crawl, is a false and arbitrary one; to reveal replicants as human slaves rather than glorified toasters.

Where I differ is that I think this interpretation works just as well if Deckard isn't actually human, right up until past the Batty fight, where the human audience just presumes Deckard is human-- despite no one ever actually saying so.

So the first portion of the film sets up what everybody believes-- that there are humans and there are replicants, and that the distinction is real and meaningful even if making the distinction is arbitrarily difficult. It's the perfect setup allowing a society to dehumanize any groups or individuals it wants for any reason-- see, these things *look* human but really aren't because of some secret information produced by experts on the subject and we should just trust them.

So I think the climactic fight where Batty demonstrates his humanity functions just as well-- Deckard presumes his own humanity, because why wouldn't he, and we do too. So we see it as the confrontation between replicant and human where the replicant asserts his humanity.

I just add another layer onto that which I don't think in any way detracts from the previous one, where Deckard's presumed humanity is brought into question. The thing is, though, that it's been in question for almost the entire film, along with the very basis for making the distinction between humans and replicants in the first place!

We're told that distinguishing replicants from humans is so difficult that you need specially-trained operators using specialty equipment in order to make this distinction. But we NEVER actually see it work successfully; in fact we might be forgiven from concluding that it does not, and perhaps never has, worked.

The test supposedly looks for an absence of emotional reaction to content that is expected to produce an emotional reaction. (The film's obsession with emotions as evidence of humanity I abhor, but this is the film's premise so I have to roll with it in order to discuss.) Ford's predecessor is doing the V-K test to Tyrell employees when he runs into Leon. When asked about his mother, Leon shoots the interrogator.

One interpretation of that is Leon knows the test is going to find him, and so he uses violence to escape.

Another would be that Leon has had a violently emotional response. In fact, Leon and most of the replicants throughout the film emote more strongly than the presumed human characters! Leon displays actual glee in doing violence to Deckard. Batty displays sadness over the corpse of Pris. Pris and Batty display fear about what will happen to them after Zhora and Leon are killed.

Deckard, mostly, stares into space with a flat expression.

So anyway...

Then we get Deckard going to Tyrell and doing the VK test on Rachel. Rachel asks if Deckard has ever retired a human by mistake. She asks if Deckard has ever taken the VK test himself. Interesting.

I don't just think that it's being questioned that Deckard is human or not. I think it's being questioned whether he would pass the VK test whether he was biologically human or not.

Deckard ultimately concludes that Rachel is a replicant, but claims it was difficult to make the determination. However, he was operating under the assumption that Rachel was human. If he had been told in advance she was a replicant, he might have made the judgment more quickly and easily-- the film does not really give us much (if any) insight into how automatic the test is-- after all, it is administered by a (presumed) human operator and does not function automatically, so it's not hard to imagine that a judgment call is involved-- one that could be influenced by the tester's state of mind.

So that's two replicants who underwent the test; one who ended it with a violent and emotional reaction before it was finished, and another that very nearly escaped detection, either because of changes in her answers caused by the memory implants Tyrell gave her, or simply because Tyrell influenced the test by telling Deckard that Rachel was human.

At this point the integrity of the VK test rests entirely on the credibility of the text crawl. We have never seen an unambiguous example of it operating as advertised, and it is the only explicitly referenced method of distinguishing human from replicant within the text. Even the description of its method of operation is questionable, as every single replicant in the film behaves contrary to the assumptions on which the VK test is based.

To sum up-- I think the portion of the film where Deckard's humanity is presumed to exist is there to make the point you are focusing on-- that either replicants are, or at the very least are capable of demonstrating the qualities we describe as justifying calling a self-aware intelligence "human".

The last reveal-- the idea that Deckard's memories might be false, and that he might be like Rachel, a replicant that was unaware of its nature, is there to make you question whether or not the humanity you have is real or presumed-- because as we've just seen, those born homo sapiens are just presumed to have it, and those created replicant apparently have to earn it.

So I guess the question I have is this: if humanity needs to be earned, did Deckard earn his?