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I was a big science fiction fan when I was a PhD student in the 1960s. I even went to evening classes on the topic. Our favourite author was Philip K. Dick. He had such weird titles: The Penultimate Truth, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and, best of all, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which became the film Blade Runner).

The theme in all Dick’s work is that “things are not what they seem”. What we perceive is not the real world, but a façade behind which is hidden a much more unpleasant reality.

One of my favourite bits of his writing is this, from the 1959 story Time Out of Joint:

“The soft-drink stand fell into bits. Molecules. He saw the molecules, colourless, without qualities, that made it up. Then he saw through, into the space beyond it, he saw the hill behind, the trees and sky. He saw the soft-drink stand go out of existence, along with the counter man, the cash register […] In its place was a slip of paper. He reached out his hand and took hold of the slip of paper. On it was printing, block letters.”

This idea had also been a constant theme in my studies of schizophrenia. How can I be sure that you are hallucinating while what I experience is reality? This was also the theme of my book, Making up The Mind: all I can know about the world is a construction made by my brain from the crude signals coming from my senses. I don’t see the soft drinks stand. What I get from my brain is the equivalent of Dick’s slip of paper.

But I am more optimistic than Dick was since I believe that the reality I can never quite reach is probably quite pleasant. And, crucially, I can share it with other people.