I would argue that you are missing a beat, insofar as he’s not so much about constructionism (although he was about that, too) as a level below that.
There’s social construction in the format of group consensus and shared narrative, but the “reality” PKD typically picks at is much more basic and fundamental - your perception, your symbol set, your very humanness defining your experience of “objective reality”. He thought that “objective reality” was absolutely inseparable from our perception, that we build a gestalt from fragmented chaos, and that that process can break down. Dick has characters in total isolation lose reality not through divergence with social norms, rather through their perception undergoing some shift - it’s no coincidence that he was into disassociative psychedelics.
The article, if anything, misunderstands Dick, as one of the fundamental aspects of his worlds is that more often than not the problem is the protagonist, who is blind to their own corrosive effects on reality, rather than reality being controlled by sinister entities with purpose and direction.
All of these so-called “realities” (I do agree with you on that aspect) are simulacra, mounted atop a further simulacra, ultimately possibly (Bostrom among others has dented my confidence in “probably”) mounted upon some physical base reality.
But it’s equally likely that we’re a Boltzmann brain having one hell of a hallucination - and that’s far closer to PKD’s ultimate truths than anything as mundane as manufactured “realities”.
Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation was directly inspired by PKD’s work, and explores his notions in quite some detail. It’s a light read, and I highly recommend it.
There’s social construction in the format of group consensus and shared narrative, but the “reality” PKD typically picks at is much more basic and fundamental - your perception, your symbol set, your very humanness defining your experience of “objective reality”. He thought that “objective reality” was absolutely inseparable from our perception, that we build a gestalt from fragmented chaos, and that that process can break down. Dick has characters in total isolation lose reality not through divergence with social norms, rather through their perception undergoing some shift - it’s no coincidence that he was into disassociative psychedelics.
The article, if anything, misunderstands Dick, as one of the fundamental aspects of his worlds is that more often than not the problem is the protagonist, who is blind to their own corrosive effects on reality, rather than reality being controlled by sinister entities with purpose and direction.
All of these so-called “realities” (I do agree with you on that aspect) are simulacra, mounted atop a further simulacra, ultimately possibly (Bostrom among others has dented my confidence in “probably”) mounted upon some physical base reality.
But it’s equally likely that we’re a Boltzmann brain having one hell of a hallucination - and that’s far closer to PKD’s ultimate truths than anything as mundane as manufactured “realities”.
Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation was directly inspired by PKD’s work, and explores his notions in quite some detail. It’s a light read, and I highly recommend it.