The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's had acquired an atmosphere of mounting suspicion.
Not suspicion directed toward any person in particular.
Rather suspicion directed toward reality itself.
Rain still worked steadily against the windows.
Books remained arranged in formations suggesting either advanced scholarship or the aftermath of some minor intellectual explosion.
Professor Quillibrace sat reading beside the fire.
Miss Elowen Stray was making notes.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying tea and looking unusually pleased.
"I believe I have finally discovered solid ground."
Quillibrace looked up slowly.
"Oh dear."
Blottisham sat down.
"No, really. I have been thinking about these ghosts."
"An alarming sentence already," said Quillibrace.
Blottisham ignored him.
"We have questioned things."
"Essences."
"Origins."
"Quite enough disturbance for one term."
Quillibrace closed his book carefully.
"And now?"
Blottisham leaned back triumphantly.
"Now I have realised how knowledge works."
Miss Stray lowered her pencil.
Quillibrace stared into the middle distance briefly.
"Go on."
"The world exists outside us."
"Mm."
"Our minds construct pictures of it."
"Pictures."
"Certainly. Images, ideas, concepts, representations."
Blottisham spread his hands.
"We compare these with reality and thereby know things."
Silence settled over the room.
Miss Stray glanced at Quillibrace.
Quillibrace glanced at Miss Stray.
Blottisham narrowed his eyes.
"That expression again."
"What expression?"
"The one suggesting I have entered another conceptual minefield."
"No minefield," said Quillibrace gently.
"Merely a bridge."
Blottisham looked suspicious.
"A bridge?"
"Yes."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Tell me — why do we require representations at all?"
Blottisham blinked.
"Because reality is outside us."
"And?"
"And thought occurs inside us."
"And therefore?"
Blottisham looked briefly puzzled.
"One needs something connecting the two."
Miss Stray nodded.
"That was indeed the problem."
She closed her notebook.
"If the world exists independently, and experience appears internal, then how does the world become available to thought?"
Blottisham looked pleased.
"Exactly."
"So representations become the bridge," Quillibrace said.
"Reality produces internal stand-ins."
"Knowledge becomes correspondence between what is in the mind and what exists outside it."
Blottisham sat back comfortably.
"There we are."
Quillibrace sighed.
Miss Stray stared quietly into her teacup.
Blottisham looked offended.
"What now?"
"Nothing initially," said Quillibrace.
"It solved a genuine difficulty."
"But?"
"There is almost always a but."
Quillibrace leaned slightly forward.
"If all access to reality occurs through representations..."
He paused.
"...how exactly do you compare the representation with reality itself?"
Blottisham frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"You said knowledge consists in checking whether internal pictures correspond with reality."
"Yes."
"So how do you inspect reality directly?"
Blottisham stared.
"Well..."
He paused.
"I compare the picture with..."
Silence.
"...oh no."
Quillibrace nodded sympathetically.
"Quite."
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
"You may compare one representation with another."
"But reality itself seems to retreat."
"The bridge begins producing another gap."
Blottisham sat very still.
Rain tapped softly against the windows.
After a while he spoke again.
"Wait."
"Mm?"
"If representations explain knowledge..."
"Yes?"
"...what explains representations?"
Quillibrace smiled.
"Excellent."
Blottisham looked alarmed.
"No, I dislike it when you say that."
Miss Stray looked amused.
"Take words."
"How does a sound become about something?"
"How does a mark on paper become meaningful?"
"How does a neural pattern become knowledge?"
Blottisham frowned.
"The representation represents something."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"Yes."
Blottisham stared.
"Oh, that's awful."
"Quite."
"We are explaining representation using representation."
"Mm."
Silence settled around the room again.
Blottisham stared into the fire with the expression of a man gradually discovering that every staircase in the house had become circular.
"So another ghost."
"Mm."
"And we simply assume thought works by reflecting reality."
"Mm."
Blottisham counted slowly on his fingers.
"Substance."
"Essence."
"Origin."
"Representation."
He looked up uneasily.
"Quillibrace?"
"Yes?"
"These ghosts seem increasingly organised."
Quillibrace looked thoughtful.
"They do rather."
Miss Stray closed her notebook.
"Perhaps they are not separate ghosts at all."
Blottisham stared.
"What do you mean?"
She hesitated.
"Perhaps some of them were quietly holding the doors open for the others."
Silence.
Rain moved softly against the windows.
Then Blottisham said:
"No."
Quillibrace looked at him.
"No?"
"No. I absolutely refuse to discover there is a hierarchy of ghosts."
Quillibrace returned to his book.
"A perfectly understandable position," he said quietly.
"Reality, unfortunately, has never shown much respect for it."
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