A steady rain drummed softly upon the windows of the Senior Common Room. Professor Quillibrace was examining a particularly dense article entitled Biological Naturalism and the Limits of Artificial Consciousness. Miss Elowen Stray sat opposite, watching the fire with the thoughtful expression of someone listening to two ideas attempting to become one.
Mr Blottisham arrived carrying a plate of shortbread.
"I've been reading about artificial consciousness."
Quillibrace looked up.
"My sympathies."
"They all seem to disagree."
"A promising indication that philosophy remains alive."
Blottisham selected a biscuit.
"I think I've found the answer."
"Already?"
"Consciousness is biological."
Quillibrace nodded pleasantly.
"A sentence."
"Yes."
"Not yet an argument."
Blottisham looked mildly disappointed.
"But every conscious thing we've ever discovered is alive."
"Quite so."
"So consciousness is biological."
Quillibrace folded his journal.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"You have just crossed one of philosophy's most attractive bridges."
"I have?"
"Without noticing that there was a river underneath."
Miss Stray smiled.
"What Professor Quillibrace means is that you've moved from an observation to a conclusion rather quickly."
"They're the same thing."
"They seldom are."
Quillibrace reached for a pencil.
"Permit me a small experiment."
He wrote carefully on a sheet of paper.
Every conscious being we have ever encountered is biological.
He slid it across the table.
"Would you agree?"
"Of course."
Beneath it he wrote a second sentence.
Therefore only biological beings can ever be conscious.
"There."
Blottisham studied the page.
"Well..."
"What changed?"
"Very little."
Quillibrace waited.
Finally Blottisham pointed.
"The word 'only'."
"Exactly."
"A remarkably ambitious little word."
Miss Stray laughed softly.
"It transforms a description of experience into a claim about reality."
Blottisham frowned.
"But surely experience counts for something."
"Indeed it does," said Quillibrace.
"It tells us where consciousness has been found."
"It does not necessarily tell us everywhere it can be found."
The rain intensified.
Quillibrace gazed towards the old quadrangle.
"Do you know why Fellows wear gowns to dinner?"
"Tradition."
"Originally?"
"I assumed scholarship."
"No."
Blottisham looked surprised.
"The medieval hall was cold."
"...that's it?"
"That is largely it."
"I've always imagined they symbolised learning."
"They do now."
"So they began for entirely practical reasons?"
"Precisely."
Miss Stray smiled.
"The origin and the meaning gradually became different things."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Institutions have a habit of mistaking their history for their essence."
"And philosophers?"
"We merely write papers about it."
Blottisham considered this.
"So biology might simply be where consciousness first appeared."
"It might."
"Or where we first noticed it."
"Quite."
"Those are different propositions."
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"Imagine early natural philosophers had only ever seen birds."
"They often did."
"They might reasonably conclude that flight requires feathers."
"Very sensible."
"Until they encountered bats."
Blottisham nodded.
"And then aeroplanes."
"Eventually."
Quillibrace smiled.
"The important discovery was not that birds were misunderstood."
"They weren't?"
"No."
"They really do fly."
"The mistake was imagining that feathers constituted the definition of flight."
Blottisham broke another biscuit.
"So brains might be like feathers."
"There is an analogy."
"Not a proof."
"Precisely."
He looked doubtful.
"But brains seem extraordinarily important."
"They certainly are."
"Damage the brain..."
"...and memory changes," said Miss Stray.
"Personality changes."
"Perception changes."
"Emotion changes."
"Sometimes consciousness disappears altogether."
Blottisham nodded vigorously.
"Exactly."
"So surely that settles it."
Quillibrace shook his head.
"It settles something."
"What?"
"That biological brains can produce consciousness."
"And?"
"It does not yet establish that they alone can."
A thoughtful silence settled over the room.
Eventually Blottisham spoke.
"I think I'm beginning to see the difficulty."
"Excellent."
"We know where consciousness occurs."
"Yes."
"But we don't yet know why."
Quillibrace's eyebrows rose approvingly.
"Very good."
Miss Stray stood and wandered towards the bookshelves.
"We know remarkably little about what consciousness depends upon."
"Biology."
"Perhaps."
"Embodiment."
"Perhaps."
"Chemistry."
"Perhaps."
"Evolution."
"Perhaps."
She turned.
"But notice how often we answer difficult questions by listing familiar companions."
Blottisham laughed.
"I do that rather a lot."
"We all do."
Quillibrace picked up the journal again.
"There is another possibility worth considering."
"Oh?"
"Perhaps consciousness depends not primarily upon what a system is made from..."
"...but upon how it is organised."
Blottisham looked sceptical.
"Like a computer?"
"Not necessarily."
"The brain is considerably more complicated."
"Then what do you mean?"
Miss Stray answered.
"A melody."
Blottisham blinked.
"A melody?"
"The same piece of music can be played on a piano."
"Yes."
"A violin."
"Yes."
"An orchestra."
"Certainly."
"Or encoded digitally."
"Quite."
"The material changes."
"The melody remains."
Blottisham considered this.
"So perhaps..."
He hesitated.
"...perhaps some things belong to patterns rather than materials."
Quillibrace smiled.
"A dangerous thought."
"Why dangerous?"
"Because once one begins separating organisation from substance..."
"...many comfortable assumptions become negotiable."
Rainwater trickled slowly down the leaded panes.
Blottisham stared into the fire.
"If machines became astonishingly intelligent..."
"They may."
"They still might not experience anything."
"Entirely possible."
"And equally..."
He looked at the others.
"...we cannot yet prove they never could."
Quillibrace inclined his head.
"I believe that is the most careful sentence you have uttered this week."
Miss Stray returned to her chair.
"Perhaps the real lesson is simply one of humility."
"In what sense?"
"We should distinguish between saying..."
She paused.
"'This is the only example we possess.'"
"And?"
"'This is the only example reality is permitted to contain.'"
No one spoke for a while.
The rain softened.
The fire settled into a quiet glow.
At last Quillibrace closed his journal.
"The history of science," he said, "contains a recurring pattern."
Blottisham looked up.
"We discover something remarkable."
"Yes."
"We mistake the first path by which we reached it..."
He glanced towards the ancient college beyond the window.
"...for the only road that could ever have led there."
Miss Stray smiled.
"And perhaps consciousness deserves rather more imagination than certainty."
Outside, the rain continued to fall upon stone that had long ago ceased to remember why it had first been laid.
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