The afternoon had settled into one of those gentle silences peculiar to old colleges, where even the ticking of the clock seemed to have acquired tenure.
Professor Quillibrace stood before an ancient map hanging on the wall of the Senior Common Room. Miss Elowen Stray was examining a small volume of essays, while Mr Blottisham wrestled with a stubborn teapot that appeared reluctant to cooperate with either gravity or etiquette.
Without turning, Quillibrace spoke.
"Do you know what has always struck me as rather unfair?"
Blottisham looked up.
"No."
"Every philosopher of mind is expected to explain consciousness."
"Naturally."
"Using consciousness."
Blottisham paused.
"I don't see the difficulty."
Quillibrace smiled.
"That, my dear Blottisham, is because you are using it."
Miss Stray closed her book.
"It's a curious situation."
"In what way?"
"The observer is part of the thing being observed."
Blottisham frowned.
"Like studying one's own eyesight."
"Precisely."
Quillibrace gestured towards the old map.
"Tell me what you notice."
Blottisham approached.
"It's Europe."
"Yes."
"And Jerusalem."
"Indeed."
"Rather large."
"And where is it?"
Blottisham looked more closely.
"In the middle."
"Was it actually the geographical centre of the world?"
"No."
"So why is it there?"
Blottisham thought for a moment.
"Because it mattered to whoever drew the map."
"Exactly."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Every map has a centre."
Blottisham nodded.
"Naturally."
"The interesting question," she said quietly, "is whether the centre belongs to the world..."
"...or to the mapmaker."
The room fell briefly silent.
Quillibrace returned to his chair.
"Human beings begin their understanding of reality from themselves."
"What alternative is there?"
"None."
"So that's perfectly reasonable."
"Entirely."
He poured tea.
"The difficulty begins when we mistake the starting point for the destination."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"I don't quite follow."
"When children first draw maps..."
"They usually put their own house in the middle."
"Quite."
"Eventually they discover the world has made other arrangements."
Miss Stray laughed softly.
"I suspect philosophy consists largely of discovering that reality has organised itself without first consulting us."
Blottisham settled into his chair.
"So this is another discussion about anthropocentrism?"
"In a sense."
"I thought we'd already dealt with that."
"We dealt with biology."
"And consciousness."
"This afternoon," said Quillibrace, "we are dealing with something considerably more awkward."
"Oh?"
"Ourselves."
Blottisham sighed.
"We seem to do that rather often."
Quillibrace picked up a notebook.
"When you imagine another mind..."
"Yes?"
"What do you use to imagine it?"
"My imagination."
"And what possesses your imagination?"
"...I do."
"Exactly."
Blottisham blinked.
"I can't very well borrow somebody else's."
"No."
"So every alien civilisation you have ever imagined..."
"...has first passed through the customs office of the human imagination."
Miss Stray laughed.
"An unusually strict customs office."
"Very."
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
"But surely a mind has certain features."
"Such as?"
"Thoughts."
"Reasonable."
"Memories."
"Perhaps."
"Intentions."
"Quite possibly."
"Emotions."
"Frequently."
"A sense of self."
Quillibrace smiled.
"You have produced an admirable inventory."
"I thought so."
"Of human interior life."
Blottisham frowned.
"Isn't that what a mind is?"
"It is what our minds are."
"And the difference?"
"We are trying to discover whether those are identical propositions."
Miss Stray looked towards the window.
"A bat experiences the world through echoes."
"Yes."
"An octopus possesses a nervous system unlike ours."
"So I understand."
"A migrating bird navigates across continents using cues we scarcely perceive."
Blottisham nodded.
"They're all rather different."
"Nature appears surprisingly uninterested in repeating itself."
Quillibrace stirred his tea.
"Suppose tomorrow we encountered an extraterrestrial civilisation."
"They usually arrive shortly after tea."
"They demonstrate mathematics."
"Excellent."
"They compose music."
"Promising."
"They debate ethics."
"Civilised."
"But they possess no emotions recognisable to us."
Blottisham hesitated.
"That would be odd."
"They possess no individual identity."
"Odder."
"They think collectively."
"Hm."
"They experience centuries as we experience minutes."
Blottisham looked uncomfortable.
"I don't know whether I'd call that a mind."
Quillibrace nodded.
"How interesting."
"What?"
"You did not ask whether they understood."
"I assumed they did."
"You did not ask whether they experienced."
"I assumed that as well."
"You merely noticed that they failed to resemble you."
Miss Stray spoke gently.
"We often mistake unfamiliarity for absence."
Rain began tapping quietly against the windows.
Blottisham watched the droplets gather.
"So how do we recognise another mind?"
Quillibrace looked thoughtful.
"How do we recognise another human mind?"
"People speak."
"They do."
"They behave."
"Yes."
"They tell us what they experience."
"Indeed."
Blottisham stopped.
"I've never actually observed anyone else's consciousness."
"No."
"I've only inferred it."
"Precisely."
Miss Stray nodded.
"We infer minds from evidence."
"We do not perceive them directly."
"So recognising consciousness has always involved interpretation."
"Exactly."
Blottisham leaned forward.
"So perhaps the problem isn't artificial intelligence."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Go on."
"Perhaps the problem is that we've developed excellent instincts for recognising creatures rather like ourselves."
"And?"
"We don't know whether those instincts would work for something genuinely different."
Quillibrace's expression brightened.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"I believe you've just become unexpectedly philosophical."
"I was afraid of that."
The fire crackled softly.
Miss Stray stood and wandered towards the old map once more.
"Perhaps every mind begins by believing it is looking through a window."
Neither of the others spoke.
"And eventually discovers..."
She traced a finger lightly across the faded parchment.
"...that it has been looking into a mirror."
Quillibrace regarded her for a long moment.
"My dear Miss Stray."
"Yes?"
"I shall endeavour to remember that sentence before I accidentally publish it."
She smiled.
"I suspect someone else thought of it first."
"Almost certainly."
Outside, the rain drifted across the college gardens.
The ancient map remained upon the wall, its centre quietly revealing rather more about the cartographer than the world itself.
At length Quillibrace rose to leave.
"The history of knowledge," he said, collecting his coat, "contains a curious pattern."
Blottisham looked up.
"We repeatedly discover that reality is under no obligation to organise itself around the point from which we first happened to observe it."
He glanced once more at the map.
"The universe has taught us that lesson before."
Miss Stray opened the door.
"Perhaps," she said, "it is about to teach us again."
The three stepped out into the cloister, leaving the old Common Room exactly as they had found it—except, perhaps, for one mirror that had quietly ceased pretending to be a window.
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