A late afternoon in the Senior Common Room. Rain taps against the tall windows. Professor Quillibrace has placed a single sheet of paper on the table. Mr Blottisham has already poured the tea. Miss Elowen Stray is reading quietly.
Professor Quillibrace:
I propose we begin with a rather unsettling proposition.
Mr Blottisham:
Excellent. I find unsettling propositions much easier to understand than ordinary ones.
Miss Stray:
That may be because ordinary propositions usually require more attention.
Mr Blottisham:
Quite possible.
Professor Quillibrace:
The proposition is this:
"The greatest obstacle to understanding other minds is not that they are different from ours. It is that we quietly assume they are not."
Mr Blottisham:
I object.
Professor Quillibrace:
Naturally.
Mr Blottisham:
It seems to me that understanding people depends precisely upon recognising that they are like us. If everyone were completely different, communication would be impossible.
Miss Stray:
That is a fair objection.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes. The argument is not that people have nothing in common. The argument is that we often mistake similarity for identity.
Mr Blottisham:
But surely if someone says, "I am in pain," I know what they mean.
Professor Quillibrace:
Do you?
Mr Blottisham:
Yes.
Professor Quillibrace:
How?
Mr Blottisham:
Because I have experienced pain.
Professor Quillibrace:
Precisely. You understand another person's pain by referring to your own.
Mr Blottisham:
That seems sensible.
Professor Quillibrace:
It is sensible. It is also an inference.
Mr Blottisham:
I am not sure I like that word.
Miss Stray:
Why not?
Mr Blottisham:
Because an inference sounds like something that could be wrong.
Professor Quillibrace:
An excellent observation.
Mr Blottisham:
Thank you.
Professor Quillibrace:
I was not complimenting you.
Mr Blottisham:
I shall accept it provisionally.
The Window of Consciousness
Miss Stray:
Perhaps the difficulty is that each person has only one example of consciousness available to them.
Mr Blottisham:
Their own?
Miss Stray:
Exactly.
Professor Quillibrace:
Each of us experiences reality from the inside of a single mind. Our own consciousness becomes the only direct evidence we possess for what consciousness is like.
Mr Blottisham:
That seems unavoidable.
Professor Quillibrace:
It is unavoidable. But unavoidable does not mean harmless.
Miss Stray:
A person who has only ever looked through one window might begin to believe that the landscape always has the shape of that window.
Mr Blottisham:
A rather poetic way of saying people are biased.
Miss Stray:
A rather important kind of bias.
Professor Quillibrace:
Indeed. The problem is not that we begin with ourselves. We must. The problem is that we forget we began there.
What Is It Like To Be a Bat?
Mr Blottisham:
I have always thought the bat example was slightly unfair.
Professor Quillibrace:
Unfair to whom?
Mr Blottisham:
The bat.
Miss Stray:
Why?
Mr Blottisham:
Because nobody ever asks what it is like to be a professor.
Professor Quillibrace:
Many people have asked that question.
Mr Blottisham:
Really?
Professor Quillibrace:
Usually immediately before leaving the room.
Miss Stray:
The point of the bat example is not that bats are unusual creatures. It is that another being may inhabit a reality that cannot be reconstructed from our own experience.
Mr Blottisham:
But we understand bats.
Professor Quillibrace:
We understand many things about bats.
Mr Blottisham:
Their sonar.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Their biology.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Their behaviour.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
So what is missing?
Professor Quillibrace:
What it feels like to be a bat.
Mr Blottisham:
Ah.
Miss Stray:
We can describe the mechanisms. We can predict the behaviour. But the subjective world remains inaccessible.
Mr Blottisham:
So we know what the bat does, but not what being a bat is like.
Professor Quillibrace:
Precisely.
Mr Blottisham:
That is slightly inconvenient.
Professor Quillibrace:
Reality often is.
The Problem of "Red"
Miss Stray:
The more troubling example may actually be human beings.
Mr Blottisham:
Surely humans are easier.
Miss Stray:
Are they?
Mr Blottisham:
I assume so.
Professor Quillibrace:
And there is our problem.
Mr Blottisham:
You cannot possibly object to my assuming humans are human.
Professor Quillibrace:
No. I object to assuming that being human guarantees identical experience.
Miss Stray:
Consider colour.
Mr Blottisham:
Red?
Miss Stray:
Yes. We both use the word "red". We both stop at red traffic lights. We both identify red apples.
Mr Blottisham:
So we agree.
Professor Quillibrace:
Behaviourally.
Mr Blottisham:
Is that not enough?
Professor Quillibrace:
For crossing the road, usually.
Miss Stray:
But we cannot directly compare the private experience itself.
Mr Blottisham:
You mean your red might not be my red?
Professor Quillibrace:
Exactly.
Mr Blottisham:
That seems impossible to test.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Then perhaps we should not worry about it.
Miss Stray:
Or perhaps we should notice what it reveals.
Mr Blottisham:
Which is?
Miss Stray:
That communication can succeed even when experience is not identical.
Understanding and Humility
Professor Quillibrace:
This is the important point.
The existence of difference does not make understanding impossible.
It makes understanding more interesting.
Mr Blottisham:
I confess I expected this discussion to end with everyone admitting nobody understands anyone.
Professor Quillibrace:
A popular philosophical mistake.
Miss Stray:
The discovery that we cannot completely enter another person's experience does not mean we know nothing about them.
Professor Quillibrace:
Exactly. We understand through interpretation.
We observe words, actions, expressions and contexts. We construct models of other minds.
Sometimes those models are remarkably accurate.
Sometimes they fail.
Mr Blottisham:
So understanding someone is rather like making a very careful guess?
Professor Quillibrace:
A sophisticated guess.
Miss Stray:
One that improves through conversation.
The Final Question
Mr Blottisham:
I think I have discovered something troubling.
Professor Quillibrace:
Only one thing?
Mr Blottisham:
I may have been assuming that everyone else experiences the world the way I do.
Miss Stray:
That is a very human assumption.
Mr Blottisham:
And possibly incorrect.
Professor Quillibrace:
Possibly.
Mr Blottisham:
How do I know when I am wrong?
Professor Quillibrace:
You ask.
Mr Blottisham:
That seems disappointingly simple.
Miss Stray:
Perhaps understanding begins with the willingness to ask rather than assume.
Professor Quillibrace:
Indeed.
The greatest barrier between minds may not be distance.
It may be the confidence that there was never any distance at all.
There is a brief silence.
Mr Blottisham:
I have a question.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes?
Mr Blottisham:
Do other people experience tea differently?
Miss Stray:
Possibly.
Mr Blottisham:
Then how can we be certain this is good tea?
Professor Quillibrace:
We cannot.
Mr Blottisham:
A disturbing conclusion.
Professor Quillibrace:
No. Merely a philosophical one.
Mr Blottisham:
I shall have another cup, just to investigate.
No comments:
Post a Comment