The Senior Common Room. A storm moves across the grounds of St Anselm's. Professor Quillibrace is examining a diagram on a piece of paper. Miss Elowen Stray is looking through a book of astronomical images. Mr Blottisham enters carrying a plate of biscuits.
Mr Blottisham:
I have brought refreshments.
Professor Quillibrace:
Excellent.
Mr Blottisham:
I assumed a discussion about alien intelligence might require biscuits.
Miss Stray:
Why?
Mr Blottisham:
Because if we encounter beings from another world, we shall need to establish diplomatic relations.
Professor Quillibrace:
Through biscuits?
Mr Blottisham:
It has worked with colleagues.
Miss Stray:
Has it?
Mr Blottisham:
They have usually stopped arguing.
Professor Quillibrace:
That may have been exhaustion rather than agreement.
The Language Problem
Professor Quillibrace:
Our subject today is the possibility that another intelligence might not merely speak a different language.
It might possess a different way of organising meaning itself.
Mr Blottisham:
Surely we could just translate.
Miss Stray:
Could we?
Mr Blottisham:
We translate languages all the time.
Professor Quillibrace:
Between human languages.
Mr Blottisham:
Languages are languages.
Professor Quillibrace:
Are they?
Mr Blottisham:
I am beginning to dislike that question.
Miss Stray:
When we translate between human languages, we already share a vast foundation.
Mr Blottisham:
Such as?
Miss Stray:
We inhabit similar environments. We perceive similar objects. We experience hunger, pain, colour, movement, and time.
Professor Quillibrace:
Our languages differ, but the world we begin from overlaps considerably.
Mr Blottisham:
So the alien problem is that aliens might not have the same starting point.
Professor Quillibrace:
Precisely.
The Invisible World
Miss Stray:
Imagine a creature that perceives magnetic fields directly.
Mr Blottisham:
Like a compass?
Miss Stray:
No. A compass detects direction. Imagine a being for whom magnetic variation was as immediate and vivid as colour is for us.
Mr Blottisham:
So they would see something we cannot.
Professor Quillibrace:
More importantly, they might think with distinctions we cannot naturally imagine.
Mr Blottisham:
Such as?
Professor Quillibrace:
Suppose their basic categories were not objects and properties.
Mr Blottisham:
What else is there?
Miss Stray:
Perhaps relationships.
Mr Blottisham:
Relationships?
Miss Stray:
Imagine a mind for which the connection between things was more fundamental than the things themselves.
Mr Blottisham:
That sounds very inconvenient.
Professor Quillibrace:
For you, perhaps.
Mr Blottisham:
How would I ask such a being where it lives?
Miss Stray:
It may not have a concept corresponding to "where."
Mr Blottisham:
Everyone has a where.
Professor Quillibrace:
That statement contains precisely the assumption under examination.
The Hidden Assumptions of Thought
Professor Quillibrace:
We often imagine that reality arrives pre-divided.
Objects.
Events.
Properties.
Causes.
Mr Blottisham:
Surely those are just the things that exist.
Miss Stray:
Or they may be ways that our minds organise what exists.
Mr Blottisham:
You mean we invent categories?
Professor Quillibrace:
Not invent in the sense of making reality arbitrary.
Rather, we construct useful ways of distinguishing aspects of reality.
Miss Stray:
The world provides possibilities.
Minds create divisions.
Mr Blottisham:
But some divisions must be correct.
Professor Quillibrace:
Certainly.
Mr Blottisham:
And some incorrect?
Professor Quillibrace:
Certainly.
Mr Blottisham:
How do we know the difference?
Professor Quillibrace:
By whether the division helps us understand and navigate reality.
Mr Blottisham:
So categories are tools.
Miss Stray:
Exactly.
Mr Blottisham:
And another mind might have different tools.
Professor Quillibrace:
Now you understand the problem.
The Forest Problem
Miss Stray:
Consider a forest.
Mr Blottisham:
A forest is a collection of trees.
Miss Stray:
Is it?
Mr Blottisham:
Yes.
Miss Stray:
A botanist might see hundreds of species, ecological relationships, geological conditions and evolutionary histories.
Professor Quillibrace:
A child might see somewhere magical to explore.
Miss Stray:
A forester might see resources and patterns of growth.
Mr Blottisham:
But it is still a forest.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Then we agree.
Miss Stray:
We agree about the word.
Mr Blottisham:
Is that not enough?
Professor Quillibrace:
For many purposes.
But the question is whether we agree about the reality the word organises.
Experts and New Worlds
Mr Blottisham:
You mentioned experts earlier.
Miss Stray:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Are they seeing something different?
Professor Quillibrace:
In an important sense, yes.
Mr Blottisham:
But the object is the same.
Miss Stray:
The object is the same. The experienced world is not identical.
Mr Blottisham:
A chess grandmaster sees a chessboard differently?
Professor Quillibrace:
A beginner sees pieces.
A grandmaster sees possibilities.
Miss Stray:
The physical arrangement is identical.
The meaningful structure is not.
Mr Blottisham:
So knowledge changes perception.
Professor Quillibrace:
Exactly.
The Alien Question
Miss Stray:
Now extend this difference beyond human beings.
Mr Blottisham:
To aliens.
Miss Stray:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
Suppose they arrive tomorrow.
Professor Quillibrace:
A common scenario.
Mr Blottisham:
We teach them English.
Miss Stray:
Why assume English contains the concepts they need?
Mr Blottisham:
Because English contains many concepts.
Professor Quillibrace:
Many human concepts.
Mr Blottisham:
But concepts are concepts.
Professor Quillibrace:
Again, a dangerous assumption.
Miss Stray:
Perhaps their intelligence would not ask the questions we ask.
Mr Blottisham:
Why not?
Miss Stray:
Because questions emerge from ways of organising reality.
Professor Quillibrace:
A different conceptual framework may produce different mysteries.
Artificial Intelligence
Mr Blottisham:
Does this apply to artificial intelligence too?
Professor Quillibrace:
Possibly.
Miss Stray:
We often ask whether machines think like humans.
Mr Blottisham:
Is that not the obvious question?
Professor Quillibrace:
Perhaps it is the wrong question.
Mr Blottisham:
What would be the right one?
Miss Stray:
Whether another intelligence can have meaningful organisation of experience, even if that organisation does not resemble ours.
Mr Blottisham:
So the challenge is not whether it thinks.
Professor Quillibrace:
But whether we recognise what its thinking consists of.
The Difficulty of Understanding
Mr Blottisham:
I confess this is rather unsettling.
Miss Stray:
Why?
Mr Blottisham:
Because I thought understanding meant discovering what something really is.
Professor Quillibrace:
A reasonable view.
Mr Blottisham:
But now you are suggesting understanding means discovering how something sees.
Miss Stray:
Exactly.
Mr Blottisham:
Then understanding is not just collecting facts.
Professor Quillibrace:
No.
Mr Blottisham:
It is entering another perspective.
Miss Stray:
As far as possible.
Mr Blottisham:
And if the perspective is too different?
Professor Quillibrace:
Then we begin the difficult work of translation.
Mr Blottisham:
Even if translation never finishes?
Miss Stray:
Especially then.
The Final Thought
The rain grows heavier against the windows.
Mr Blottisham:
I have a final question.
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes?
Mr Blottisham:
If another intelligence had completely different concepts, how would we know we understood it?
Professor Quillibrace:
An excellent question.
Mr Blottisham:
Thank you.
Professor Quillibrace:
Because we might begin to predict, cooperate and communicate successfully.
Miss Stray:
But perhaps we should never assume that successful communication means complete understanding.
Mr Blottisham:
So we can understand without knowing exactly how the other mind works?
Professor Quillibrace:
Yes.
Mr Blottisham:
That sounds familiar.
Miss Stray:
It should.
Professor Quillibrace:
It is the problem we began with.
There is a pause.
Mr Blottisham:
So the alien was us all along?
Professor Quillibrace:
No.
Mr Blottisham:
No?
Professor Quillibrace:
The alien was the assumption that everyone else was not.
Mr Blottisham:
That is disappointingly profound.
Miss Stray:
A common side effect of thinking carefully.
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