The rain had settled into the steady rhythm that suggested it had no intention of stopping before supper.
Professor Quillibrace was seated beside the fire with a volume of Halliday open upon his lap. Miss Elowen Stray was gazing thoughtfully into the garden, where the roses appeared to be conducting their own quiet negotiations with the weather.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying an umbrella that was wetter on the inside than the outside.
"I've solved it," he announced.
Quillibrace looked up.
"Have you, Mr Blottisham?"
"Yes. Significance means importance."
"I see."
"So this afternoon should be fairly straightforward."
Miss Stray smiled into her teacup.
Quillibrace closed his book.
"I fear," he said gently, "that it may become rather less straightforward than that."
"What," asked Blottisham, settling heavily into an armchair, "is the difference between something being significant and something being important?"
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Suppose I write on the blackboard:
The meeting has been cancelled.
"What does the sentence do?"
"It disappoints everyone."
"No," said Quillibrace. "It means something."
"It certainly means disappointment."
"Only if you were hoping to attend."
Blottisham frowned.
"The sentence possesses meaning whether or not anyone cares about it."
"I suppose so."
"So its significance, in one sense, lies within the relationships among the words."
Miss Stray nodded.
"It belongs to the architecture of meaning."
Blottisham looked doubtful.
"But surely if something is meaningful, it matters."
"Does it?"
Quillibrace leaned forward.
"Suppose you read an excellent account of climbing Everest."
"I'd rather watch a documentary."
"Nevertheless. You understand the ascent."
"Yes."
"You understand the cold."
"Yes."
"The danger."
"Certainly."
"The exhaustion."
"I'd be exhausted simply reading about it."
Quillibrace smiled.
"But nothing in the book is cold."
"No."
"Nothing is tired."
"No."
"Nothing fears falling."
Blottisham paused.
"I hadn't thought of that."
"The meanings are present," said Miss Stray quietly.
"The mountain is not."
Blottisham stirred his tea.
"So the words know about the mountain."
"The words do not know anything," said Quillibrace.
"They organise meaning."
"And that's different?"
"It may be profoundly different."
After a moment Blottisham said,
"So if I read a recipe, I don't become full."
"Precisely."
"And if I read about grief..."
"...the page does not become sorrowful," said Miss Stray.
A thoughtful silence settled over the room.
Quillibrace rose and wandered towards the window.
"Gerald Edelman approached consciousness from another direction."
"The chap with the birds?"
"Among other things."
"He argued that organisms do not first observe a neutral world and then decide what is important."
"The world already matters."
"Exactly."
"The mouse does not calculate whether the owl is inconvenient."
"It runs."
"Because danger already possesses significance."
Blottisham brightened.
"So there are really two questions."
Quillibrace looked pleasantly surprised.
"Go on."
"The first is..."
He counted carefully upon his fingers.
"'What does this mean?'"
"Yes."
"And the second is..."
Another finger.
"'Why should I panic?'"
Miss Stray laughed softly.
"A perfectly respectable first approximation."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Though perhaps we might replace 'panic' with 'matter'."
Blottisham considered this.
"So one sort of significance belongs to meanings."
"And the other?"
"...belongs to things that actually count."
Quillibrace inclined his head.
"Very good."
The conversation drifted into silence until Miss Stray spoke.
"I wonder whether we often confuse the two."
"In what way?" asked Blottisham.
"We assume that because something carries meaning, it therefore possesses importance."
She looked out towards the rain.
"But libraries contain enormous quantities of meaning."
"They do."
"They are not themselves anxious."
"No."
"They contain books about hope."
"Yes."
"They are not hopeful."
"No."
"They contain histories of war."
"They do."
"They are not frightened."
Blottisham sat very still.
"That's rather peculiar."
"It is," said Quillibrace.
"We often speak as though meaning automatically carries its own concern."
"But perhaps it doesn't."
Blottisham's brow furrowed.
"Then what about these language models everyone's talking about?"
Quillibrace returned to his chair.
"A timely question."
"They seem to understand everything."
"They certainly participate in extraordinarily rich systems of meaning."
"So they possess significance."
"They possess semantic significance."
"But whether anything matters to them..."
"...is another question altogether."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"So the machine may understand danger..."
"...without danger being dangerous."
"It may discuss grief..."
"...without grieving."
"It may explain hope..."
"...without hoping."
Blottisham stared into the fire.
"I've never noticed that distinction before."
Miss Stray smiled.
"Perhaps because language is so successful."
"How do you mean?"
"It allows us to speak about things that matter."
"So?"
"So successfully that we begin to imagine the speaking and the mattering are identical."
Quillibrace reached for his cup.
"There is a curious habit within philosophy."
"What's that?"
"We spend centuries arguing about a question."
"And then?"
"We discover we have been asking one question as though it were another."
Blottisham nodded slowly.
"So perhaps we've been treating meaning and mattering as the same thing."
"Perhaps."
"And they aren't?"
Quillibrace smiled.
"I suspect they are close neighbours."
"But not the same house."
Miss Stray looked up from her tea.
"And if we mistake one for the other..."
"...we may spend a very long time knocking on the wrong door."
The room fell quiet once more.
Outside, the rain continued to fall upon the roses.
Inside, three cups of tea cooled unnoticed, while three minds occupied themselves with the curious possibility that one of philosophy's oldest habits might simply have been confusing two different kinds of significance.
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