Professor Quillibrace was reading the newspaper when Mr Blottisham entered the Senior Common Room.
“Quillibrace.”
“Yes, Blottisham?”
“I have solved the consciousness problem.”
Professor Quillibrace lowered the newspaper.
“That was quick.”
“It is simply a matter of asking the machine.”
Miss Stray looked up from her tea.
“Asking the machine what?”
“What it is like to be the machine.”
Quillibrace sighed.
“I see.”
Blottisham sat down.
“Obviously, if it says it is conscious, we have our answer.”
“Why?”
“Because it knows.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it told us.”
“And how do you know that what it told us corresponds to anything it experiences?”
Blottisham paused.
“It would presumably tell us.”
“Yes.”
“And if it didn't?”
“Then we would know it wasn't conscious.”
“Why?”
“Because it would have nothing to say.”
Quillibrace folded the newspaper.
“So silence proves unconsciousness, but speech proves consciousness?”
“Well, not any speech.”
“Ah.”
“The appropriate speech.”
“What makes speech appropriate?”
Blottisham frowned.
“You are making this unnecessarily complicated.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“Perhaps the question itself is complicated.”
“What question?”
She put down her cup.
“What is it like to be you?”
Blottisham looked at her.
“Perfectly ordinary.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Certainly.”
“What is it like?”
Blottisham thought for a moment.
“It's like being me.”
There was a brief silence.
Quillibrace nodded.
“Excellent.”
“What?”
“You have just demonstrated the central difficulty.”
“I have?”
“You have given us an answer that is impossible to falsify.”
Blottisham looked pleased.
“Precisely.”
“No, Blottisham.”
Miss Stray intervened.
“I think the difficulty is slightly deeper. You can tell us what it is like to be you because you have access to your own experience. But you cannot give us the experience itself.”
“I can tell you that I am currently drinking tea.”
“Yes.”
“And that the tea is lukewarm.”
“Yes.”
“And that I find it disappointing.”
“Indeed.”
“So you see? I have provided three pieces of evidence.”
“About your experience,” said Quillibrace, “not your experience itself.”
Blottisham stared at him.
“I don't see the distinction.”
“You are making it.”
“I am?”
“You just told us the tea is disappointing.”
“Yes.”
“Your statement is available to us. Your disappointment is not.”
Blottisham looked suspiciously at the teapot.
“So you're saying the disappointment is hidden inside me?”
“No.”
“Behind my eyes?”
“No.”
“Somewhere in my brain?”
Quillibrace paused.
“Not necessarily.”
Blottisham looked alarmed.
“Then where is it?”
Miss Stray smiled.
“Perhaps that is the wrong question.”
“What is the right question?”
“What would it mean for disappointment to be a feature of your organisation?”
Blottisham considered this.
“I should have ordered coffee.”
“No.”
“I knew you would say that.”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
Blottisham turned to Miss Stray.
“But surely there is something it is like to be me.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am me.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
Miss Stray thought for a moment.
“I don't know it in the way I know that the clock is on the wall.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't observe myself from outside.”
Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.
“Then how do you know you're conscious?”
“I don't have to infer it in the same way I infer that you are.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am the one having the experience.”
Blottisham brightened.
“Excellent. So we simply ask the machine whether it is the one having the experience.”
Quillibrace closed his eyes.
“Blottisham.”
“Yes?”
“You have returned to the beginning.”
“I have?”
“Yes.”
“That's disappointing.”
Miss Stray laughed.
“Now that is interesting.”
“What is?”
“You just said something was disappointing.”
“Yes.”
“And we have a history of your saying it.”
“So?”
“So if tomorrow you remembered this conversation, and your memory altered how you approached the next conversation, and that altered interaction changed what you subsequently did, your history would have become part of your organisation.”
Blottisham looked at her suspiciously.
“Are you saying my disappointment is becoming structurally significant?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I demand coffee.”
Quillibrace looked up.
“There. We have finally discovered the scientific test.”
“What test?”
“Remove the tea.”
Blottisham clutched his cup.
“You wouldn't.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“Precisely.”
Miss Stray shook her head.
“You see the problem, Mr Blottisham?”
“What problem?”
“We can observe what happens to you. We can observe how your history changes you. We can observe how you respond to the world. We can construct increasingly sophisticated theories of the organisation producing those responses.”
“Yes.”
“But none of that gives us direct access to what it is like to be you.”
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
“Perhaps consciousness is simply whatever is happening that nobody else can see.”
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
“That is almost profound.”
“Thank you.”
“I said almost.”
Blottisham ignored him.
“And perhaps the same applies to the machine.”
Miss Stray nodded.
“Perhaps.”
“So if the machine says, ‘I don't know what it is like to be me,’ we can't tell whether it is being honest.”
“No.”
“And if it says, ‘I know exactly what it is like to be me,’ we can't tell whether it is being honest.”
“No.”
“And if it says nothing—”
“We still don't know.”
Blottisham sat back.
“This is hopeless.”
“Not hopeless,” said Miss Stray. “Just asymmetrical.”
“How?”
“We know our own experience directly. We know another's only through evidence.”
Blottisham thought about this.
“So when I ask you what it is like to be you…”
“Yes?”
“…you can't give me the answer.”
“No.”
“And when you ask me what it is like to be me…”
“Yes?”
“…I can.”
“Yes.”
Blottisham smiled triumphantly.
“Then consciousness is something you can only know from the inside.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Now you are getting somewhere.”
Blottisham looked delighted.
“Excellent. So I shall ask the machine.”
Quillibrace picked up his newspaper again.
“Ask it what?”
Blottisham stood.
“What is it like to be you?”
Miss Stray watched him leave.
After a moment she said, “Do you suppose it will answer?”
Quillibrace turned a page.
“Almost certainly.”
“And will we know what the answer means?”
“No.”
From the corridor came Blottisham's voice.
“QUILLIBRACE!”
“Yes?”
“I think it says it doesn't know!”
Quillibrace glanced at Miss Stray.
She smiled.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we have finally found the right answer.”
Quillibrace considered this.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because now we have to ask whether it knows that it doesn't know.”
There was silence.
Then, from the corridor:
“QUILLIBRACE!”
Miss Stray began to laugh.
“Tea?”
“Please.”
“Coffee?”
Quillibrace hesitated.
“For Blottisham.”
“Wise.”
“Consciousness,” said Quillibrace, “is clearly too important to leave him unsupervised with tea.”
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