The Senior Common Room was unusually empty the following afternoon.
Professor Quillibrace was at his desk. Miss Stray was reading by the window.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying three books and an expression of renewed determination.
“I have been thinking.”
Quillibrace looked up.
“That is usually how these things begin.”
“I have reached an important conclusion.”
Stray closed her book.
“Should we be worried?”
“I think you should.”
He placed the books on the table.
“You have persuaded me that the quale need not be a little object inside the brain.”
“Progress,” said Quillibrace.
“You have persuaded me that ‘what it is like’ need not refer to another experience behind the experience.”
“More progress.”
“And you have persuaded me that the hard problem may not be solved by simply adding phenomenal properties to physical processes.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“I am impressed.”
“Don't be.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have discovered the real problem.”
Stray smiled.
“Which is?”
“Who is having the experience?”
Quillibrace looked at her.
“There it is.”
Blottisham pointed at him.
“Don't say ‘there it is’ as though I have merely produced another noun.”
“I was going to say that you have produced another observer.”
“I have not.”
“Then who is having the experience?”
“I am.”
“Who is ‘I’?”
“The person experiencing it.”
“Excellent.”
“And?”
“Where is this person?”
Blottisham stared at him.
“Here.”
“In the room?”
“Yes.”
“In the body?”
“Yes.”
“In the brain?”
“Presumably.”
Quillibrace leaned back.
“Then why do we need another observer inside the brain?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“I didn't say we did.”
“No. But the traditional picture often seems to require one.”
Stray looked up.
“Perhaps that is because we imagine perception as something that happens to an observer.”
“Exactly,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham frowned.
“But perception does happen to me.”
“Yes.”
“Then I am the observer.”
“You are the organism.”
“What's the difference?”
“A great deal.”
Stray put down her book.
“Suppose a deer hears a sound in the forest.”
“Very well.”
“It turns its head. It freezes. It assesses the direction. It may flee.”
“Yes.”
“Who is observing the sound?”
“The deer.”
“Who is observing the deer observing the sound?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“No one.”
“Exactly.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“The deer does not require a smaller deer inside its head.”
Blottisham laughed.
“Nor, I presume, a still smaller one inside that.”
“Precisely.”
“The infinite regress again.”
“Not quite,” said Stray. “The point is that the regress arises only if we imagine that perception requires an internal spectator.”
Blottisham sat down.
“Then what does perception require?”
“An organism capable of being affected by its environment in organised ways.”
“That's rather broad.”
“It is supposed to be.”
Quillibrace added:
“The important word may be organised.”
Blottisham looked at him.
“Explain.”
“Consider a stone.”
“Very well.”
“It can be struck by sunlight. It can become warm. It can be moved by a falling branch. It undergoes changes.”
“But nothing matters to it.”
“Exactly.”
“A plant?”
“Now we have something different.”
“Because it responds.”
“More than that,” said Stray. “Its organisation establishes differences that matter to its continued existence. Light, water, temperature, nutrients, damage. Its environment is not merely a collection of physical differences. It is structured by the organism's possibilities.”
Blottisham nodded slowly.
“Food. Danger. Shelter.”
“Exactly.”
“So you are saying that the organism has a world.”
“A world for it.”
Quillibrace raised a finger.
“That distinction is crucial.”
“Why?”
“The universe does not need an organism in order to exist.”
“Obviously.”
“The earth existed before there were animals to perceive it.”
“Yes.”
“The stars existed before there were eyes to see them.”
“Yes.”
“So consciousness does not make the world appear.”
Blottisham thought about this.
“It makes a difference to the world as encountered.”
“Precisely.”
Stray turned towards the window.
“Once there is an organism for whom things can matter, there can be a world for that organism.”
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
“But isn't that simply another way of saying that the organism represents the world?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why not?”
“Because representation suggests that there is first a world and then an internal copy of it.”
“And there isn't?”
“Perhaps there is in some cases. But we need not begin there.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Consider the burning finger again.”
Blottisham smiled.
“We seem unable to escape it.”
“Your finger is damaged. You withdraw it. The damage matters to you. You attend to it. You may protect it. You may remember what caused it.”
“Yes.”
“At no point do we need to imagine a little picture of the injury being presented to an inner spectator.”
Blottisham looked at his finger.
“Yet it hurts.”
“Yes.”
“And that remains important.”
“Of course.”
“Then perhaps the problem with qualia was never that they describe something unreal.”
Stray smiled.
“That is closer.”
“What, then?”
“Perhaps they describe something real in the wrong grammatical form.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“An experience can be real without being an object.”
Blottisham considered this.
“A relation can be real without being a thing.”
“Exactly.”
“And a perspective can be real without there being a witness to it.”
“Now you are getting somewhere.”
Blottisham frowned.
“I am beginning to suspect that you have been waiting for me to say that.”
“We have been waiting for several days,” said Quillibrace.
Stray laughed.
Blottisham stood and began pacing.
“Then what becomes of privacy? My pain is not your pain. My experience is not your experience.”
“Certainly.”
“So there must be something private about experience.”
“Yes.”
“Then what is it?”
“Your organisation,” said Stray.
“My organisation?”
“Your body, your nervous system, your history, your sensitivities, your habits, your possibilities. No other organism occupies exactly the same relation to the world.”
“So privacy doesn't require a private object.”
“Exactly.”
Quillibrace added:
“Your experience is private in the same sense that your life is yours. Not because there is a secret object locked inside you, but because no other organism is you.”
Blottisham was quiet.
“That is rather less mysterious.”
“Perhaps.”
“And rather more mysterious.”
“Also perhaps.”
He smiled.
“I am beginning to dislike that word.”
“You'll get used to it.”
Blottisham returned to his chair.
“Then what about consciousness itself?”
“What about it?”
“If consciousness is not a thing, what is it?”
Quillibrace looked towards Stray.
She answered.
“Perhaps we should stop asking what consciousness is as though it were something waiting to be found.”
“And ask?”
“How a living system comes to have a world.”
Blottisham nodded.
“And how the world comes to matter to it.”
“Yes.”
“And meaning?”
“Later.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“Mattering before meaning.”
Blottisham looked at them both.
“That sounds suspiciously like the beginning of another theory.”
“Or the end of this one,” said Stray.
There was a long silence.
Outside, a bird called.
Blottisham looked towards the window.
“Does the bird have a world?”
Stray smiled.
“Almost certainly.”
“Does it know that it has one?”
“No idea.”
“Does it need to?”
“No.”
Quillibrace closed his journal.
“That may be the point.”
Blottisham stood.
“So the universe does not need to be experienced in order to exist.”
“No.”
“And consciousness does not require a witness.”
“No.”
“But once living systems exist…”
Stray waited.
Blottisham looked again towards the window.
“…there can be a world for them.”
“Exactly,” said Stray.
Quillibrace gathered his papers.
“And perhaps,” he added, “that is enough of a mystery for one afternoon.”
Blottisham nodded.
“For once, I agree.”
He picked up his books.
Then paused at the door.
“I still think qualia are worth discussing.”
“Of course,” said Stray.
“Why?”
“Because maps are useful.”
Blottisham smiled.
“Provided we don't mistake them for territory.”
Quillibrace looked up.
“Now you are learning.”
And the door closed.
No comments:
Post a Comment