by David Lodge
RALPH
There are a lot of books because all kinds of people are into consciousness these days – neurologists, psychologists, biologists, even physicists …
HELEN
Which of those are you?
RALPH
None. I started out as a philosopher. Then I moved into AI. Once upon a time –
HELEN
AI?
RALPH
Atificial intelligence. Once only philosophers were interested in the problem of consciousness. Now it’s the biggest game in town.
HELEN
What’s the problem?
RALPH
Well, it’s the old mind–body conundrum: how does a physical brain produce the mental phenomenon of consciousness? Don’t you ever ask yourself that?
HELEN
I can’t say I do. I’m more interested in the contents of my mind … emotions, sensations, feelings.
RALPH
They’re part of the problem. We call them qualia in the trade.
HELEN
Qualia?
RALPH
The specific quality of our subjective experiences of the world. Like the smell of coffee, or the blue of the sky on a clear day … or the feel of a kiss. They’re impossible to describe scientifically. Nobody’s proved they actually exist.
HELEN
There’s no need to! They are the proof.
RALPH
Well, they seem real enough to us, individually, while they’re happening, but they can’t be observed by anyone else. They’re intangible effects produced by events in the hard-wiring of our brains.
HELEN
Like happiness and unhappiness?
RALPH (pleased)
You saw my TV series?
HELEN
Only a bit of it. And that was by accident. (apologetically) I don’t watch science programmes as a rule.
RALPH
Well, I don’t go all the way with the neuroscientists. The mind is a machine, yes, but a virtual machine. It’s like a computer. You write on a computer, I presume?
HELEN
I’ve got a laptop. I’ve no idea how it works.
RALPH
OK. Your laptop runs different programs simultaneously so that you can switch from one to another – word processing, Internet searches, email – and cut and paste between them. The brain is like an infinitely more complex parallel computer, running an enormous number of programs at terrific speed. The possible interactions between them are so complex that it’s very difficult to simulate the process – but we’re getting there, as British Rail used to say.
HELEN
You mean, at your Institute, you’re trying to design a computer that thinks like a human being?
RALPH
That’s the ultimate objective, yes.
HELEN
And feels like a human being? A computer that feels pain, and falls in love, and suffers bereavement?
RALPH
Pain might be difficult – it depends how you define it. But it would be quite possible to design a robot that could get into a symbiotic relationship with another robot and would exhibit symptoms of distress if the other robot were put out of commission.
HELEN
You’re joking, of course?
RALPH
Not a bit. I refereed an interesting paper recently about modelling grief. I’ll email you a copy.
HELEN
Ah, I’m having a bit of trouble with my email at the moment.
RALPH
Aren’t you on the university network? You’ll need it to communicate with your students.
HELEN
The English Department secretary did say something about it …
RALPH
I’ll call the IT centre today and tell them to get on your case.
HELEN
Thank you very much.
RALPH
Meanwhile I’ll leave you to your book. (He gets up.) What is it?
HELEN
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove.
RALPH
I think I saw the film.
HELEN
It’s not quite the same.
RALPH
I never got on with Henry James. I prefer his brother, William. Have any of your books been filmed?
HELEN
I’m afraid not. One was optioned, but nothing came of it.
RALPH
What was it called?
HELEN
The Eye of the Storm.
RALPH
I must see if Carrie’s got it. She reads a lot of novels. I’ll print out that bereavement article and send it to you through the internal mail.
HELEN
Thank you.
RALPH goes. HELEN opens her book and begins to read. RALPH returns.
RALPH
Unless you’d like to come with me now and pick it up.
HELEN
Oh.
RALPH
I could give you a quick tour of the Institute.
HELEN
Aren’t you busy?
RALPH
Not for the next hour.
HELEN
Well, that’s very kind … All right. I must admit I am rather curious about that building.
RALPH
The outside is probably more interesting than the inside. Unlike the brain, which it’s supposed to represent … the divided dome being the brain’s two hemispheres.
HELEN
Oh, I wondered about that …
They go off.
Scene Six
RALPH’s office. RALPH ushers HELEN in.
RALPH
Here we are. Can I take your coat?
HELEN
Thank you.
He takes her coat and hangs it up, with his own. She keeps her book in her hand.
RALPH
So what d’you think of the Institute?
HELEN
I’m impressed. The design is stunning.
RALPH
Our students call it the Mind–Body Shop.
HELEN
The ones I saw downstairs seem happy to be here.
RALPH
So they should be … There’s nowhere else like it in this country. Please sit down.
HELEN
But aren’t you worried about the future – with the cuts in university funding?
RALPH
That will mainly affect undergraduate courses. We have only postgraduates and post-docs here, many from abroad. The Institute was endowed by a big software company, and we get a lot of research contracts from industry and government, especially the MOD. So no, I’m not worried about the future.
HELEN
Lucky you.
RALPH
I believe we make our own luck. (HELEN considers whether to challenge this). Mostly. Now let me find that article …
As the dialogue continues, RALPH boots up his PC, searches for a file, and prints it out.
HELEN
Why is the outside of the building clad in mirror glass?
RALPH
Can’t you guess?
HELEN
Because you can see out of it, but not into it? Like the mind?
RALPH
Right! But after dark, when the lights are on, you can see everything that’s going on inside the building, symbolising the explanatory power of scientific research. At least, that was the architect’s idea.
HELEN
So if you close the blinds, you ruin the symbolism.
RALPH
Not really. Most thought takes place behind blinds. We can never know for certain what another person is really thinking.
HELEN
Never?
RALPH
Even if they tell us, we don’t know whether they’re telling the truth. And by the same token, nobody can know our thoughts as we know them.
HELEN
Just as well, perhaps.
RALPH
Absolutely. Imagine what the VC’s dinner party woul
d have been like, if all the guests had those bubbles over their heads you get in comics, with their thoughts in them.
HELEN
I suppose that’s why people read novels – to find out what goes on in other people’s minds.
RALPH
But that’s not real knowledge.
HELEN
Oh, isn’t it?
RALPH
Real knowledge is based on verifiable facts. The trouble is, if you restrict the study of consciousness to what can be objectively observed and measured – whether it’s the behaviour of rats in a maze, or neurons firing in the human brain – then you leave out what’s distinctive about it.
HELEN
Qualia.
RALPH
Exactly. There’s an old joke that crops up in nearly every book on the subject, about two behaviourist psychologists who have sex, and afterwards one says to the other, ‘It was great for you, how was it for me?’
HELEN laughs.
RALPH
Consciousness is a first-person phenomenon. It always belongs to an ‘I’. ‘I feel hungry, I feel anxious, I feel bored …’ Scientific description is always third-person: ‘The bored subject yawned at irregular intervals.’ That’s the problem in a nutshell. How can you describe a first-person phenomenon in a third-person discourse?
HELEN
Oh, but novelists have been doing that for two hundred years!
RALPH
How?
HELEN
It’s called free indirect style. Listen. (She opens her copy of The Wings of the Dove at the first page, and reads aloud.) ‘She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place, moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed cloth that gave at once – she had tried it – the sense of the slippery and the sticky.’ You see – you have Kate’s consciousness there, her thoughts, her feelings, her impatience, her hesitation about leaving or staying, her perception of her own appearance in the mirror, the nasty texture of the armchair’s upholstery, ‘at once slippery and sticky’ – how’s that for qualia? And yet it’s all narrated in the third person, in precise, elegant, well-formed sentences. It’s subjective and objective.
RALPH
It’s effectively done, I grant you. But Henry James can claim to know what’s going on in Kate … what’s-her-name’s head because he put it there. If she were a real human being, he could never presume to tell us how she felt about that armchair.
HELEN
Could a cognitive scientist tell us, then?
RALPH
In the present state of the art, no. For the time being we have to settle for knowing less about consciousness than novelists pretend to know.
He collects the pages from the printer, staples them and gives them to her.
RALPH
There you are.
HELEN
Thank you. (reads title) ‘The Cognitive Architecture of Emotional States with Special Reference to Grief’.
RALPH
It’s only a theoretical model of course.
HELEN
They’re not actually trying to build a computer that feels grief?
RALPH
It’s what they’re working towards.
HELEN
What on earth for?
RALPH
Emotional Intelligence. It’s what human beings have – we don’t just think, we feel. Emotions affect our priorities, and our decision-making. Computers have pure intelligence. In many ways they’re more intelligent than we are, and they’re getting better all the time, exponentially. Your laptop – my mobile phone, even – is smarter than this university’s first mainframe computer, which filled a whole room. It’s been calculated that if cars had developed over the last thirty years at the same rate as computers, you’d be able to buy a Rolls-Royce today for under a pound, and it would do three million miles to the gallon. It’s only a matter of time before computers start designing themselves, and take over the world, so it’s in our interest to ensure that they evolve with emotional intelligence built in. Otherwise they might decide to exterminate us.
HELEN (laughs)
That’s pure science fiction!
RALPH
Well, a lot of science fiction has proved prophetic.
HELEN
So one day we’ll have computers that cry as well as count?
RALPH
That would be difficult. We don’t really understand why humans produce tears when they’re sad. Animals don’t. As Darwin said, ‘Crying is a puzzler.’
HELEN (taken with the phrase)
‘Crying is a puzzler.’ When did he say that?
RALPH
It’s in the notebooks. I was reading it yesterday. (He picks up from his desk a book with a bookmark in it, opens it and turns back a few pages as he speaks.) He’s thinking about laughter – how, when humans laugh, they expose their canine teeth, just like baboons. He speculates that our laughing and smiling might be traced back to the way apes communicate the discovery of food to the rest of their tribe. Here it is. ‘This way of viewing the subject important – laughing modified barking – smiling modified laughing.’ Then comes the afterthought. He can’t think what crying might be a modification of. ‘Crying is a puzzler.’
HELEN
‘Sunt lacrymae rerum.’
RALPH
My Latin’s a tad rusty.
HELEN
‘There are tears of things.’ Virgil. It’s almost untranslatable, but one knows what he means. Something like, ‘Crying is a puzzler.’
There is an electronic noise from the doorway. RALPH and HELEN turn towards it. A small robot on wheels whizzes in and stops in the middle of the room.
RALPH
Ah! This is Arthur, our latest recruit.
The robot’s lens-like head rotates slowly.
HELEN
What’s he doing?
RALPH
Learning his way around. He’s mapping the room, committing it to memory.
The robot suddenly sets off at speed, collides with something and is motionless. HELEN laughs. RALPH frowns.
RALPH
There must be something wrong with the program.
HELEN
I’d say he has a long way to go before he can get emotionally involved with another robot.
RALPH
Oh, he’s a very simple fellow. We shall be pleased if we can teach him to pick up litter.
An alarm bell rings, lights blink on and off.
HELEN
What’s happened?
RALPH
I wish I knew. (The telephone rings. He picks it up.) Messenger … Yes, what’s the problem? … A mouse? How could a – Oh, you mean a real mouse? With four legs and whiskers? … I see … Yes, yes, I’m coming. (He puts down the phone.) A mouse gnawed through a cable in our network centre.
HELEN
Is it serious?
RALPH
For the mouse, yes, he’s dead. Electrocuted. And our main server is down. I’d better go and assess the damage.
HELEN
Of course. I’ll be going. (She takes her coat.)
RALPH
If we don’t get email back soon my staff will begin to have withdrawal symptoms. And I won’t forget your email problem.
HELEN
Thank you.
Music.
Scene Seven
HELEN’s flat. She is seated at her table, typing on her laptop. She stops typing and speaks as before.
HELEN
Apparently scientists have decided that consciousness is a ‘problem’ which has to be ‘solved’. This was news to me, and not particularly welcome. Consciousness is what most novels are about, certainly mine. Consciousness is my bread and butter. I rather res
ent the idea of science poking its nose into it.
When I type ‘science’ I often leave out the first ‘e’ by mistake, so it reads like ‘skince’, and I’m tempted to leave it like that. ‘Skince’ expresses the cold, pitiless, reductive character of scientific explanations of the world. I feel this quality in Ralph Messenger. When he said about Martin’s death, ‘For him it was a good way to go,’ I nearly got up and walked away. But I didn’t.
He offered to show me round his Institute, and while I was there he gave me an article about grief, which he seemed to think I would find interesting. I’ve never read such an alienating piece of prose in my life. (She picks up the article and reads.) ‘We define grief as an extended process of cognitive reorganisation characterised by the occurrence of negatively valenced perturbant states caused by an attachment structure reacting to a death event.’ So now we know. That was what I went through in the months after Martin’s death: just a spot of cognitive reorganisation. The desolating loneliness, the helpless weeping, the booby traps of memory triggered at every turn … Halfway through the article there was a diagram supposed to represent the architecture of the mind, all boxes and circles and ellipses, connected by a tangle of swirling arrows and dotted lines – meant to show the reaction of an ‘attachment structure’ to a ‘death event’. I suppose ‘attachment structure’ is the cognitive science term for love.