Secret Thoughts Read online

  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.