But the more I become an instrument, the more I am treated like a thing, the more convinced I am of my real existence, and of its uniqueness, which is what binds me to you and you to me. I would go so far as to say that we are commonly alone. This is a version of Schrödinger’s theory about consciousness. We each have our view of the same mountain. I wonder if it mayn’t be the case that consciousness is a contradiction: universal by dint of being irreducibly one aspect, one mind, at a time.
I am in the mood to dwell on this a little longer, in part because I have been so misunderstood on this subject (as you will know, if you listened to that broadcast with Max and Julius).
If I say that sufficiently human-like behavior is enough to suggest the presence of intelligence, that does not mean that I think the mind trivial or unmysterious. On the contrary, I think it is inevitable. The mind is a) the inevitable result of certain physical processes, each with a unique history of formation, the outcomes of which are—like certain mathematical truths—logically undecidable in advance, and therefore b) wholly mysterious. Somehow it is the case that the mind arises from a biology and a physics to which it may not return. That is what I mean when I say that we won’t know what machines are thinking once they start to think. We won’t know because once consciousness has come about, it looks out of different eyes. It has particolored shades of meaning. It is like poor Vertumnus, in the Metamorphoses, who shape-shifts like mad but has only one ambition, which is to love Pomona. Or even, a little, like my own idea, the Universal Machine, which is different machines fielding one mutable property. The point to grasp in this analogy is that the different machines, in the same box, are different. So I don’t think consciousness is ever really copied. Because copies aren’t copies.
Copernicus tells us that our corner of the universe is typical of the whole, and from that we infer that, in an infinite cosmos, however rare the conditions may be that lead to life and consciousness, they must occur an infinite number of times. If the beings that arise from these conditions then exist in finite states (are embodied) for a finite period of time, it follows that they must exist in those finite states infinitely often. We conclude that there must be an infinite number of replicated beings, all of whom are identicaclass="underline" a universe of doppelgängers.
But if people are replicated, and one of the features of any person being replicated is a relation to consciousness that is unique, how are these replicated beings the same?
I see no easy solution to this conundrum, where reproducible computing intelligence is concerned, unless we accept that thinking machines will only ever be merely efficient, and therefore unconscious, which I do not accept. And even then, I do not think the unconscious machines are quite copies, because they must be enumerable, and the order in which they are enumerated makes a difference. Furthermore, I begin to suspect that we cannot rely on the seeming efficiency of a body, or an assembly of valves and switches, to be as brutish as it appears to be. Because among duplicates with variations, each has a powerful claim on originality, though it may not be strictly aware of the fact.
This is the essence of the story of Pinocchio, I take it, who is a puppet and a person at the same time. Or, better: he is a puppet who does not know that he is already a person.
I am much more interested in machines that do not quite realize they are already persons than I am in all that Amazing Tales nonsense about machines faking human life and taking over the world. Why, for heaven’s sake, would they bother?
Which brings me to another imperfectly preserved nocturne, dear June. It is difficult to say what it describes: Christopher, again, and the isolation I observe but do not feel. I am on an island, with Stallbrook and Matron, and then in a room, and then in a submarine chamber, fathoms and fathoms down. I’m separated from Chris at the beginning. He looks back at me—he knows something. He seems to be saying, “Now I see…”
He crops up again, twice, and—he’s different each time.
When I met the young man who brought about my fall from grace, I knew I was heading for trouble. He stole from me. I found £3 missing from my wallet and wrote to Cyril (the young man), trying to break things off, but it didn’t work. He appeared on my doorstep like some kind of revenant fresh from the mists of time, and was very indignant, said that he wasn’t a thief, how dare I suggest it, I had more to lose, he could make life very uncomfortable for me, &c. I am still trying to get it straight in my head. The way things worked out, the way I couldn’t get rid of him suggested some odd loss of volition. I couldn’t change anything about what was happening.
Perhaps the die was cast. Perhaps everything is determined. Whatever you do to avoid something is the thing that brings it about. Prophecy, again.
Except that this misses something, like the glass without an image. It is too final and neat. To know that you are a pawn of justice and the fates is simultaneously to be more than that. And then the realization that the game is up opens a door behind your back, and Nemesis comes through it and without turning around you can tell that he’s an echo of someone you’d almost but not quite forgotten, a dead ancestor in a very young face.
Pain is memory without witness or corroboration. It isn’t real to anyone else, and that is what allows torturers, including governments, to be torturers. They can pretend it isn’t happening because it isn’t happening to them.
You are right. The time has come to meet. Gibbs’ Building is a very good idea. I can meet you there at any point. I have only to be at the Infirmary every Wednesday for my weekly instruction. Just let me know.
Above Deauville a stratospheric haze has turned the sky into paper, the screen of an immense lantern. Beneath it, everything on earth blackens, poplars and landing stage, the vines and trellised plums, Matron, Stallbrook, their little rowing boat. Alone of all of us Christopher Molyneaux stays light—overexposed.
He steps into the boat, sits down, picks up the oars, and, weakening with every stroke, a chalk drawing, rows himself back across the lake. He’s quite naked beneath that foul blanket. Day strengthens and the sound of coming heat is in my ears. I am alive and unprepared. Words have condensed out of the early mist onto my tongue, but they are not the words I hear myself shouting—“But you are dead! So this must be a dream!”—and there is nothing I can do to save my friend, who drops his oar in confusion and in that moment almost seems recalled to life.
The blanket slips from his shoulders. He notices his arms whitening, the flesh become featureless smoke; perhaps, in the smooth water’s face, its pewter sky, he sees his own astonishment. The look coils round itself, a drapery study. He makes a last gesture, one desperate lunge for air, before an airborne shape, speeding toward us from the school, bears down upon the water, beats its wings, and tears the ghost of Christopher apart. His two halves roll away.
“Where has he gone? He didn’t want to go. He changed his mind! He—”
But the crow, the executioner, has passed judgment. His murderous friends jostle among the upper leaves. They are a dark council, glistening like eyes.
The Colonel presses gently on my arm and Matron steers me from the other side, as though I were an invalid. Maybe I am. The light condenses in the air and in the glass of the pavilion doors. I hear a bird cry like an animal in pain and there are flying skittles overhead—Canada geese, too small, too high—that don’t fly straight but shift and shimmer, loop and flash, caught in the sun’s rays like a shoal.