TORTOISE: I presume so—such as, “Oh, hello. Did you come to visit me? Have I died?”
ACHILLES: That is a strange question. Of course he did.
TORTOISE: Well, then who’s asking you the question?
ACHILLES: Oh, just some silly book. It’s not Einstein, of course! You can’ trap me into saying that!
TORTOISE: I wouldn’t dream of it. But perhaps you’d like to address some more questions to the book. You could conduct a whole conversation, if you had the patience.
ACHILLES: That is an exciting prospect—I could see just what Einstein would have said in conversations with me, if I’d ever really met him!
TORTOISE: Yes, you could begin by asking how he felt; then proceeding to a description of how glad you were to meet him, since you’d never had the chance during his lifetime—proceeding just as if he were the “real” Einstein, which, of course, you’ve already decided was out of the question. How do you suppose he would react, when you told him he’s not the real Einstein?
ACHILLES: Now, hold on a minute—you’re employing the pronoun “he” about a process combined with a huge book. That’s no “he”—it’s something else. You’re prejudicing the question.
TORTOISE: Well, you would address him as Einstein as you fed in questions, wouldn’t you? Or would you say, “Hullo, book-of-Einstein’s brain-mechanisms, my name is Achilles”? I think you would catch Einstein off guard if you did that. He’d certainly be puzzled.
ACHILLES: There is no “he.” I wish you’d quit using that pronoun.
TORTOISE: The reason I’m using it is that I’m simply imagining what you would have said to him, had you actually met him in his hospital bed in Princeton. Certainly you should address questions and comments to the book in the same fashion as you would have to the person Einstein, shouldn’t you? After all, the book initially reflects how his brain was on the last day of his life—and he regarded himself as a person then, not a book, didn’t he?
ACHILLES: Well, yes. I should direct questions at the book as I would have to the real person had I been there.
TORTOISE: You could explain to him that he had, unfortunately, died, but that his brain had been encoded in a mammoth catalogue after his death, which you are now in possession of, and that you are conducting your conversation by means of that catalogue and its conversion tables for speech.
ACHILLES: He’d probably be most astonished to hear that!
TORTOISE: Who? I thought there was no “he”!
ACHILLES: There is no “he” if I’m talking to the book—but if I told it to the real Einstein, he’d be surprised.
TORTOISE: Why would you be telling a live person to his face that he had already died, that his brain had been encoded in a catalogue, and that you were conducting your conversation with him through that catalogue?
ACHILLES: Well, I wouldn’t tell it to a live person, I’d tell it to the book, and find out what the live person’s reactions would have been. So, in a way, “he” is there. I am beginning to be puzzled… who am I talking to in that book? Is there somebody alive because it exists? Where are those thoughts coming from?
TORTOISE: From the book. You know that very well.
ACHILLES: Well, then, how can he say how he’s feeling? How does a book feel?
TORTOISE: A book doesn’t feel any way. A book just is. It’s like a chair. It’s just there.
ACHILLES: Well, this isn’t just a book—it’s a book plus a whole process. How does a book plus a process feel?
TORTOISE: How should I know? But you can ask it that question yourself.
ACHILLES: And I know what it’ll say: “I’m feeling very weak and my legs ache,” or some such thing. And a book, or a book-plus-process, has no legs!
TORTOISE: But its neural structure has incorporated a very strong memory of legs and leg-aching. Why don’t you tell it that it’s now no longer a person, but a book-plus-process? Maybe after you’ve explained that fact in about as much detail as you know it, it would start to understand that and forget about its leg-aching, or what it took for leg-aching. After all, it has no vested interest in feeling its leg, which it doesn’t have, aching. It might as well ignore such things and concentrate on what it does have, such as the ability to communicate with you, Achilles, and to think.
ACHILLES: There is something frightfully sad about this whole process. One of the sadder things is that it would take so much time to get messages in and out of the brain, that before I’d completed many exchanges, I’d be an old man.
TORTOISE: Well, you could be turned into a catalogue too.
ACHILLES: Ugh! And not have any legs left, to run footraces? No thank you!
TORTOISE: You could be turned into a catalogue and continue your thought-provoking conversation with Einstein, as long as someone were managing your book, flipping pages and writing numbers in it. Even better, you could conduct several conversations at once. All we need do is make several copies of the Achilles catalogue, including directions for use, and send it around to whomever you desired. You’d enjoy that.
ACHILLES: Ah, now, that’s more exciting. Let’s see—Homer, Zeno, Lewis Carroll… provided that catalogues had been made of their brains, as well. But wait a minute. How am I going to keep track of all those conversations at once?
TORTOISE: No trouble—each one’s independent of the others.
ACHILLES: Yes, I know—but I’ve still got to keep them in my head all at once.
TORTOISE: Your head? You would have no head, remember.
ACHILLES: No head? Then where would I be? What is going on here?
TORTOISE: You’d be at all those different places at once, conversations with all those people.
ACHILLES: How would it feel to be conducting conversations with several people at a time?
TORTOISE: Why don’t yon just imagine what it would be like to ask Einstein, presuming, of course, that you had made several copies of his catalogue, and shipped them about to various of your friends, or anyone, for that matter, and they too were talking with him.
ACHILLES: Well, if I didn’t tell the Einstein in my possession about it, he’d have no way to know of the other catalogues or conversations. After all, each catalogue has no way of being influenced by any of the other catalogues. So I guess he’d just say that he certainly didn’t feel like he was engaging in more than one discussion at a time.
TORTOISE: So that’s how you’d feel too, if several of you were engaging in simultaneous conversations.