Mindscan

27

Now that I was cured, I’d been getting some more vigorous exercise—I could take it now, and I didn’t want to lose the strength in my legs; I’d need that when I got back to Earth. Each day at noon, Malcolm and I met at High Eden’s basketball court.

When I arrived today, he was already there, shooting baskets from a standing position. The hoops were hugely high up—a full ten meters—so it required a lot of eye-hand coordination to sink the ball, but he was managing pretty well.

“Hey, Malcolm,” I said, coming into the court. My voice echoed the way it did in such places.

“Jacob,” he said, looking over at me. He sounded a bit wary.

“What?” I said.

“Just hoping not to get my head torn off,” said Malcolm.

“Huh? Oh, yesterday. Look, sorry—I don’t know what came over me. But, listen, have you been watching the TV from Earth?”

Malcolm sent the ball flying up. It went through the hoop, and then made the long, long fall down in slow motion. “Some.”

“Seen any news?”

“No. And it’s been a pleasure not to.”

“Well,” I said, “your son is making headlines down there.’’

Malcolm caught the ball and turned to me. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. He’s representing Karen Bessarian—the uploaded Karen—in a case about her legal personhood being challenged by her son.”

Malcolm dribbled the ball a bit. “That’s my boy!”

“I hate to say this,” I said, “but I hope he loses. I hope the other Karen loses.” I held up my hands, and Malcolm tossed the ball to me.

“Why?”

“Well,” I said, “now that I’m cured, I want to go home. Brian Hades says I can’t because the other me is the legal person. But if that gets struck down…” I dribbled the ball as I moved around the court, then sprung up rising higher and higher and higher, well above Malcolm’s head, then tipped the ball into the basket.

As I was floating down to the ground, Malcolm said. “How far along is the trial?”

“They say it’s only going to last another couple of days.” I folded my legs a bit to absorb the shock of my landing, but there really wasn’t much.

“And you think there’ll be a decision soon that’ll change your circumstances?” asked Malcolm, who was bending over to collect the ball.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Sure. Why not?”

He turned around and gently bounced the ball a couple of times. “Because nothing happens fast in the law. Suppose Deshawn wins—and he’s a damn good lawyer; he probably will.” He took a bead on the net and threw the ball. It sailed up and up, and then, on its way down, went through the hoop. “But winning the first round doesn’t matter.” He ran over—great loping strides—and caught the ball before it hit the ground. “The other side will appeal, and they’ll have to go through the whole thing again.”

He threw the ball again, but this time I think he deliberately missed, as if he were illustrating his point. “And suppose Deshawn loses,” he said. “Well, then, his side will appeal.”

I went to fetch the ball. “Yes, but—”

“And then the appeal will be appealed, and, for a case like this, it’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court.”

I had the ball, but I just held it in my hands. “Oh, surely it’s not that big.”

“Are you kidding?” said Malcolm. “It’s huge!” He let the last word echo for a few second, then: “We’re talking about the end of inheritance taxes. Immortal beings never give up their estates, after all. If it hasn’t already, I’m sure the IRS will join the case. This will drag out for years … and, anyway, all of this is just in the United States. You’re a Canadian; U.S. law doesn’t apply to you.”

“Yes, but surely similar cases will be fought in Canada.”

“Look, if you’re not going to throw the damn ball—” I tossed it to him. “Thanks.”

He started to dribble it. “Immortex may be located in Canada, because of the liberal laws up there.” He paused, then looked at the floor. “I mean down there. But how many Canadians have uploaded so far? Most of Immortex’s clients are rich Americans or Europeans.” He leapt up, sailing higher and higher, and did a slam-dunk. As he drifted down, he said. “And you don’t have any children, do you?”

I shook my head.

Back on the floor now, he said, “Then there’s not likely to be a battle over your estate.”

My heart was sinking. “Maybe that’s true, but…”

He was heading over to pick up the ball. “Plus, even if the U.S. strikes down the transference of personhood, Canada might not—you guys have gone in a different direction on lots of issues. Christ, a poodle can legally marry a four-slice toaster in Canada. Can you really see your country slamming the door on uploaded consciousness?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

He had the ball in his hands now. “Maybe. But it’ll take years. Years. You and I will be long dead by the time this is all resolved.” He threw the ball to me, but I didn’t catch it. It bounced along, the sound it was making matching the pounding that was starting again in my head.

As we rose when Judge Herrington entered the courtroom the next day, I noted that he looked like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. Of course, I hadn’t gotten any, and Porter’s disassembling about uploads and sleep was bothering me.

Sorry—did I say disassembling? I meant dissembling, of course. Christ, all this talk about us not being real was getting to me, I guess.

Everyone sat down. Malcolm was on my right; off to my left were Tyler’s wife and kids.

“Ms. Lopez,” the judge said, nodding his long face, “you may present the defendant’s case.”

Maria Lopez was wearing orange today, and, for some reason, the blonde highlights were gone from her hair and eyebrows. She rose and bowed toward the bench.

“Thank you, your honor. We call Professor Caleb Poe.”

“Caleb Poe,” called out the clerk.

A dapper, middle-aged white man came forward and was sworn in.

“Professor Poe,” said Lopez, “what’s your job?”

“I’m a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan.” He had a nice, smooth voice.

“And in that capacity, have you given much thought to what it means to be conscious?”

“Indeed, yes. In fact, one of my books is called Consciousness.”

Some time was spent going through his other credentials, then: “In your professional opinion,” said Lopez, “is the object seated there claiming to be Karen Bessarian actually her?”

Poe shook his head emphatically. “Absolutely not.”

“And why do you say that?”

Poe had obviously been rehearsed as well—he launched immediately into his spiel without any hesitation. “There’s a concept in philosophy called the zombie. It’s an unfortunate choice of words, because the philosophical zombie is nothing like the reanimated dead of voodoo lore. Rather, the philosophical zombie is the classic example of a human whose lights are on, but nobody is at home. It appears to be awake and intelligent, and it carries out complex behaviors, but there is no consciousness. A zombie is not a person, and yet behaves indistinguishably from one.”

I looked at the jurors. They, at least, appeared well rested, and seemed to be following with interest.

“In fact,” continued Poe, “I contend that all human beings are first and foremost zombies, but with the added element of consciousness essentially along as a passenger. Let me make the distinction clear: a zombie is conscious in that it is responsive to its environment—but that’s all. True consciousness—which, as I’ll argue later is what we really mean when we talk about personhood—recognizes that there is something that it is like to be aware.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lopez.

Poe was a fidgety sort. He shifted his weight from side to side in the witness chair.

“Well, a classic example is derived from John Searle’s famous argument against strong artificial intelligence. Imagine a man in a room, with a door that has a slot in it—like those slots old-fashioned doors had for paper-mail to be pushed through. Got it? Now, imagine a man sitting in that room. The man has a huge book with him, and a bunch of cards with strange squiggles on them. Okay. Now, someone outside pushes a piece of paper through the slot, and on that piece of paper is a series of squiggles. The man’s job is to look at those squiggles, find a matching sequence of squiggles in his big book, and then copy out the next series of squiggles that appear in the book onto the paper that has come in through the slot, and then push the piece of paper back out the slot.” He imitated doing just that.

“Now,” continued Poe, “unbeknownst to the man, the squiggles are in fact Chinese ideograms, and the book is a list of answers to questions in Chinese. So, when the question, ‘How are you?’ is pushed through the slot in Chinese, the man looks up the Chinese for ‘How are you?’ in the answer book, and finds that the appropriate reply is the Chinese for ‘I am fine.’

“Well, from the perspective of the person outside the room—the one who posed the original question in Chinese—it seems that the person inside the room understands Chinese. But in fact he doesn’t; he doesn’t even know what it really is that he’s doing. And he certainly doesn’t have that feeling that you or I would have when we say we know Chinese, or understand classical music. The person in the room is a zombie. It behaves as if it is consciously aware, but it is in fact not.”

Poe shifted again in his chair. “That metaphor is made concrete in an experience we’ve all had in our lives: we get in our cars to drive somewhere, and our minds wander as we drive along. When we get to the destination, we have no recollection of having made the trip. So, who was the driver? The zombie! It played chauffeur, while your consciousness—a mere passenger—did something else.”

Lopez nodded, and Poe went on. “Think about it: how often do you have to stop and ask yourself, ‘Now, what was it I had for lunch today?’ We often eat whole meals with no real attention to the fact that we are eating. But if you can imagine eating or driving without paying attention—with your consciousness distracted by something else—if you can imagine doing those things at least temporarily without conscious involvement, then it’s possible to imagine them permanently without conscious involvement. That’s the zombie: the doer, the actor, the thing that goes through all the motions without any real person being present.”

“But these are very complex behaviors,” said Lopez.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Poe. “That driving zombie was operating a motor vehicle, obeying traffic signals, looking over its shoulder to check its blind spot before pulling out”—he was now acting out the actions he was describing—“exchanging hand signals with other drivers, perhaps even listening to traffic reports and altering its route based on them. All of that can—and does—happen without conscious attention.”

Maria Lopez moved out from behind the defendant’s table and into the well. “Surely that’s not so, Professor Poe. Oh, I grant you that some actions are so ingrained as to become instinctive, but listening to a traffic report, and making a decision based on it—surely that requires consciousness, no?”

“I disagree—and I think you will, too, ma’am, if you consider it for a moment.” He spread his arms, taking us all in. “Doubtless everyone in this court has had this experience: you’re reading a novel, and at some point you realize you have no idea what was said in the last page. Why? Because your conscious attention had wandered off to consider something else. But there’s no doubt that you have read the page that you have no awareness of; indeed, you’ve quite likely tapped the page-down key on your datapad while reading it. Your eyes tracked across dozens or hundreds of words of text, even though you weren’t consciously taking them in.

“Well, then who was doing the reading? The zombie you! Fortunately, zombies have no feelings, so when the conscious you realizes that it has missed out on a page or more of text, you say, wait, wait, go back, and you re-read the material the zombie has already read.

“The zombie is content to redo this, since it never gets bored—boredom is a conscious state. And then the two of you—conscious you and zombie you—go on reading new material together in unison. But the zombie is actually in the foreground; the conscious you is in the background. It’s as if the conscious you is looking over the zombie’s shoulder, following along as the zombie reads.”

“Any other examples?” asked Lopez, now leaning her bottom against the defendant’s table.

Poe nodded. “Certainly. Has this ever happened to you? You’re lying in bed asleep and the phone rings.” He pantomimed lifting an old-fashioned handset. “You answer it, have a conversation, and then, once it’s over, you have no idea at all what you’ve said. Or your spouse says to you that you chatted about something late at night, when you both were supposedly awake, but come the morning you have no recollection of it. This happens all the time. If the conscious you doesn’t answer your phone or reply when spoken to, the zombie you gets on with the job.”

“Surely it’s only capable of the most mechanical responses, though?” said Lopez.

Poe shook his head, and shifted again in his seat. “Not at all. In fact, the zombie is responsible for most of what we say. How could it be otherwise? You might start a sentence that will end up being twenty or thirty words long. Do you really believe that you have thought out that whole sentence in your brain before you start speaking it? Stop for a moment right now, and think this thought: ‘On the way home from court today, I’d better pick up some bread and milk.’ It took a measurable time for you to think that, and yet we can talk nonstop for extended periods without pauses to work out the thoughts we want to express. No, in most speech we discover what it is that we’re going to say as it is said—just as those listening to us do.”

Poe looked over at the jurors, then back at Lopez. “Have you ever been surprised by what you said? Of course—but that would be impossible if you knew in advance what you were going to say. And, in fact, whatever validity talk therapy has is based on this principle: your therapist forces you listen attentively to the words your zombie is spewing out, and, at some point you exclaim, ‘My God! So that’s what really going on in my head!”

“Yes, okay, maybe,” said Lopez. She played the devil’s advocate well. “But talking is simple enough—as is driving a car—until something goes wrong. Then, surely, your consciousness takes over—takes the driver’s seat so to speak.”

“No, not at all,” said Poe. “In fact, it would be disastrous if it did so. Consider another example: playing tennis.” He imitated a man swinging a racquet. “Tennis is one-hundred percent a spectator sport, from consciousness’s point of view. The balls lob back and forth too fast for conscious processing of their trajectory, speed, and so on.

“In fact, here’s a trick. If you want to beat an old pro at tennis, do this: let him whip your butt in a practice match, then compliment him on his technique. Ask him to show you exactly what he’s doing that’s better than what you’re doing; get him to articulate the process, and demonstrate it in slow motion. Then challenge him to a rematch. His consciousness will still be dwelling on how tennis is played, on what you’re supposed to be doing—and that will interfere with his zombie. Only when his consciousness retreats to the sidelines, and the zombie starts playing the game on its own, will he be back at top form again.”

Poe spread his arms as if all this were obvious. “Same thing with driving. If you’re about to hit another car, you can’t stop to think about pumping the brakes, or how to turn to avoid fishtailing, or whatever. Consciousness will get you killed; you have to leave it to your zombie to react without the delays caused by conscious thought.”

“But can’t you take this all one silly step further, Professor Poe?” said Lopez, looking not at him, but at the jurors as if she were speaking on their behalf. “I mean, I know I’m conscious; I know I’m not a zombie. But, if we believe what you’re saying, you could be a zombie, just going through the motions of giving expert testimony without any real awareness. Doesn’t this all devolve to solipsism—the position that I am the only one who really exists?”

Poe nodded. “Up until a year or two ago, I would have agreed with you. Solipsism is arrogance writ large, and there’s no rational basis for believing that you, Maria Lopez, are the chosen one, the only real, conscious human being who has ever existed. But Immortex has changed that.” He held up a pair of fingers. “Now there are two kinds of actors on the stage. One kind are humans, who evolved from a long line of hominids and primates and earlier mammals and mammal-like reptiles and amphibians and fishes, and on and on back to the first single-celled organisms—things very much like the paramecia Dr. Porter talked about.

“And the other is what Immortex calls a Mindscan, an up-loaded consciousness. A reasonable person can, by extrapolation from his own inner life, recognize that others are conscious, too—or, more precisely, that others have a conscious rider in their zombie bodies. But as far as I’m concerned, all Immortex has demonstrated is that they can recreate the zombie part; there is zero evidence before this court that the consciousness that once dwelt in the biological Karen Bessarian has been duplicated. Yes, the lights are on in that—that thing sitting there—but there is no reason at all to think that anyone is at home. The fact that Mindscans don’t dream is damning proof that this is true.”

Poe looked into the seating gallery, past me to where Dr. Porter was, and pointed an accusing finger. “Indeed, Andrew Porter himself said he doesn’t know what consciousness is, and that song-and-dance he gave about microtubules is just obfuscation. Whatever consciousness really is, there’s no positive evidence that it’s being transferred in the Mindscan process.” Poe crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The burden is entirely on Immortex to prove that they have transferred it, and, as I say, there’s zero evidence that that is in fact the case.”