"...Louis had no intention of effecting a rescue at the slightest risk to himself. I could see his mind working as clearly as if his skull had been transparent... when he finished taking over the ship according to his plan, he would be the man holding the shotgun."
-Donald Hamilton, Murderers' Row (London, 2013), 19, p. 180.
A mind visible through a transparent skull is a colourful image but, of course, if Louis' skull really were transparent, then all that Helm would see through it would be a brain consisting of electrically firing, electrochemically interacting neurons. That sight would not tell him that Louis was thinking, "I will not rescue anyone. When I take over the ship, then I will have everyone else on board at gunpoint."
Might there be a science that would enable us to observe not just the outer surface of the brain but also all its internal interactions and to deduce from them the corresponding thoughts? I doubt it. Think of all the thoughts that have ever been thought, will ever be thought or could have been thought and all the corresponding neural interactions. How is anyone going to know how any one of those interactions corresponds to any particular thought? But, even if this were possible, to deduce, e.g., a written account of the thought, "I will not rescue anyone...," would not be to experience the thought in the way that its thinker does. The qualitative difference between an objectively observed cerebral state and a subjectively experienced mental state is the mind-body problem.
Meanwhile, Poul Anderson's first future history foreshadows his last. Two unemployed drunks fear that robots will supersede humanity. They will not. However, in Anderson's novel, Genesis, post-organic intelligences do supersede humanity. And one of those intelligences re-creates humanity. An end and a beginning.
4 comments:
Some people are good at 'reading' thoughts through body language and expressions and tone of voice and eye-movement and so forth.
Others aren't -- I'm not, unless I think about it consciously.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: But some writers, such as Anderson, have tried to describe what it might be like to subjectively and actually experience the minds and thoughts of others. I can think of two examples by Anderson: "Journeys End" and "Progress." The first shows us telepaths whose talent was caused by an accidental genetic mutation; the latter, in the Maurai timeline, shows us "telepathy" caused by surgical insertion of tiny radio devices in the skull.
Mr. Stirling: Might it also be possible to understand what others might be thinking by accurately "hearing" what they are subvocalizing?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: possibly, but a lot of thought is non-verbal.
I can "see" my cats thinking, for example -- "Shall I go have a snack, or a nap?" -- with their heads swiveling back and forth between the destinations. But they're not using words.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I know how much of my own thinking is non-verbal. And I do wonder once in a while how REAL a phenomenon telepathy is.
Ad astra! Sean
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