What is it like to be a … ?

As I was writing a recent story, the thought occurred to me that one of my characters was asking that question, and I remembered several instances where I’d encountered it in my reading: probably in something by Oliver Sachs, Daniel Dennett or Steven Pinker. 

The question was first discussed in Thomas Nagel’s 1974 article in The Philosophical Review, in which he advocated the idea that consciousness and subjective experience cannot be reduced to brain activity.

In "What is it Like to Be a Bat?", Nagel argues that consciousness has essential to it a subjective character, a what it is like aspect. He states that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." Nagel also suggests that the subjective aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science. He claims that "[i]f we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done." Furthermore, he states that "it seems unlikely that any physical theory of mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to the general problem of subjective and objective." (Extracted from a “Yahoo Answers” forum online.)

 The character in my story was trying to comprehend the consciousness of whales—assuming, of course, that whales are conscious beings. Since then, I’ve reflected on the general question addressed as the theory of mind. We all behave toward each other as though their minds are to some extent like our own. We can say we understand what someone means by what they express only to the extent that we can imagine what we would mean if we expressed the same thing. (That’s not to say that we would in fact express the same thing, only that it makes some kind of sense to us.)

My dear, patient, understanding wife, Judith, is the human being I feel closest to. She and I might have differences of opinion or point of view, but when we speak to each other both of us seem to have the same understanding of what our words mean. Therein lies sublime comfort.

We used to have a cat named Shawna whom I sometimes found looking at me, our eyes connecting us in what felt like a profound way. The question occurred to me: what is she thinking? What is going on in her mind at this moment? What is it like to be Shawna?

In much of our lives, I suppose that we all assume that there is some regularity, some common mental ground on which we tread. We could not have built our civilizations without that assurance.

Maybe my stories all deal with the same theme. When I write what a character is thinking or saying or doing, I’m projecting something of myself into that character, even though in real life I might never say or do the same thing. I often protest that I don’t know what he or she is going to say before I’ve written it on the page. I almost never know how a story is going to end until I’ve arrived there along with the characters. I’m experiencing what it is like to be that character. Sometimes it’s a real struggle.

Empathy is not the same as sympathy. I think of the first as a precondition of the second. One has to recognize that another has a familiar feeling before one can share in the feeling. Perhaps they are simply different vectors on the plane of awareness of others. I’m certain that our cat was aware of me not only as a fellow creature but as a recognizable individual. Was she aware of humans in general? I can’t say. Still, I think that much of our interaction with our pets assumes that they feel at least some things in common with us. We often interpret their behavior and expressions on the basis of our own—our personal theories of mind. “Anthropomorphizing” is how some put it, projecting our own reality into (usually non-human) others.

As Nagel asserted forty-some years ago, "If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done." Those in the neurological fields may by this time have some inklings—or at least intuitions—that are closer to such a goal. We in the general population are more interested in the personal ramifications. Getting inside the mind of a whale or even another human in order to understand them doesn’t necessarily require a theoretical examination of neuronal activity.

We learn by trial and error. An infant learns first how to understand what the parent means by whatever signals are given, and this understanding spreads to others in its environment. I suppose that those who regularly work with animals come to understand at least some of the clues given by those animals. Empathy comes by degrees, never perfectly. Sympathy probably depends on the emotional capacity of the observer for feeling, as well as for empathizing with the situation of the animal. 

To say that we can never truly know what is in the mind of another creature may be too much. I’m certain that I’ll never know everything that Judith knows, no matter how long we live together. Indeed, that’s part of the joy of being with her; the little mysteries in our interactions are part of the charm of our relationship. “Familiarity breeds contempt” puts it too strongly. What we have together is never boring.

Still, it would be comforting to know a little of what that stranger I meet might be thinking and feeling, or that large dog I encounter on the street, or even that humpback whale who displays her tail as she dives beneath the opaque surface of the ocean. And I’ll probably never forget the seeming intensity of our cat Shawna’s gaze and wondering what was going on in that pretty little head.

Perhaps, gazing into my eyes, she was thinking the same thing.

Shawna

Whales

A story...

“This is interesting,” Waldo said. “A few ounces of alcohol—I’m partial to gin, myself—relaxes certain neural areas of the brain, diminishing the ordinary behavioral controls of the cerebral cortex.”

I watched him grinning to himself without any self-consciousness. Waldo was clearly having fun. We’d been sitting in my living room talking, and it had been clear to me that he was one of those aliens inhabiting the body of some poor human who’d had the misfortune to die just when they were attending to things, and he was getting used to the complexities of the human mind. “He” remembered things the former inhabitant remembered, and I could see the contortions he had to go through to be “in” the body. 

 He continued, “The world does, indeed, look differently through this lens.”

I just grinned, I gathered from his response to me, which was, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

I didn’t say anything. I’d been here before, and I didn’t have any particular feeling about them. I’d never met one who seemed threatening in any way. To me it was more comical than anything. They—if they are in any understandable way “plural”—have been having a hard time understanding human beings. It’s like a retriever struggling to understand its first command “fetch!” Waldo and I’d had some long conversations that day, and our relationship was casual and friendly.

“You’ve been developing this chemical compound over centuries,” he said, “What a grand time it is, watching the subtle differences in effects of various combinations of the distillation processes. I’ve tried several psychogenic compounds, and alcohol seems the most entertaining.”

“It works for me,” I said, sipping the vodka martini I’d poured for myself. Waldo had turned up his nose at first, but he drank one down. I was curious what it would do for him.

He had sort of invited himself to my place after we met in the bar down on State Street that afternoon. The Red Fox was crowded, and we couldn’t hear each other very well, so I suggested that it was quieter at my place.

It seems that his previous incarnation, if that’s the right term, was a college professor of marine biology who had died from a heart attack in front of his class. “He” woke up in the E.R. and insisted upon checking himself out before the next of kin were even notified.

“You know, you humans have pretty much taken over this planet,” he said. “With your communication media, nothing can get past you.” He downed a second martini like it was water. “Still, you have no idea of what other creatures do with their environment.”

“Gimme a forinstance,” I said, aware that I was slurring my words.

“Do you know that the blue whale’s brain could contain everything your species has ever thought?”

“Well,” I said, “why hasn’t it?”

He looked at me in a funny way, like he couldn’t understand where I was coming from. “How do you know it hasn’t?”

“They just go swimming around out there in the ocean. What else do they do?”

Waldo sighed. “Jesus,” he said, and kinda closed down.

A little while later, he looked up at me and said, “What do you know about your planet?”

“I don’t know much, but I’ve seen the earth with Google Earth. You can almost see individual people on the beaches at Del Ray. What can a whale see? What’s he know about, say, Saint Louis?

“You humans think that because you can kill every other creature on the planet that you’re ‘the top of the food chain,’ as you claim.”

I shrugged. 

He squinted slightly. “What you call wisdom is just an accumulation of information by your species, disseminated in various languages over time, about how stuff works.”

It was amusing for me, even as muzzy as I was feeling, to watch his struggle for control. Obviously, the human part of him was having a ball, but the alien part was in over his head. “You sound like a pontificating professor emeritus,” I said. “Wisdom isn’t just information.”

He grinned. “I know more than I can tell.”

“How is that working for you?” I asked, draining the last three drops from my beautiful little triangular glass and peering at him through its side.

“Tacit knowledge. A man named Michael Polanyi explained it.”

I shook my head and grinned back. “You learned that from me, three hours ago.”

Waldo looked confused at first, then smiled. “I did, indeed, didn’t I?”

“Good thing whales don’t drink alcohol,” I said. “They could do some real damage, with all they know.” 

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “I wonder,” he finally said, “how much of a whale’s knowledge is tacit knowledge.”

“Maybe all of it?” Something hit me. “I would have thought that you or your kind would have inhabited whales by now. How do you know they have so much knowledge?”

He sighed. “I believe that was tried, about five hundred years ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems that their brains are so much more complicated than those of humans. Impervious, almost, to inhabiting.”

“You mean we aren’t much of a challenge.”

He sat up. Picking up his glass, he signaled “more.”

I wasn’t sure, by that point, whether “more” would be a good idea. He was about two hundred pounds, close to my weight, but he was—or had been—younger and with a much better build. Some guys get unpredictable when they’ve had too much booze. Sober, Waldo was a pussycat. Never hurt a fly, I think. 

“Alcohol can be toxic in too high a concentration,” I said, trying to sound erudite. 

He put his glass down.

“Sorry, Waldo,” I said. “Maybe that’s where human experience just might be significant, even to you.”

His eyes were slightly bloodshot. I had to laugh. “You look like a boss I once had,” I said, “who used to invite his customers out for lunch, you know, to get in their good graces.”

Waldo smiled. “I understand.”

“Well, my boss used to drink a lot at those lunches. I guess the customers did, too, but he would get so drunk we’d have to lead him out to the car.”

He frowned, and began to stand up. “Whoa!” His arms went out as if to steady himself.

I laughed. “Where did you hear that word?”

“I don’t know. It just came out.”

“More of that tacit knowledge,” I said. “Anyway, I guess you’re feeling the booze.”

“Quite unsteady.” He sat back down.

I went into the kitchen and returned with a box of Triscuits. “Eating something might help,” I said, dumping a few of the crackers into the decorative bowl on the coffee table.

“So tell me more about whales,” I said.

“The adult sperm whale brain is four hundred eighty-eight cubic inches. Our brain,” and he pointed to his own head, “is about seventy-nine cubic inches. It took a lot of brain power to transform the whale from a mammal something like a hippopotamus into a totally aquatic mammal.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “but that doesn’t account for the present size of the whale’s brain. Neuroanatomical evidence suggests that the large whale brain supports a complex intelligence that is driven by the socially complex and highly communicative lifestyle of these predators.” 

Waldo leaned back and smiled at me.

“Wow,” I said. “I have to hand it to you. You’ve got a lot of Wikipedia stored in your seventy-nine cubic inches. But I can’t imagine why they need all that power for just swimming around in the ocean.”

He looked down. “Yes,” he said slowly, “that’s why I’m here talking with you and not out there in the Pacific Ocean communicating with another whale up in the Aleutian Islands.”

“You took the easier class.”

Waldo frowned. “That’s putting it rather strongly, isn’t it?”

My face felt hot. “Sorry,” I said, “My social skills are diminished by martinis.”

“Actually, humans were the obvious choice to study at this moment in time.” He studied his empty martini glass.

“Why is that?”

Looking directly at me, he said, “Because you are indeed at the top of the food chain here, but you are also capable of destroying all life on the planet. Perhaps that could be diverted somehow.”

“You want to save us from ourselves?” I was thinking about pouring some more vodka.

“Save not only you,” he said. “Those whales, for example.”

I nibbled on a Triscuit. “Whales shall inherit the earth? I thought that was to be the roaches.”

Waldo looked at me—shocked or merely puzzled, I couldn’t tell.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was being funny.”

“I once knew a fox terrier who was funnier.”

We both laughed at that.

“So,” I began, “I’ve met a few ‘people’ like you, but I’ve never found out just why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

“I’m here to learn,” he said with a slight smile.

I sighed and mixed myself another martini. Holding the bottle of vermouth up, I looked at him questioningly.

He nodded. I mixed another one.

“You just said you wanted to save the planet. You’ve got an objective, then, right?”

He shrugged and sipped at his drink.

“I’d better fix us something more substantial than whole-wheat crackers.” I got up and headed for the kitchen. Over my shoulder, I said, “Do you eat meat, or are you a vegetarian?”

When he didn’t respond, I stopped and looked back at him. He had sloshed a bit of his martini on his shirt front.

“What?” I asked.

“I’ll never get used to you humans.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes, you’re a vegetarian.’ ” I went to the refrigerator and dug out a mac-and-cheese casserole left over from two days ago. Loading it into the microwave, I returned to the living room, where Waldo had finished his martini.

“It’s not vegan,” I said. “It’s got cheese in it.”

He slumped back and closed his eyes. “I know it’s not,” he said, “but it feels as though the room is spinning.” He smiled at the mixed meanings.

I dashed for the hall closet and brought back a bucket. “Just in case you feel like you’re going to vomit,” I said. 

I shouldn’t have given him that last martini.

We sat for a few minutes until the microwave dinged.

The food helped both of us. I watched him closely as we ate. As I said, he looked to be younger than I (which isn’t saying much), and in pretty good shape for somebody who had “survived” a heart attack.

“I’m curious,” I said, “how you happened to get into this particular person.”

Waldo was curiously nonchalant in explaining. “He was clearly gone, but not damaged beyond repair. No close relatives.” Like that explained everything.

He paused, then went on. “Afterward, I took a leave of absence from my academic post ‘to recuperate’, and they generously allowed me to disappear for a while. Maybe after I put his recent life back together in my mind, I will return to teaching. If I don’t, I have the resources to do other things.”

“You said you’re here to learn. Sounds to me like you have more agenda than that. You mentioned saving the earth from us, or something like that.”

He smiled. “Wouldn’t you? If you saw some creature about to cause a major catastrophe and you might be able to prevent it, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s also something to be said for allowing the creature to figure out for himself or herself what needs to be done, provided I’ve already satisfied myself that they have the wisdom to recover from the situation.”

His eyebrow went up. “You think humans have the necessary wisdom?”

“I think from what you said earlier that you don’t—maybe don’t yet—understand what ‘wisdom’ really is.” I was feeling on thin ice. This man, or creature, or being—whatever it was—could run circles around me in knowledge and intelligence. But something was lacking.

Waldo just looked at me.

“We know,” I said, “collectively we know what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic destruction to ourselves and the earth.” 

He looked skeptical.

I laughed. “I know, I know, we don’t even know what’s in a whale’s mind. Maybe we have a lot to learn, but there’s enough of us who know already how to solve the biggest problems that threaten us and the rest of life on Earth.”

He continued to eat the mac and cheese. But I could tell that he was thinking. Maybe he or they really are here to learn.

I was warming up. “There’s an old term—‘faith’—that’s used to justify various religious assumptions. It means trusting something, some philosophy, some generalized notion that has very large implications. I have faith that we humans are able to resolve most of the problems we have encountered or even caused ourselves. I’m willing to go with that faith rather than hope that some outside force—even yours—will come in to save us, because that would leave us in a place of—” 

“Subservience?”

I was surprised by his word. He was hearing me. Frankly, I was embarrassed, because I wasn’t all that confident that I knew what I was talking about. But he heard me. I just nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ve learned something.”

We sat for a long while without talking. I felt as though I should continue, but something told me that I should stop there. What else could I say that would make how I felt clearer to him? Or to me?

Finally, he scraped the last of the food from his plate and looked up at me. “I need to process,” he mumbled.

He stood up carefully. Smiling, he said, “I seem to have recovered my balance.”

We shook hands as he went out the door. I poured another drink and sat and thought. That he and I might never see each other again seemed almost pre-ordained. You know, “ships that pass in the night” kind of thing. I was only slightly curious about him, where he was going, how he had come about.

I didn’t touch my drink. Instead, I pulled out my laptop and started a new document. There was something I needed to write, but my mind was still foggy. At least I needed, right then while Waldo was fresh in my mind, to begin something.

I typed: It’s Up to Us.

Then I leaned back on the sofa and thought about what I had said to Waldo, that I had faith in humanity, despite the current sorry state of the world. Of course we don’t need a messiah to save us from ourselves. If we can’t do it by ourselves, we don’t deserve to continue.

Perhaps whales, with their tremendous brains, know things we don’t yet know. Still, they don’t have history and books that can survive the inevitable passing of individuals; maybe they need all that brain power to store the wisdom that we keep in our libraries and database servers. 

With our opposable thumbs, we have created vast civilizations—literally extensions of the seventy-nine-cubic inches of storage each of us carries around in our skulls, not only extending the reach of our individual minds but collecting everything that our uber-compatriots have generated over the years. The wisdom that one person collects in a brief lifetime compounds exponentially in contact with that of other persons.

A whale may not feel the need to know that she has evolved from some land mammal for evolutionary reasons millions of whale lifetimes ago. Perhaps what she can communicate with others of her kind across thousands of miles of water is enough. With our minuscule brains we’ve figured out how to do that, too. And much more.

I thought of an essay I read in the Times that morning, “We Are Not Born Human,” By Bernard-Henri Lévy, where he said:

“Humanity is not a form of being; it is a destiny. It is not a steady state, delivered once and for all, but a process.”

I went back to the Times for more, and happened on another piece, by Ai Weiwei, a Chinese expatriate, on the same subject:

“There is no such thing as a human being in the abstract. Only when we see people as embedded in their experiences—their own social positions, their educations and memories, in pursuit of their own ideals—can the question “What is a human being?” fully make sense.

. . .

 “Simply to avoid the question is a terrible mistake. We must ask it, and we must do so repeatedly. The debates and judgments that led to human wisdom in the past were responses, each in its time, to essentially the same question, asked in the political and social context of that time, and it is relevant at every social level: individual, community, family and nation. Many of the political and cultural disagreements that we see in the world today arise from a reluctance to face this key question squarely, and to arrive at clear definitions with regard to it.”

“Waldo should read that,” I said out loud. I didn’t know how I could put any of that into my own words. (Do whales have anything like words, those magical little bits of language that combine so readily with each other to allow one to say just about anything about anything?) Words, like the little blooms in my lover’s flower garden, come and go, but remind me, over and over, about what’s important.

I must have dozed off. The laptop screen had gone dark, gone asleep like me but, like me, not lost. I hunched over the keyboard and pressed a key…