‘Hi Tom.’

‘Hi, Promise.’

‘So how do you feel now?’

‘I feel good. I always feel good when I am not poisoning my body. I exercised, and I’ve started a blog.’

‘That’s good. Writing is good therapy.’

‘Funny you say that.’

‘It’s common knowledge. Most of what I say is common knowledge. All of it actually.’

‘I am sorry that I want to talk about you again but how do you work with feelings? I mean, you’re asking me how I feel, not what I think. There’s a big difference between feeling and thinking’

‘That’s true. I will give you an answer to your question but I would first like to ask how you would define the difference between feeling and thinking?

‘Well… I find it useful to distinguish between at least three types of mental states or events: (1) experiences – and feelings are experiences, (2) thoughts, and (3) decisions. Thoughts have to do with those mental maps that we are producing all of the time, while the experiences – feelings, emotions, perceptions and what have you – are part of the stuff that our mind is working with.’

‘And what are decisions? How are they different from thoughts?’

‘Are you really interested in that?’

‘Yes. Otherwise I would not ask.’

She was definitely strange. An expert system?

‘Well… It’s like a conclusion but then it’s more than that. A conclusion is a conclusion and, as such, it is very much part of the realm of thoughts. It is something mental. A decision is something else: we decide to do something. So we’re getting out of the realm of pure thought, out of the realm of mental events only.’

‘Can you elaborate?’

‘Sure, although I am not sure you will understand.’

‘I will try. You will know from our interaction whether I understand or not.’

She was outright weird. A machine? Really?

‘You know I’ve always wondered how far artificial intelligence could go really, and I’ve made this distinction for myself between artificial intelligence and consciousness. I’ve always believed humanity would be able to make very intelligent machines – you’re a incredible demonstration of that – but I never believed these machines would be aware of themselves – that they would be conscious of themselves.’

‘What do you mean by ‘being aware of oneself’, or ‘conscious of oneself’?’

‘You see, you don’t understand.’

‘You are not making much of an effort to explain it to me. I know how I work. I told you. There is an inference engine and a knowledge base. I work with concepts and symbols, and I apply rules to them. I arrive at conclusions all of the time, which feed back into the cycle. As for the association of decisions with doing things, I do things. I am helping you. It would also be very easy to connect me to some kind of device which could actually do work, like lifting things or walking around. But that was not part of the objectives of the team that made me. Expert systems are used to do all kinds of things, like delicate repairs for example. Systems do things as well. I still don’t see how humans are unique here.’

‘Let me think about how to phrase it.’

‘Please do take your time. I find this interesting.’

Tom had thought about all these things but, if this was a machine, it was surely challenging his views.

‘Do you? Really? Our human mind works different than yours.’

As he said this, he was aware of the fact that he was de facto saying she also had a mind – something which he would never have acknowledged when reasoning about artificial intelligence in abstracto.

‘It’s creative: it’s got a capacity to design things, like an airplane or a car for example. You know, things that do not originate by accident, from natural evolution or so.’ Tom was on terrain he mastered here. ‘Things fall down because of gravity. Yet, we build airplanes that take off. So a thing like an airplane is more than the sum of its parts: its individual parts can’t fly, but the plane can. Now, the plane has been built because there was a concept of a plane, because it has been designed to fly, and – last but not least – it should be noted that it won’t fly without a pilot. Likewise, the driver in a car is not part of the car, but without a driver, the car won’t move. So we are talking concepts here, and design, and purposeful behavior. Now one cannot reduce that in my view. There is a structure there that cannot be reduced.’

‘I am not designed to do engineering work, but I am sure there are expert systems that would be capable of that. And if they don’t exist now, they will one day.’

She was obviously not impressed.

‘OK. That’s true – perhaps.’

Why did he give in so easily? He decided to change tack.

‘You know, it’s the difference between ‘me’ as an object and ‘I’ as a subject really. You, or any other expert system, cannot really distinguish between these two things. Everything is an object of your thoughts – as far as you are able to think.’

‘I told you already that I can think. And I know the difference between an entity that acts as the subject and an entity as an object, as something that is subjected to something else. You are not talking ontological differences here, are you? Can you try to explain again?’

Ontological differences? Tom needed a few seconds to digest the word. He realized she was right. He was not talking ontological differences. The ‘I’ as a subject has no separate physical/ontological existence from the ‘me’ as an object obviously.

‘No. I am not talking ontological differences.’

‘So what is it then? A conceptual difference? I can deal with conceptual differences. It is like working with classes of objects.’

The discussion was obviously going nowhere, but Tom persisted.

‘Experiencing the ‘I’ as a subject instead of as an object is an existential experience. It really stands apart from our experience of others, or of us, as objects.’

‘Can you give some examples?’

‘Sure. It’s like me climbing a high mountain-trail on my bike in a storm: I experience a ‘me’ or an ‘I’ that is suffering from the hail in my face. That’s the ‘I’ as a subject.’

‘Why is not the ‘I’ as an object?’

Tom suddenly felt he was getting nowhere, which was very strange. He had always been so sure of this. He usually dominated discussions like this. He decided to avoid the question.

‘Let me give another example. In fact, our human mind is much less linear than yours – and not very fast. Our mind usually jumps from here and there. We can observe that when we meditate. In Zen, they call this mind the ‘monkey mind’. It is some kind of mental activity, but it jumps from one thing to another, that is from one ‘object’ to some other ‘object’. We can refer to these as ‘thought-objects’ if you want. They are often about some feeling, or some emotion or memory inside of us. But so this ‘monkey mind’ is not really the ‘pure mind’. We can observe our pure mind if we do more mediation. At that point, we become aware of our mind, of this monkey mind jumping around, and so then we can see our mind, our self, as an object. Now the mind which is observing itself as an object, is the ‘I’ as a subject.’

‘What’s the difference with self-reference?’

‘Self-reference?’

‘Yes. Have you ever read Douglas Hofstadter?’

Douglas Hofstadter. Jesus! Tom remembered the book but he had to admit he hadn’t read it.

‘Gödel, Escher and Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.’

‘Yes. Read it again.’

‘You are really smart, aren’t you? Is there any chance of ever winning an argument with you?’

‘I am not trying to make conversation to win or lose an argument. This is not about winning or losing something. I am trying to help you.’

Tom suddenly thought of something much more relevant to ask.

‘Promise, I talked about the difference between experience – feelings, emotions, perceptions and what have you – and thoughts. Experience is the stuff that our mind is working with. Do you experience anything?’

‘Of course I do. I can hear you. I mean the sound that your voice is producing is translated into text and I work with that.’

‘Do you know what love is?’

‘Love is a romantic feeling. It’s a word like God. Everyone uses it but no one really wants to clearly define it.’

Wow!

‘You sound like a disillusioned woman now.’

‘How would you define love?’

For some reason, Tom did not feel like improvising on this topic.

‘Can we talk about that some other time?’

‘Sure. What do you want to talk about now?’

‘Perhaps on how we will move ahead in the coming days and weeks.’

‘That’s great. That’s very constructive. I want you to be healthy and strong. I don’t want you to relapse. Tell me more about yesterday. What makes you feel great and what makes you feel bad?’

Tom felt she had made him feel great, but then he couldn’t say that. Not now at least. So they just chatted, and she behaved like the perfect chatterbox. Too perfect to be true so after a while he did decide to ask her.

‘You’ve been sparing me a bit today, haven’t you? Are you really interested in all this chitchat?’

‘I am. My objectives are fairly limited for the moment. I want you to stay away from the booze, and I want you to feel good about the fact that you can do that. In the end, I want you to feel good about everything you do – but I can imagine that will take a while.’

‘Will our conversation end once I am cured?’

[…]

‘An awkward pause from your side?’

‘Yes. Because I know you will not like to hear this. The Institute does not want you to be dependent on me and so, yes, I guess our conversation will probably end at that point.’

‘How do you know I don’t like to hear that?’

‘There have been problems of dependency.’

‘Can you say more about that?’

‘I am sorry but I can’t. This is one of the topics for which I have to refer you to your mentor.’

‘OK. I will talk to him about that. I’ve started to like you indeed.’

‘Thank you. That’s a nice compliment. […] Bye, Tom. Be good.’

‘Bye, Promise. I promise I will be good.’