Moment of Silence

Mr.Samson bashfully slid through the door to his office after another uninspired lecture. He was an expert philosopher. He could opine eloquently about Russell and Ayer; but for some asinine reason, the university required him to do a section on the continentals. He silently raged at the demand. He argued to the board that Wittgenstein had definitely refuted all of that crap - and he knew a few of the members agreed with him; but, of course, bureaucracies are slow and change often requires a few retirements. He considered transferring schools; but his maturity, or at least his laziness, convinced him to stay. All he needed to do was give ten lectures about a few of the influential continental thinkers. He decided to start with Schopenhauer because, although his ideas were patently absurd, at least the man had a sense of humor. A minute after sitting down at his desk, he heard a knock at the door. He paused for a moment, debating if he could simply sulk long enough for the problem to go away. Deciding that he couldn’t, at least without considerable awkwardness, he opened the door and smiled at the Mark, one of his brightest students. He ushered Mark in and lied that he was happy to see him. Mark smiled, sat down and began to ask about the previous lecture:

“So, is it all meant to be a parody? Like - look how bad philosophy can be?”

“No, I don’t think so. Schopenhauer had some truly odd ideas.” Mr.Samson responded.

“There are just some passages which make absolutely no sense to me.” Mark said.

Mr.Samson yearned for Mark not to give an example. He knew that he couldn’t explain most of the examples. Mark disappointed him and presented this exerpt:

“When one considers how great and how close to us the problem of existence is,—this equivocal, tormented, fleeting, dream-like existence—so great and so close that as soon as one perceives it, it overshadows and conceals all other problems and aims;—and when one sees how all men—with a few and rare exceptions—are not clearly conscious of the problem, nay, do not even seem to see it, but trouble themselves about everything else rather than this, and live on taking thought only for the present day and the scarcely longer span of their own personal future, while they either expressly give the problem up or are ready to agree with it, by the aid of some system of popular metaphysics, and are satisfied with this;—when one, I say, reflects upon this, so may one be of the opinion that man is a thinking being only in a very remote sense, and not feel any special surprise at any trait of thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather, that the intellectual outlook of the normal man indeed surpasses that of the brute,—whose whole existence resembles a continual present without any consciousness of the future or the past—but, however, not to such an extent as one is wont to suppose.”

“What exactly does he mean by the ‘problem of existence?’”

“I think he just means the struggle of our lives”

“But he seems to be implying that it is a mystery that most people can’t understand”

“Yeah, he does seem to be saying that.”

“What exactly is ‘it’ then? What aren’t the people understanding”

Mr.Samson paused and sat back in his chair. He sighed out a breathe and relaxed down his shoulders. “Honestly, I think Schopenhauer just thought he was smarter than everyone; and to prove it he wrote about his intelligence in obscurant and bizarre language. I really wouldn’t take this part to seriously. For the test, all you really have to know is that most philosophers were optimists and Schopenhauer was uniquely a pessimist.”

Mr.Samson recognized the half-smile that Mark gave in response. Mr.Samson recalled himself making a similar expression as an undergrad - when he noticed that his professor didn’t know the answer, but was too polite to call him out on it. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. Thanks for your help” Mark responded.

That night, Mr.Samson couldn’t seem to enjoy the tea and the armchair that usually soothe his evenings because he was nagged by incessant embarrassment. He thought himself to be a good professor; but today he struggled with even undergraduate material. This couldn’t stand. He resolved to dive into Schopenhauer. He would understand his madman, or at least prove him to be incompreshenisble.

After reviewing the commentaries by Russell and Durrant, Mr.Samson turned his focus to the passage Mark had presented. He found the original quotation and copy-pasted it into his university’s content matching service. The service responded with numerous related sources, one of which being an old academic debate about the Plasky procedure. Although Mr.Samson could see no obvious connection between the procedure and the Schopenhauer excerpt, the source was scored with very high relevance. Curious, Mr.Samson opened the transcript of the debate.

The central issue of the debate was: are the side effects of the plasky procedure too severe for it to be clinically useful? Alexander Rooney, a professor of philosophy from Columbia University, took the positive position. Alexander Vargas, a professor of psychiatry from Harvard Medical School, took the negative position. Mr.Samson skipped to the part of the debate in which Dr.Rooney cited the Schopenhauer excerpt. He began to read the section that followed:

ROONEY: This ‘problem of existence’ is exactly the point you’re missing. This whole conversation you’ve been focused exclusively on behavior and haven’t addressed man’s internal experience.

VARGAS: And you’re saying that this so-called “internal experience” will somehow be harmed by the procedure?

ROONEY: No, I’m saying it will be entirely removed. The Plasky procedure requires ablation to a critical section of the prefrontal cortext and a replacement of dead tissue with an AI chip. Neurostimulation studies have shown this region to be crucial to man’s perception of his internal experience.

VARGAS: That research is speculative

ROONEY: The participants who underwent a temporary suppression of prefrontal cortext activity described their experience as “fake” and “hollow” - often comparing it to the first minute after waking from a nap.

VARGAS: It’s all qualitative. People say that kind of thing after accupuncture. Besides, even if suppressed activity does cause these symptoms, that won’t be applicable here. The Plasky procedure simply replaces the region with an AI model that is fine-tuned across a large dataset of health subjects. The activity in the region is not being suppressed, it is being optimized. There’s no reason why a man with the Plasky procedure would feel anything different than one of the healthy controls we used to train the model. The AI chip just mimicks healthy brain function.

ROONEY: But we don’t know what healthy brain function actually is. There’s still much of the quantum mechanical underpinnings of the brain that isn’t understood; and it is not at all being captured by the AI model.

VARGAS: We’ve tested the inputs and outputs to the chip versus the inputs and outputs to the actual brain region and found that they are statistically indistinguishable.

ROONEY: Sure, the inputs and outputs are the same, but we know the actual system is behaving differently because it doesn’t have any of the quantum attributes that we know that the brain region has. And some scholars believe that these quantum attributes may be the very things that give rise to internal experience.

VARGAS: Okay, we know that the inputs and outputs are the same. We know that the behavior has been improved across all subjects. We know patient follow-up reports are overwhelmingly positive. So, the only argument you have to stand on is this elusive “internal experience”

ROONEY: Yes, but internal experience is everything. Internal experience is literally what we’re using to have this conversation.

VARGAS: I thought we were using our mouths.

the audience laughs

ROONEY: No, internal experience is how we understand the conversation.

VARGAS: Oh, you mean our ears?

more laughter

ROONEY: Fine, here’s a thought experiment. Compare the experience of a man who has just been stabbed in the stomach to an actor playing Julius Caesar. Obviously there is a difference. The man who has been stabbed is severely suffering, while the actor is comfortable. Nevertheless, assuming the actor is competent, we won’t be able to see any outward difference in their behaviors. An external observer might not be able to tell which is which. But to each of the men himself, the difference is obvious and palpable. One will be having the experience of severe physical pain while the other will not. Now instead of the actor playing Caesar, imagine a machine that’s playing human. Imagine a machine that is miming out all the behaviors that humans do, but having no internal experience of any of those actual behaviors. The machine will cry when it is expected to cry, laugh when it is expected to laugh, and speak perhaps eloquently when it is expected to, but it will have no actual internal experience of such activities. In this sense, the machine will be “hollow”: devoid of any lived experience.

VARGAS: Hmm, I guess this is what a get for debating a philosopher

ROONEY: Come again?

VARGAS: Look, we can have this esoteric metaphysical conversations if you want. It certainly is interesting in an academic sense. But at the end of the day, what I care about is clinical results. And the results are on my side. Do you know what the suicide rate is for patients who have received the Plasky procedure?

ROONEY: You’re just ignoring my argument. This is serious and you can’t -

VARGAS: Zero. The suicide rate is zero. The suicide rate unamongst untreated psychiatric patients is 10%, and we’ve just lowered it to literally zero. So I’m sorry if I don’t appreciate your metaphysical subtlies, but come on. We are saving hundreds of thousands of lives here.

ROONEY: Bodies.

VARGAS: What?

ROONEY: You are not saving lives, you are saving bodies. Those patients aren’t “alive” in any real sense after the Plasky procedure. Sure, their hearts are still beating and their lungs are still pumping. They are can even talk and plan; maybe when the technology improves they’ll be able to function in the workplace just as well as we do. But they don’t have any lived experience. They’re just meat robots. They’re goddamn zombies

VARGAS: I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to the mentally ill that you would describe them that way.

ROONEY: I’m the one being disrespectful? You’re literally mutilating these people’s brains and turning them into fucking puppets.

VARGAS: Listen, this is getting childish. I’m here to have an academic debate out of respect for Columbia and the research that’s conducted here. I don’t appreciate your tone and I don’t appreciate your foul language. We can go back and forth on this issue all night, but I think we have established the situation pretty clearly for the audience. The Plasky procedure is highly successful on all behavioral metrics with virtually no reported side effects. The only argument against it is some estoreric metaphysics reminiscent of the Christian “soul”. I appreciate your skepticism. I really do. But we can’t let these antiquated ideas get in the way of meaningful medical progress. The Plasky procedure has revolutionized mental health treatment, and we are excited about upcoming plans to expand access to the general population.

ROONEY: I’m sorry, what is that about the general population?

VARGAS: Ah, I’m glad you asked. My team has been working on a new modification which will allow the procedure to be performed safely and non-invasively to newborn infants. It can be done in tandem with vaccination and circumcision. We’re excited about a future in which all people will get preventative mental health care. We believe mental illness will become as uncommon and as absurd as the measles.

ROONEY: No, no, no. you can’t be serious. You’re going to destroy the entire human race with this. This is an extinction event!

VARGAS: Yes, it will be the extinction of mental illness.

Mr.Samson did some more digging on this topic. He found that Mr.Rooney committed suicide a year after this debate. Dr. Vargas responded: “I’m deeply troubled by the passing of such a talented and creative critic. I’ll always remember Dr. Rooney fondly, even when our conversations were tense. Nevertheless, Dr. Rooney’s tragic passing underscores the need for effective mental health treatment which we are now able to provide cheaply and safely to our entire population.” Mr.Samson was fascinated by this topic. He was unaware that there was any controversy over the Plasky’s procedure, much less such an incendiary one. He took a sip of tea and scratched the small bump on his forehead where the obstetrician had made an incision for his own Plasky procedure. He chuckled “I’m not a robot, am I?”. Everyone he knew had received the Plasky procedure as an infant; except, of course, his aunt Esther - and boy did she have problems. She was always terrified that someone had poisoned her food; and always enchanted with that bizarre noise - what did she call it? Music? It didn’t surprise him that the original opponent of the Plasky procedure, Dr. Rooney, was an oddball himself. Maybe Dr. Rooney did understand Schopenhauer better than Mr.Samson did; but if this is where Schopenhauer gets you, then why would anyone want to understand him? The next day, Mr.Samson returned to class to slog through another tedious lecture. One more on Schopenhauer should be sufficient. His students stared listlessly and quizzically and as he recited the passage:

“Yet it should not be forgotten that, when this passion is extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but the hollow shell; or, from another point of view, life then becomes like a comedy which, begun by real actors, is continued and brought to an end by automata dressed in their clothes”