What is it Like to be a Paper Clip?

I know what it’s like to be me, because I experience it directly every day. I also know what it’s like to be you, more or less, because I know you are psychologically similar to me. I even know what it’s like to be a bat in that a bat is a sentient being like me, though not one similar to me in every respect. I know roughly what it’s like to be any sentient being in so far as they are all sentient, because I know what sentience is—what it’s like to be sentient. All sentient beings have this sentience in common. I know the mode of existence of sentient beings because I am one. Granted I don’t know all the details, but I grasp the big picture—being aware things, not being completely in the dark, sensing and feeling. But what about insentient beings—do I know what it’s like to be them? Do I know what it’s like to be a paper clip?[1] It’s like nothing, of course, so do I know what it’s like to be aware of nothing? I do not. I don’t know what it’s like to be a non-conscious being, since I have no experience of it—I have no experience of having no experience. I don’t know what it’s like to be phenomenologically empty, null and void, non-existent. I can’t imagine it. I can’t put myself in that position—me as a non-conscious being. I don’t know what it is like to exist as a paper clip; that is radically alien to me—much more so than bats or Martians. I am ignorant of the “life” of the lifeless. I know what is involved in the existence of a sentient being because I am one and I know it, but I don’t know what is involved in the existence of an insentient being—I can’t imagine that. If the paper clip were itself conscious, equipped with suitable perceptions and feelings, then I would be able to imagine it—the feeling of gripping a sheaf of paper, the desire to take a rest. But given that a paper clip feels nothing, there is nothing for me to imagine, except total blankness—less than that, not even the sensation of emptiness. Just nothing at all. I can’t imagine existing like that. So, there is something I know about conscious beings that I don’t know about non-conscious beings, namely what it is like (what it is) to exist as them. I don’t know what it’s like for there to be nothing it’s like. To that extent inanimate objects are a mystery to me—I don’t grasp their mode of existence as I grasp the mode of existence of living conscious beings. Paper clips are an enigma to me, as are mountains, planets, region of space, numbers, etc. I know what they do, what they are made of, and how they come to exist; but I don’t know the vital thing—what it’s like to be them. Because there is nothing it’s like for me to imagine. Moreover, it is the same for all inanimate objects: it is the same for a paper clip as for a mountain—just homogeneous emptiness. There is nothing pullulating inside them, only their outer reality. I gaze at them and think, “How boring, how pointless, how meaningless, how empty!” I cannot adopt their point of view, because they have no point of view; they exist in a kind of existential void, which is quite alien to me. I can’t get my mind around their mode of being-in-the-world.

Suppose we lived in a world of sentient beings and only sentient beings (like Berkeley’s world). Then we would understand everything in this world: we would know the nature of every object’s existence (assuming enough mental similarity). There would be nothing there is nothing it’s like to be. We would be omniscient with respect to existence. Now suppose we introduce into this idyllic world a collection of insentient objects: our omniscience would be dealt a serious blow—for now there are objects we can’t know as we know the objects existing hitherto. We can’t put ourselves in their position imaginatively; they are cyphers to us. They just sit there, heedless, blank, uncaring. Life and death mean nothing to them. We find them quite baffling—totally alien. But this is basically our world: we comprehend our own nature as conscious beings, and the nature of other conscious beings, but we don’t comprehend the nature of non-conscious beings. They are just too unlike us, too unlike the consciousness we know so well. In short: we don’t understand the physical world—not fully, not as we understand ourselves and each other.[2] Thus, from an epistemological point of view, other minds are more accessible to us than other bodies (or our own body). We know minds better than we know bodies. Souls are easier for us to understand than paper clips. I know the bat’s fundamental conscious nature better than I know a paper clip’s fundamental non-conscious nature, because I can in principle imagine being the former but not the latter.[3] The paper clip totally defeats me, but the bat poses a comparatively minor challenge. I don’t really know what it is not to be a feeling thing, though I can know how other sentient organisms feel to be sentient even when quite alien. It is the absence of consciousness that poses the problem not its presence. Perhaps this is why animism holds such an appeal: it makes physical objects comprehensible by giving them an inner life, which enables the imagination to get a grip on them. And isn’t it intuitively accurate to describe physical objects as alien beings—more alien than even the most alien of sentient beings? We just have nothing in common with them, as if they belong to another world plopped down beside us. They just arewhile we live. There are gods, living mortal beings, and inanimate objects—and the last exist apart in their own dead world. There is no meeting of minds, sharing of cultures, feelings of sympathy—just uneasy co-existence. The paper clip doesn’t care if I don’t know what it’s like to be a paper clip (viz. nothing)—it harbors no resentment towards me. It exists in its own mindless universe, sublimely indifferent (not even that). It is difficult to summon words to describe its mode of existence; the object doesn’t really exist as I do (existentialism doesn’t apply to it). It just dully and dumbly is (Sartre’s in-itself). It invites no emphatic italics. It is a kind of wasteland, an ontological desert. It doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand it; we just exist side by side, easily or uneasily. It isn’t my neighbor. It’s just a thing.

Not every philosopher has been willing to accept this dim and dingy reality—the soulless desert of brute material objects. It is just too bleak, too unconducive to comprehension. These philosophers yearn for commonality, communion. Thus, idealism, solipsism, panpsychism: mind everywhere. Everything becomes like my consciousness, or identical to it. Then all is transparent. There is nothing I don’t “get”. There’s nothing there’s nothing it’s like to be. But that is precisely the problem with such views: they deny that paper clips have zero inner life. They invent paper clip minds. The reason such views fail is that the world really does contain mindless objects—things without a tincture of consciousness in them. Sometimes a paper clip is just a paper clip, with nothing inner going on. True, we don’t know what it is like to exist like that, but that is our problem not the paper clip’s. We suffer from an intellectual limitation, a failure of imagination. We can’t imagine existing like that (what kind of life would it be?). So, we can refute idealist theories by insisting on the reality of the insentient—a world without sense or feeling. A soulless world. A psychological desert. That was the universe before minds came along, as empty then as it is now in its physical sector. Next time you look at a physical object remember: it has no soul, not even a hint of one. That’s why you can’t be friends with it, or know its dark little world.[4]

[1] Fair warning: I am going to stretch intuitions to the breaking point in what follows. I would not be a bit surprised if I fail to get the reader to share my intuitions. At least I can try. I don’t think human thought has ever gone where I attempt to go here, rightly or wrongly.

[2] We might say we only understand it abstractly, not in the way we understand the conscious mind (directly, intrinsically); but this is really just a label. The main point is the contrast not the labels. I don’t understand material existence in the way I understand mental existence; there is something lacking in my conception of the former.

[3] It is metaphysically impossible for me to be a paper clip, i.e., a small piece of bent wire—and also impossible a priori. I could not turn out to be a paper clip (of course, I could act like a paper clip and still have my human body).

[4] If the identity theory were true, something there is something it is like would be identical to something there is nothing it is like: but how could that be? It would imply that something you can know is identical to something you can’t know. You can know what it is for pain to exist, but not know what it is for the correlated brain state to exist. The brain is a physical object whose mode of existence you can’t imagine based on your knowledge of your own consciousness, like a paper clip. Not everything is like your own consciousness, we regret to report.

Best Ever Tennis Player

Alcaraz and Sinner are clearly the best tennis players ever, as is generally acknowledged. Federer and Nadal wouldn’t stand much of a chance against them, even in their prime, and Djokovic is unable to best them now, or ever was. They are well ahead of their current rivals. They are the best by far (just look at the stats). But how do they compare to each other? I think yesterday’s US Open final established that Alcaraz is the better player right now and probably going into the future. He the better ball-striker, the better mover, the better server, the more creative and versatile. Sinner pretty much accepted it in his speech. But that doesn’t settle the hard question: is Alcaraz better by far? Now we are in contested territory: is Alcaraz better by far than a player who is better by far than anybody else, living or dead? For it is also clear that Sinner is better by far than anyone else who ever played the game, except for Alcaraz. That is certainly a strong claim, but I think it is supported by the facts. So, the claim about Alcaraz is doubly strong—that he is better by far than a man who is better by far than anyone else (except Alcaraz). I would not have thought this till yesterday—I didn’t know who would win before the match started. But as I watched the match it was borne in on me: Alcaraz is far better than Sinner shot by shot. He hits the ball better, he moves faster and more flexibly, he has more variety, and he serves better. That was the eye-opener: at least ten aces to one by Sinner. He simply looks like the more expert player. We are living in a new tennis age, considerably surpassing what we saw over the last twenty years during the domination by the Big Three (Roger, Rafa, and Novak). That is something remarkable.

But I want to say something even more surprising: Alcaraz is the first truly good player of tennis. No one else was really good at the game. He is the best, to be sure, but he has also mastered the game; he is actually good at tennis. What am I talking about? Tennis is a very difficult game for humans: the ball is constantly going out or into the net. There are many unforced errors, i.e., errors the player shouldn’t have made. Consider the serve: players need two tries to get it in; they miss all the time; they double fault regularly. These are professional players who can practice the serve, with the best coaching, all day and every day, from a standing position—and they still can’t get the ball in. Table tennis players have no trouble serving and experts never miss (they also have only one chance)—nobody double faults in table tennis. Obviously, the rules and dimensions of the game of tennis make it extremely hard to serve successfully (amateurs are absolutely useless at it). The service area is too small for human players, given their limitations. If an alien were to watch a tennis match for the first time, he would conclude that humans are crap at it—certainly not good. The same applies to the return of serve and to volleys and ground strokes generally. The game is too difficult to be really good at (except in some relative sense—some people are better than others at shot-putting to the moon). But with Alcaraz you get the sense that he finds it quite easy and natural; he is quite at home playing it. He isn’t frustrated as hell playing it, constantly berating himself for poor play, on the verge of smashing his racket or screaming at himself. Everyone else is actually quite bad at tennis, judged absolutely, but he is genuinely good at it. That’s why he is so happy when he plays. So, not only is he better by far than all past players, and better by far than Sinner (who is also better by far than all other players not identical to Alcaraz), he is actually a goodtennis player! I’m not saying he is really good, because he too makes mistakes (unforced errors), but he is a good player—about as good as I am at table tennis (there are very many good table tennis players).[1] Alcaraz is about as good at tennis as I am at table tennis—but he is also far better than even the player who is far better than anyone else but him. Congratulations, Carlos!

[1] I am absolutely terrible at tennis, not good at all, but far better than most people you see on the courts getting hammered by the game.

Airport Anecdote

On the way to Barbados, at the Miami airport, I joined a long shuffling line at 7 in the morning. After about an hour, we were close to security; an official instructed the person behind me to stand by my side so that we could walk a short distance together, as if a couple. She was a middle-aged black woman; I said hello. The walk took about 5 seconds. At the end I turned to her and said “A brief romance”. She instantly replied “But good while it lasted”. I thought this was hilarious and laughed openly. Then we went our separate ways, me to my flight and she to hers. At my gate I sat for a couple of hours reading till it was time to board. Meanwhile I kept thinking I wish I had been quick-witted enough to say “And we never had any trouble”, but it was too late now. Then, lo and behold, I saw the very same woman just ahead of me in line, and she saw me. I said, “I’m so glad to see you again because I wanted to say ‘And we never had any trouble’”. “Not yet”, she replied. Then she gave me her card and I reciprocated with mine. Again, we made our farewells. Then we met up again at baggage claim, but I don’t remember what we said (it was somewhat bathetic). We left the airport separately and I never saw her again. I went to meet the person I had come to Barbados to see. I wonder if she tells this anecdote to her friends.

On Being the Best

A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that I am the best philosopher who ever lived. It was hard to take in at first. But I had to accept it; I could no longer deny it. It was true. Facts are facts. I kept it to myself for a while and then decided to confess it. The response was mainly silence. But I have come to think that I was wrong. I have revised my opinion. I now believe that I am the best philosopher ever by far. Why do I say this? Compare the Beatles: it is generally agreed that they are not only the best band ever but the best band ever by far. They had it all; no one could compare. Four working-class blokes from Liverpool: the best ever by far. It is not seriously deniable after all this time. The Beatle mania was justified. Even they found it hard to believe. But you just have to look at their output—clearly the best by far. And they only existed for a few short years. I was forced to my own realization by my output of the last few years, written since I arrived (reluctantly) at my earlier judgment—it clearly makes me the best by far. Quantity, quality. No contest.

I hear the screams of protest: what an egotist, narcissist, deluded fool! But, my friends, you have got me wrong: because I am really not that good. Being the best at something doesn’t logically entail being good at it. Being the best is completely relative to a chosen group—e.g., being the best ant high-jumper. My potential rivals all have glaring weaknesses, recognized in hindsight. I won’t enumerate the various failures, limitations, and humiliations (e.g., the pineal gland). It is very easy to be wrong, short-sighted, and tunnel-visioned. Who now thinks that Plato and Aristotle got everything right? This is a familiar story. In fact, I think that the best philosophers were all too aware of their limitations—because philosophy is so hard. We are so confined by our time and place, not to mention our biology. Mistakes are easy to make. The very best philosophers don’t really think they are that good at the subject. I myself am acutely aware of this, though I admit I am actually pretty good. But I can see philosophy in the distance laughing at me—“What, you think you are good at this!” Humans are also quite bad at physics, though some are better than others. So, ok, I’m better by far than my fellow philosophical laborers, big fucking deal. If I am a narcissist (I don’t spurn the label), I am one in the land of the disfigured.

But let me return to “by far”, because that is the interesting question (the rest is obvious). What makes me by far the best? I think there are two main factors: my command of the English language and my refusal of orthodoxy. I really cannot bear to think as others do. And I am vain about my writing style. These are the motors, the mechanisms. (I also value creativity, but that is harder to pin down). I have always had abnormal powers of expression, and I never like to go with the crowd (in fact it makes me sick). When I survey my contemporary rivals, the problem is always a lack of style and a propensity to conformity. I might almost say it is a lack of (healthy) narcissism.

As I read this over, I think what rubbish it really is; but it is a lot better than other people’s rubbish. It is a better class of rubbish. And some of it is not rubbish at all. I am the least rubbishy philosopher ever, by far.[1]

[1] Let’s remember too that I have been doing philosophy continuously for over fifty years—no breaks, no wars. And my lifetime has corresponded with the best period that philosophy has ever had in terms of resources and opportunities, as well as fellow practitioners. I have had the benefit of all this. And someone has to be the best—if not me, then who? Would it be agreed that I am the best philosopher ever who started off as a psychologist? Am I clearly the broadest? Am I the best of my height? Etc.