I stay a while longer

That evening, I’m with two famous philosophers at a Japanese restaurant on 36th Street. Two famous philosophers and about thirty other professors, graduate students and undergraduates. The food isn’t arriving. We order another round of sake. The famous, plump functionalist and the slightly less famous, less plump representationalist are talking about God. The guy sitting next to me is telling me about an article he read recently about Germany, which he found quite interesting, and which he promises to bring along to the next session of our interdisciplinary seminar on consciousness and neuroscience. Thank God. The sake arrives, it’s warm and smooth, my neighbour’s fiancée arrives late, she’d had work to finish. She’s taller than he is and thinner and teaches something at some college or other. They touch each other a lot and kiss occasionally, they hold hands, and she says that she is divorced. I don’t say a word, but no one notices. Our waiter tells us he is Korean, but no one would have noticed that, either. At some point, our food arrives.

The functionalist and the representationalist are still talking about God. I’m a little confused, since I thought they were both atheists. At any rate they are both fierce opponents of the possibility of a non-physically explainable element of consciousness, i.e. what used to be called the soul, and yet here they are talking about God, and not in the way you would talk about something that doesn’t exist, or at least not really, like unicorns or square circles. The Spanish exchange student is criticising evolutionary theory, not on religious but on formal grounds. I try to listen, but my neighbour is telling me that the problem with Germany, according to the article on Germany he read, is the works councils.

What do I say to that? Well, you know, yes, I think the works councils do have too much power, I say, and I think, but don’t say, that not even God would have the power to make square circles, whereas unicorns probably wouldn’t be a problem. The functionalist and the representationalist are talking about God without asking the theodicy question, which makes sense, since for them evil doesn’t exist, things are either evolutionarily functional or evolutionarily non-functional, some things represent, others are represented, that’s it. God has nothing to do with it, and to them He has no business being part of a scientific theory.

But He’s perfectly all right for personal use. I like God, the representationalist is saying. He is a very nice thing. When the food arrives, my neighbour says that it’s cool to be sitting in a Japanese restaurant having dinner with two famous philosophers. And they’re talking about God, I say. Yes, he says, that’s cool as well, even though he doesn’t believe in Him, and what’s my opinion on the matter? I don’t want to say that I don’t know, because I so often say that and because I have the feeling that my reality is composed of the things I say. So long as I only think things, they won’t hurt anyone. So instead I say, I believe in works councils.

Laughter. I am mildly pleased with myself, I try to smile in a charming and modest way, but I have the feeling that people can see through it, so I smile a little more broadly, grin, try to look the same way I am feeling, and then I notice that I am perhaps grinning a little too broadly at my own joke, and so I quickly take a sip of sake, followed by a sip of beer. The laughter fades away before I can put the bottle back down.

No, really, my neighbour insists. I say, Well, you know, I don’t think God has any business in a scientific theory either, repeating the words of the representationalist. A-ha, my neighbour nods, underwhelmed by this hedge, and then I stick my neck out with: But what science doesn’t grasp, we can’t say anything about. I am worried that this will initiate a discussion about epistemology and I try to decide whether I’m more of a realist or an antirealist today, but just then my neighbour’s fiancée says she wants to go. Oh, too bad, all right, I’ll bring you the newspaper with that article next week, great, see you, yes, get home safely, bye bye.

I stay a while longer, I always stay a while longer, until at some point everyone else has gone, or I’m too drunk to see the faces around me as familiar. Or perhaps it’s the others who are too drunk. More rounds of sake are ordered, I order a beer as well, and then suddenly everybody gets up and throws their credit cards down in the middle, first the two famous philosophers, then the professor from New Jersey, then the Spanish exchange student, and finally me. I am the last, as if I had been trying to get out of paying. I am now wondering if the others are looking at me strangely, and so their looks inevitably seem strange to me, and I can’t bring myself to take part in the negotiations about how to split the bill, so I pay whatever’s left over, which is not much, and I’ve probably had more to drink than anyone else. Since I am already standing up and can tell that I won’t be able to find a way back into the conversation, I cross the restaurant to get my coat. I put it on and walk back to the table, hoping that wearing my coat will absolve me of having to announce my decision to leave, but no one reacts, which is why I start shaking hands, at the end of the table furthest away from the famous philosophers. Oh, you’re leaving? Too bad.

When I get to the famous philosophers, I shake the hand of the one whose guest I am officially. I mumble something which he presumably doesn’t understand, and I don’t understand what he mumbles back. The other famous philosopher is in the gents, or outside smoking, or else he’s looking the other way. At any rate, I’m definitely not going to shake hands with him just because he’s famous. I don’t know him at all. As I head towards the exit, I can feel the eyes of the hard core of the interdisciplinary seminar on consciousness and neuroscience on my back. I can hear their thoughts about the credit card thrown down too late, about my obduracy interpreted as arrogance, or my arrogance interpreted as obduracy, and yet as I pass another thirty tables whose occupants I studiously avoid looking at, I can nevertheless clearly tell that absolutely no one is paying any attention to me.