The things out there

Are you aware of Ned Block’s criticism of my idea of targetless higher-order thoughts?

The professor is sitting at his desk, I’m standing next to him, the papers and books are piled as high as my chest. He is reading an abstract I emailed him the day before, and I think, how can such a famous professor have such a tiny, cramped office, and then I say, I believe he said, how can an empty thought about nothing create consciousness?

Exactly. And what would I reply to that?

I believe you would reply that it is not consciousness itself that is caused by the targetless higher-order thought, but merely the disposition.

Exactly. So why do you suggest here that a combination of Kriegel’s self-representationalism and Chalmers’ panprotopsychism would offer a solution to the problem of targetless higher-order thoughts, when in fact, as you just said, they do not pose a problem at all?

He looks at me. He is sitting at his desk in his long and narrow office in this gigantic cube with no daylight or fresh air, diagonally opposite the Empire State Building, and he is looking at me very gently and indulgently, like a man who is only too happy to forgive intellectual shortcomings if only one can explain where this nonsense that one has written and sent him and which he is now obliged to read and understand came from. He just wants to understand. He feels for me, no doubt about it. I just have to tell him what it was that led me to believe that a targetless higher-order thought posed a problem, and how I can be in any doubt that a thought that is not targeted at anything is still a thought, not a thought about anything in particular, of course, but a thought nonetheless, a mental state, which, because of its structural force, has the power to generate the disposition of consciousness. I can see his gentle, old eyes, his sagging jowls, and I say, Because I do have trouble conceiving of a thought without any content whatsoever. I consider thoughts to be functional structures of brain activity, and how can a thought without content have a function?

He looks at me. He takes a breath. He looks at me.

The thought’s function, he says, and his voice sounds more high-pitched than before, much more high-pitched, as if he were speaking to a cute child, Is not to have any function.

He is still looking at me, and then I look at the wall opposite the door, at the end of this long and narrow office, and I see that it is painted yellow, and that the paint is presumably part-acrylic, and that the wall was probably machine-rendered since it’s much too smooth to have been done by hand, and the building is much too big for that anyway. I look at the wall as if it were a window.

I see.

He takes a breath. I don’t know what he’s looking at. I’m looking at the wall.

Are you happy here in New York?

Yes.

What do you do?

What do I do?

I look back at him.

When you’re not working on this.

He nods his head in the direction of my abstract, which is now lying on his desk.

I go for walks. I listen to music. (I lie.)

Do you see people?

Yes, sometimes.

Have you met some of the other students?

Yes.

Do you go out for beer?

He smiles. I smile back. We both know that the Germans like beer, just like the Americans and the Czechs, and the Laotians, and the Thais, and the French, and the Swiss, and probably all non-Muslim nationalities on the planet, but I try to smile as if he’s figured me out, because I want him to think he’s figured me out, and I want him to be pleased with himself.

Yes, we do.

He is pleased.

Excellent. Always remember: you are in New York. Go out. Meet people. Have fun. Don’t stay in too much. Don’t work too much. You can do that when you are back in Germany.

You are right, Professor. Thank you very much.

We don’t shake hands. We did that the first time we met, and probably we will again the last time, so instead I merely nod and sidle out of the tiny crack between the desk and the wall. He turns back to his work, I walk out of the open door and step into the fluorescent light of the corridor, and I think, New York is the only place where I can really sit in a room and stare out of the window and think, Out there is New York.