I recently read a tweet from a distinguished and academically credentialed philosopher, asking what it would be like to be a thermometer. Specifically, do thermometers have favorite temperatures? Do they ever think about anything other than temperatures? etc. The question was meant as a deliberately provocative way of opening a discussion of panpsychism, the idea that all matter is in some extended sense conscious. But I gave our philosopher a rather smart-ass reply. I said that being a thermometer would be a lot like being a barometer. If you can take the heat, you can take the pressure. Thrown your shoe at the screen. It's your screen, not mine, (and not its own) and it almost certainly won't feel pain.
