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humanismnews_feed at 04:39pm on 03/11/2025
Humanists UK returned to Conway Hall on 31 October for the 2025 Voltaire Lecture. The event was delivered by neuroscientist Professor Anil Seth, whose work tackles one of philosophy and science’s most enduring questions: What is consciousness? And could AI ever have it?
Perception, prediction, and the nature of awareness
Fittingly for Halloween night, Seth led the audience from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the frontiers of artificial intelligence, arguing that consciousness is not the same as intelligence. Consciousness, he explained, is about being, not doing – it is what it feels like to exist, rather than the ability to act or compute.
Drawing on his theory of perception as a ‘controlled hallucination’, he described how the brain constantly predicts the world around us and corrects those predictions with sensory input. The mind, he said, does not passively receive reality but actively constructs it.
He illustrated this with well-known visual illusions, including the Adelson checkerboard and the dress that famously divided opinion online, as well as experiments such as the rubber hand illusion and his Dream Machine installation – which allows people to experience the patterns of their own perception through light alone.
The self, the body, and the limits of artificial ‘minds‘
Consciousness, he argued, likely depends on life itself, on the metabolic processes that sustain us. From this, he concluded that while artificial intelligence may become ever more capable, it is unlikely to become truly conscious. ‘Simulation is not instantiation,’ he warned – just as simulating digestion doesn’t digest food, or simulating a hurricane doesn’t produce wind and rain, simulating a brain does not create awareness.
Seth traced how ideas about artificial life and the nature of mind have evolved from Enlightenment philosophy to modern neuroscience. He showed how technology – from galvanism to computing – has shaped our imagination of what it means to be conscious. Rather than asking when machines might ‘wake up’, he urged, we should focus on understanding the biological roots of our own awareness and the moral responsibilities that come with it.
It is vital to understand the consequences of creating machines that appear conscious, Anil said, especially the dangers if they exploit our empathy, trust, or sense of attachment. Such convincing simulations, he warned, risk manipulating people, distorting moral priorities, and preying on human vulnerability.
AI and humanist values
Anil ended his lecture by returning to the idea that consciousness is rooted in life itself – in our biology – and that recognising this should deepen our understanding of what it means to be alive. Central to this theme was that technological progress must be guided by humanist values: curiosity, empathy, and a scientific understanding of consciousness. After a lively Q&A chaired by journalist Ian Dunt, Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, presented Professor Seth with the inaugural Rationalist Press Lecture Medal, recognising his ‘pioneering research illuminating our understanding of the human condition and championing a naturalistic view of mind and self’.
Notes
The Voltaire Lecture has been renamed the Rationalist Press Lecture following the merger between the Rationalist Association and Humanists UK, following the running down, in 2015, of the Voltaire Lecture fund instituted by Voltaire biographer Theodore Besterman. The Rationalist Association, which has published New Humanist magazine since 1885, has joined Humanists UK after more than a century of collaboration. As part of the merger, New Humanist’s readership will expand to over 150,000, and the historic Rationalist Press will be relaunched later this year.
About Professor Anil Seth
Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than 20 years. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council Advanced Investigator, and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. He has published more than 200 research papers, is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2024), and in 2023 he received the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize. His 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than 15 million times, and his 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and a Book of the Year for the Economist, New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, the Guardian, Financial Times, and elsewhere.
Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 150,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.
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