Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

There is something different about a living, conscious being that sets us apart from other things in the world. To start with, this is not to be forced into saying that we have a ‘soul’. It is just to notice the distinctions we make in the world. We ‘have a body’, rather than just being a body or a thing, like a rock or a table. We would find it impossible to navigate the world if we had to continually deny the fact of our own agency. But things like rocks and tables we recognise as things that are not agents. There is a sliding scale of the things and creatures that are considered as agents on the world. Agency is an emergent quality of life.

So, will computers ever be conscious? Without flesh and blood bodies it is difficult to see this as being possible – although, like our hypothetical zombies, they may get very good at faking it. To create consciousness from scratch then becomes a question of creating artificial life. And will this ever be possible? I think perhaps yes – this seems like a more likely scenario. We have to ask though whether this is really desirable. What exactly would be the point,

when nature herself has created such a variety of life-forms?

So agency is the thing that modern science seems to want to deny, even although everyone’s life – in fact, all conscious life – seems to demonstrate its truth. Why this

insistence that it’s all a delusion? Perhaps it is simply that agency cannot be explained. But, perhaps something more than this. Perhaps it is because the ways in which it might need to be explained run exactly counter to the prevailing mindset of the last 500 years of science. We’ve not yet truly embraced quantum theory – which seems to offer a pointer towards rethinking

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