Consciousness makes life worth living. It is at once the most familiar aspect of our lives, and a persistent mystery in both science and philosophy.

In the Voltaire Lecture 2025, Professor Anil Seth will set out an approach to understanding consciousness which, rather than trying to solve the mystery head-on, tries to dissolve it by building explanatory bridges from physics and biology to experience and function. In this view, conscious experiences of the world around us, and of being a ‘self’ within that world, can be understood in terms of perceptual predictions that are deeply rooted in a fundamental biological imperative – the desire to stay alive.

At this event, Professor Seth will explore how widely distributed beyond human beings consciousness may be, with a particular focus on AI. He will consider whether consciousness might depend not just on ‘information processing’, but on properties unique to living, biological organisms, before ending with an exploration of the ethical implications of an artificial intelligence that is either actually conscious – or can convincingly pretend to be.

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.

About the Voltaire Lecture series

The Voltaire Lecture explores ‘any aspect of scientific or philosophical thought or human activity as affected by or with particular reference to humanism’. The Voltaire medallist has made a significant contribution in one of these fields. The lecture and medal are named for the philosopher Voltaire.

The Voltaire Lecture is part of the Humanists UK Annual Lecture series, which also includes The Darwin Day Lecture, The Rosalind Franklin Lecture, The Blackham Lecture, and The Holyoake Lecture.