Michael Faraday Prize Lecture – Consciousness in humans and in other things

Join us for the Michael Faraday Prize Lecture given by 2023 winner Professor Anil Seth.
 
The nature of consciousness remains one of the greatest puzzles in science and philosophy. How do subjective experiences arise from brains and bodies? What is the ‘self’?
 
In his Michael Faraday Prize Lecture, Professor Seth sheds light on these questions through the idea of the brain as an embodied ‘prediction machine’. In this view, conscious experiences of the world around us, and of being a ‘self’ within that world, emerge as forms of perceptual predictions. These predictions do not reveal the world (or body) as it is, but in ways useful for staying alive – suggesting a deep connection between consciousness and life. Professor Seth will explore implications of this view for technology, especially AI, and for society, in terms of ‘perceptual diversity’.