The best minds have asked this question forever, said Victor. I cannot answer it. What I can say is that just as consciousness appears to be an emergent property of brain function – you can’t pinpoint consciousness biologically – it is as elusive as the seat of the soul – but we would agree that consciousness exists – and we would agree that at present machine intelligence isn’t conscious. So perhaps reality is also an emergent property – it exists, but it is not the material fact we take it to be.
