Alex O'Connor

But at some point, I might sort of say, don't you think it's weird that you are conscious, you have thoughts and feelings, you have an inner sense of self.

I'd use different words because they're 10.

And this mug and this table and this chair,

don't and depending what they'd say you'd ask a further question so if they say yeah no that i guess so but that's because you know you've got a brain and then you might start asking about what they think the brain is and how so you sort of ask questions and in my view i think we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations

At least everything that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained.

And I just don't think that's true.

And I think it's like trivially untrue.

I'm not making some profound, what about love, man?

You can't scientifically... It's like, no, you can explain the chemicals that are firing.

I mean something a bit more specific, which is that science isn't really in the business of explaining things.

I'm no longer talking to the 10-year-old, by the way.

Science is not in the business of explaining things.

It's in the business of describing things mathematically.

Galileo famously says that mathematics is the language of the universe.

Fair enough.

But maths on its own doesn't do anything.

Maths just describes things.

All mathematical equations have an equal sign, and it describes some sort of fact about reality.

It doesn't cause anything.

Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move.