In a letter to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, Albert Einstein argued that free will was an illusion. Our lives are as given by natural laws as everything else in the universe. But many naturalistic philosophers disagree. They argue that phenomena like life, sentience and even free will actually did emerge in a universe that totally lacked these phenomena. Such developments are often referred to as "emergence" - the alleged fact that totally new qualities can appear in the universe: Life emerged from inanimate matter, consciousness emerged from unconscious matter, free will emerged from a universe completely determined by natural laws. This is maybe the default stand by many scientists and educated people today.

In this session we will discuss if the concept of emergence helps us understand phenomena such as consciousness, life and freedom, perhaps even morality, or if it is more or less an empty concept that does more to explain away these phenomena than to explain them.

Short introduction by Lars Risan.

In the panel:

Philip Goff is a philosopher and consciousness researcher who works as a professor at Durham University, UK. He has written lots of popular and academic articles, and his most recent book is the critically acclaimed Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023). Goff is an active debater, writer and communicator, and also co-hosts the podcast Mind Chat.

Lars Risan is an anthropologist at Historical Museum, and has previously worked at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research. Risan has written on a variety of topics. His latest book "Ulvebarna: Omsorgens naturhistorie» (2022) deals with subjects like with freedom and morality in nature and how these qualities are central in evolution of life.