From Anthony Burns, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK
Regarding your article “What makes a mind?”, until recently it was thought that the life process originated as some kind of accident of thermodynamics, and that “agency” (and consciousness) arose as a by-product of this. But when, for example, I see a cat doing acrobatics on a garden fence, I know for certain that the laws of physics couldn’t have predicted this. The cat is clearly acting with intent and knows what it is doing. Actions like this are an everyday occurrence (14 February, p 32).
Clearly, something else is going on in addition to the known physical laws. It is apparent to me that agency – whatever this might be – is fundamental to the workings of the universe, and that the laws of physics (as we understand them) are simply what happens when agency doesn’t intervene.
