My socks look very purposeful striding around all day. Perhaps they have a mind of their own. However, when I take them off they just lie there on the floor, looking limp and lifeless. What happened to their will? Where is their mojo? Do my socks have a mind?

Before I answer that, let's make the problem simpler. I throw one sock out of sight - half the problem solved. Now, we rather assume that we, humans, have consciousness (although there are many opportunities to doubt this, let's not complicate matters at the start) and that therefore other humans share this uncanny ability. But it is still a thorny problem as to exactly where consciousness comes from; how it arises from the matter in our brains.

One theory says that everything in the universe has a mind. Every particle of every object in every place has a little piece of its mind. That doesn't necessarily mean everything is conscious, just that everything has some mind-stuff. As everything has some mind, it then follows that some particularly fortunate (or unfortunate) collections of particles can have more mind than others. And that at some point such minds become conscious. Do my socks, or rather, sock, solitary, agree?

It remains stubbornly silent on the matter. But I could go and dig out all the socks I have, and build a conscious-sock. I could tie them all together and build a sock-brain. I would probably have to go and buy lots and lots more socks, then tie them into neurone simulations. Then rather than a lump of grey matter I would have a huge mass of sock-matter. If I get the right connections the strings of socks should behave like neurons. At that point the mini-minds locked in my sad socks would burst forth into an explosion of conscious behaviour.

What would it possibly say?

"Put a sock in it, you moron!"

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