The Francis Bacon Debate Society

The Francis Bacon Debate Society is a private debate forum I founded and chair. It grew out of a Madrid dining club begun in 2008 and took its present form in 2023: a single question argued from both sides over dinner, in the Oxford Union manner. The Society sat twelve times in 2025. The evening ends with a recorded vote.

Discussion is held under the Chatham House Rule: the vote is published, the words are not. Nothing is filmed and nothing is recorded for publication. Accounts of an evening name the motion, the guest speakers and the vote: never who said what. The room holds frontier researchers, philosophers, ambassadors, policymakers and senior executives. The Society convenes chiefly in London and Madrid, and sat in Paris for the first time in 2025.

The best evenings end the same way: nobody fully agreed, nobody fully surrendered their position.

Sittings

• 2026 Madrid, June, at my home: “This House believes AGI will make today’s education obsolete.”
• 2026 Middle Temple, London, May, with guest speakers Anil Seth and Gary Marcus: “This House believes that AI is, or could soon be, conscious.” The motion fell: 8 in favour, 17 against. An account of the evening is on LinkedIn.
• 2026 House of Lords, 22 January, Francis Bacon’s 465th birthday, hosted by Lord Markham: “AI should be regulated to preserve human agency.” The opposition carried by a single ballot, with one abstention.

The Society sits again in the autumn of 2026. Motions and past sittings are recorded at francisbacondebate.org.

Attendance

By invitation. The Society keeps its own site at francisbacondebate.org, and enquiries reach me at jf {at} janfarrell.com.