Q:

Usage of “I will be. . . if it were”

I found a statement in one of my old write-up and I can't not be sure if this is wrong. I am not a native English speaker.

I will be surprised if it were to be discovered that consciousness is absent in some primitive life form at any stage of evolution.

On re-reading, I feel confused about the co-existence of will and were in two clauses. Is it acceptable in this statement? What is the grammar rule which one can use as a rule of thumb to construct such sentences?

A:

The problem is not will with were so much as will with if it were to be.
Indeed, it leaves me unsure just what you want to say here. It's clearly a conditional sentence, but one part belongs to the predictive conditional, the other to the speculative conditional (there's also the factual conditional, but that is more clearly not being used here*).
The predictive conditional considers a case as possible:

I will be surprised if it were discovered that consciousness is absent in some primitive life form at any stage of evolution.

Or:

I will be surprised if it is discovered that consciousness is absent in some primitive life form at any stage of evolution.

Both of these express the possibility as a real one, even though it states that you would be surprised.
The speculative conditional or counterfactual conditional requires the conditional mood:

I would be surprised if it were to be discovered that consciousness is absent in some primitive life form at any stage of evolution.

This makes a much stronger dismissal; it is a hypothetical possibility raised solely to then be rejected.
So: If you are open to the possibility, then use the predictive form, but if you are adamant it will not happen, use the counterfactual.
*Another way to classify conditional sentences is as  zero conditional, first conditional / conditional I, second conditional / conditional II, third conditional / conditional III and mixed conditional. Zero is factual, first is predictive, second is counterfactual in the present or future tense, third is counterfactual in the past tense, and mixed is counterfactual with either a past event condition affecting present or future outcome, or a past-continual affecting a past event.

