Intelligent beings beyond Earth may not resemble humans due to fundamentally different ways of thinking. This insight comes from philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel from the University of California, Riverside, and Jeremy Pober from the University of Lisbon.
In their recent study, they challenged the assumption that advanced extraterrestrial life must mirror human forms. According to these philosophers, alien consciousness could exist in shapes and modes that humans might struggle even to imagine.
The authors pointed to the concept of the flexibility of consciousness carriers. This theory suggests that human consciousness is tied to the human body, brain, and nervous system. However, this does not imply that any other consciousness in the universe must follow the same biological blueprint.
The philosophers proposed that flesh, blood, neurons, or carbon-based life are not strictly necessary for consciousness to emerge. For example, if a system reaches a sufficient level of complexity, consciousness could theoretically arise from other physical materials.
As a result, the familiar depiction of aliens might be far from reality. The researchers believe that intelligent life, if it truly exists in the universe, might have started evolving under different natural laws.
One of the authors’ key arguments relates to the vast scale of space. According to current estimates, the universe contains trillions of galaxies. In some of them, conditions could have been drastically different from those on Earth, while in others, they might be extremely similar. All of this suggests that human consciousness and alien consciousness could differ substantially from one another.
About the Author
