Anyone who saw the blockbuster sci-fi film \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d will remember Rocky, a creature unlike anything we\u2019ve seen on Earth.<\/p>\n
The five-legged alien is composed of a rock-like material, hence its nickname, and comes from a fictional planet where temperatures and a high-pressure ammonia-dominant atmosphere has driven evolution in a radically different direction (still, he\u2019s a cool guy.)<\/p>\n
The idea of such different yet conscious being is a fun thought experiment. And according to University of California philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel and University of Antwerp postdoctoral fellow Jeremy Pober, it may not be quite as far-fetched as it sounds.<\/p>\n
In what can only be described as a vape cloud of a working paper<\/a>, the pair examine the possibility of other consciousnesses that take on forms far beyond conventional imagination, arising from wildly different materials than those found on Earth. They argue that given the vastness of space, life could take dramatically different forms elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cSuppose your best guess estimate is that, on Earth, consciousness is present in all vertebrates, plus cephalopods and some insects,\u201d they wrote. \u201cAnd suppose that your best guess estimate is that on average each galaxy contains a million planets where species of approximately that level of behavioral sophistication eventually evolve (even if technological civilizations rarely arise).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe observable universe would then host, over its lifetime, a quintillion qualifying planets,\u201d they added. \u201cWith that many draws from the lottery, some of these life forms will be strange indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n The team examined a fundamental concept in philosophy called \u201csubstrate flexibility,\u201d which describes how the same materials can have multiple different properties. For instance, a cup can be made from a litany of different materials and still successfully contain liquid.<\/p>\n In their paper, Schwitzgebel and Pober argue consciousness could also be \u201csubstrate flexible,\u201d meaning that it doesn\u2019t have to be made out of conventional carbon-based flesh and blood.<\/p>\n