Drawing on Copernican tradition, philosophers argue for plausibility of other kinds of sentient life
Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood?
The answer is almost certainly no, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside.
In a new working paper, Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober, a former UCR graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, assert that consciousness is likely possible in life forms made of much different stuff. Think of the five-limbed alien with a rock-like exterior in the recent blockbuster movie “Project Hail Mary.”
Schwitzgebel and Pober do not attempt to define consciousness. Instead, they proceed from the premise that it’s a real and recognizable phenomenon, and pose a narrower question: Must it be tied to the biology found on Earth?
The paper comes at a time when the prospect of conscious artificial intelligence looms large, fueling utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. The authors, who touch just briefly on the matter, do not take a firm position either way — and, in fact, diverge in their views. But the arguments they advance leave open the possibility that AI could be conscious, though perhaps not in its current form.
At the heart of the paper’s argument is the philosophical notion of “substrate flexibility.” As the authors explain it, a “target property,” such as being a cup, is substrate flexible if it can be achieved with different kinds of materials. A cup is substrate flexible; it can be made with glass, plastic, or many other substances. Similarly, a book can be printed on paper or stored electronically, and a records can be encoded on vinyl or on compact discs.
Consciousness, Schwitzgebel and Pober argue, is also substrate flexible.
“The universe may contain minds stranger than we can imagine,” Schwitzgebel said. […]
Continue reading: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2026/06/10/consciousness-likely-not-unique-earthlings-paper-says
