Human consciousness is one of the strangest and most stubbornly elusive phenomena in nature.
Now, researchers have proposed a radical theory that suggests consciousness doesn’t depend on flesh and blood.
According to their ‘Copernican Principle’, consciousness isn’t some special property that is only found in humans and a handful of creatures with similar biology.
That means brains and bodies radically different from our own should be able to experience the universe just like we do.
This has huge implications for our search for life amongst the stars, since conscious beings might be nothing like life as we know it.
This bold theory opens the door to conscious aliens with entirely different biological chemistry from our own, like ‘Rocky’ from Project Hail Mary.
And it might mean that there’s nothing preventing an artificial intelligence from becoming conscious.
Co–author Professor Eric Schwitzgebel, of the University of California, says: ‘The universe may contain minds stranger than we can imagine.’
Researchers have proposed a bold new theory of consciousness, which says that it doesn’t rely on flesh and blood
Very roughly, we can define consciousness as the ‘what it is like’ aspect of existence.
For example, it makes sense to ask what it is like to be a human or an octopus, but not what it is like to be a table or a cup.
The big question scientists and philosophers have spent years debating is whether this property is ‘substrate flexible’.
This means that it can be ‘realised’ by lots of different types of things, just like the property of ‘being a cup’ can be realised by something made of glass or plastic.
Recently, some researchers have made the case that consciousness isn’t substrate–flexible at all, meaning it can only arise in very specific types of biological systems.
This essentially narrows down the range of creatures that could be conscious to a very small slice of possible life that includes creatures on Earth and those with Earth–like biology.
That might seem like a harmless assumption until we start to think about the baffling variety of life that could exist out in the wider universe.
Professor Schwitzgebel and his co–author Dr Jeremy Pober, from the University of Lisbon, suggest that if advanced civilisations arise in just one galaxy in every billion, there would still be over 1,000 scattered over time and space.
The authors say that consciousness shouldn’t be unique to things with human–like biology. This means that silicon–based life, like Rocky from Project Hail Mary, could also be conscious
Given the wide variety of possible environments in which they might flourish, it should be no surprise that many of these creatures would be very different to us.
Dr Pober told the Daily Mail that aliens could have ‘high level’ differences in terms of their functional architecture, but could also differ at the ‘much lower level’ of basic biochemistry.
‘Astrobiologists and biochemists have shown that carbon–based life, which is nonetheless significantly different in biochemical composition from ours, is possible,’ says Dr Pober.
For example, life that evolved in the sulphuric acid clouds of Venus might have silicon take the role that sulphur plays in our biochemistry.
However, no matter how advanced or intelligent these creatures might be, some theorists suggest that these differences rule them out from being considered conscious.
To Dr Pober and Professor Schwitzgebel, this is an obvious mistake.
Instead, they propose something called the ‘Copernican Principle of Consciousness’.
The idea is that we shouldn’t simply assume that humans and our particular type of conscious experience are special or unique.
Their ideas are inspired by the work of Nicolaus Copernicus (pictured), who showed that Earth wasn’t in a special place in the universe. Likewise, they argue that we shouldn’t think of human consciousness as special
This draws inspiration from the so–called ‘Copernican Revolution’ in astronomy, in which astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus realised Earth wasn’t at the centre of the universe.
Before Copernicus, people thought that Earth occupied a special or privileged position in the universe.
However, better scientific understanding has shown that it is better to assume that there is nothing special about Earth or humans until proven otherwise.
Dr Pober says: ‘The spirit of the Copernican Principle is: we should believe that we as humans are special when we have evidence that says so, but not when we don’t.
For example, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that humans are the most intelligent species on Earth, but absolutely no reason to think we are even nearly the most intelligent in the universe.
Once we apply this idea to consciousness, Dr Pober says there’s no reason to think that consciousness needs to rely on flesh and blood.
The big consequence of that idea is that it vastly expands the possible range of life forms that could be having conscious experiences out in the wider universe.
The researchers are dubious that silicon–based lifeforms like Rocky or the Horta from Star Trek are biologically viable.
The researchers are divided over whether this means artificial intelligences, like Skynet from The Terminator, could be conscious in the future
But if they did exist, there is no reason to think that they wouldn’t be conscious.
However, Dr Pober and Professor Schwitzgebel don’t agree on what this means for AI.
On the one hand, Dr Pober isn’t convinced that we shouldn’t be so flexible with what can be considered conscious.
‘There is good reason to think some aliens with biochemistries are conscious,’ he says.
‘The extent of this difference – the degree of substrate flexibility of consciousness, if you will – does not extend to stuff as different from us as silicon chips.’
However, Professor Schwitzgebel argues that we should be even more flexible about what sorts of systems can be considered conscious.
Once the idea that consciousness requires human biology is abandoned, he argues, it becomes harder to justify excluding silicon–based systems solely because they are made of silicon.
Professor Schwitzgebel adds that philosophers have ‘focused too much on whether silicon can duplicate a human brain and not enough on the broader question of what kinds of systems can be conscious.’
HOW SOON WILL WE BE ABLE TO UPLOAD OUR MINDS TO A COMPUTER?
Brain and memory preservation has been explored at length by futurists, scientists and science fiction junkies alike.
Many say it falls under the category of ‘transhumanism.’
Transhumanism is the belief that the human body can evolve beyond its current form with the help of scientists and technology.
The practice of mind uploading has been promoted by many people, including Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, who believes we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers by 2045.
Similar technologies have been depicted in science fiction dramas, ranging from Netflix’s Altered Carbon, to the popular series Black Mirror.
Another prominent futurist, Dr Michio Kaku, believes virtual reality can be used to keep our loved ones’ personalities and memories alive even after they die.
Scientists and futurists have different theories about how we might be able to preserve the human brain, ranging from uploading our memories to a computer to Nectome’s high-tech embalming process, which can keep it intact for thousands of years
‘Imagine being able to speak to your loved one after they die … it is possible if their personality has been downloaded onto a computer as an avatar,’ he explained.
These ideas haven’t been met without criticism.
McGill University Neuroscientist Michael Hendricks told MIT that these technologies are a ‘joke.’
‘I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever on the backs of their descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? They are cartoon bad guys,’ he said.
Meanwhile, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis said recently that such technologies would be virtually impossible.
‘The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,’ he said.
‘You can have all the computer chips in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.’
