Two philosophers just made a bold argument: consciousness might exist across the universe in forms so strange we can’t even picture them. According to Futurism AI, University of California philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel and University of Antwerp postdoctoral fellow Jeremy Pober lay out the case in a new working paper. Their core claim is simple to state and hard to dismiss. If consciousness can run on materials nothing like our carbon-based biology, then minds could be everywhere, built from chemistry we’ve never encountered.
This is significant because it reframes a question usually stuck in science fiction as a serious philosophical bet about the odds.
What the researchers actually argued
Their reasoning leans on a numbers game. Suppose consciousness on Earth covers all vertebrates, plus cephalopods and some insects. Then suppose each galaxy averages a million planets where species reach roughly that level of behavioral sophistication. Run the math across the observable universe, they write, and you get “a quintillion qualifying planets” over its lifetime. “With that many draws from the lottery,” the pair note, “some of these life forms will be strange indeed.”
The second pillar is a concept called substrate flexibility. A cup holds liquid whether it’s glass, clay, or metal. The function doesn’t depend on one specific material. Schwitzgebel and Pober argue consciousness could work the same way, meaning it doesn’t need conventional flesh and blood to exist.
From there, they take aim at what they call “terrocentrism,” the unjustified assumption that Earth-style biology is the only path to a conscious mind. “The universe may contain minds stranger than we can imagine,” Schwitzgebel said in a statement.
The AI angle, where they disagree
What stands out here is how directly this connects to the AI consciousness debate. AI models have no physical body, so a conscious AI would already be radically unlike anything we know. And the two authors don’t agree on it.
- Pober takes the cautious line: until we have reason to believe otherwise, we should assume current computer chips cannot produce consciousness.
- Schwitzgebel pushes back, saying “we should be open” to the possibility.
That split is worth noticing. Even the people writing the paper can’t settle whether silicon qualifies, which tells you how unsettled the underlying science really is.
Why it leans on Copernicus
The paper frames itself as a rebuke to human exceptionalism. In cosmology, the Copernican mediocrity principle says humanity holds no special spot in the universe. The authors apply the same logic to minds. If sophisticated, behaviorally complex entities have arisen many times across many substrates, then claiming only beings like us are conscious would, in their words, be “a violation of a principle of Copernican mediocrity.”
What to keep in mind
Here’s the honest caveat. This is a philosophical thought experiment, not an empirical finding. There’s no telescope reading, no lab result, no detected signal. The quintillion figure rests on guesses stacked on guesses: how common life is, how often it gets complex, whether consciousness travels across substrates at all. The authors are clear that these are best-guess estimates, and the AI disagreement shows the reasoning has real soft spots.
So treat it as a useful frame, not a discovery.
What this means going forward
For anyone working in or near AI, the practical takeaway isn’t “machines are conscious.” It’s that the question of what counts as a mind is moving from the fringe into mainstream academic argument. Over the next few years, expect this debate to shape real decisions: how companies talk about model welfare, how regulators frame AI rights conversations, and how researchers design tests for machine experience.
A few things smart readers can do now:
- Watch the language. When labs or critics invoke “consciousness,” ask whether they mean behavior, function, or genuine experience. They’re different claims.
- Separate hype from philosophy. A substrate-flexibility argument is a reason to stay open, not proof of anything.
- Track the disagreement. When experts split as cleanly as these two did, that’s your signal the field has no consensus yet.
The bigger shift is cultural. We’re starting to treat “what is a mind” as an open engineering and ethics problem, not a settled one. Full details are available at the original source.