I saw the other day an article in the newspaper where the author asked members of the public whether they believed intelligence existed outside of Earth.
I myself do believe that there is life out there. However, the issue I forsee is dealing with the philosophical question of what constitutes intelligence. I’m not so sure that we would recognize it if we saw it.
Our experience as humans appears to frame intelligent life as an organism that is self-aware, breaking free of the evolutionary constrictions placed on its existence. Little green men.
But this concept of self and being for us is very much focused on the presence of a brain-like apparatus. Yet the developmental process on this planet is so chaotic and unbelievably unique when it comes to life on our scale, that I find it extremely unlikely that something with any ressemblence to Earthly brains could develop elsewhere. No, it would likely be something different entirely.
This makes being able to perceive intelligence difficult as we are so reliant on the brain to help define what is intelligent here on Earth. But when we think of it, what is the brain except for a complex set of interactions. Provide a stimulus to the same brain, and the “output” is entirely predictable.
I believe that if we had sufficient computational power, that we could simulate the entire human brain. That in essence, the computer would contain within it a person as indistinguishable in its humanity as you or I. A dreary thought, but it reinforces the notion that we are in essence a machine. The fact that it comes down to no more than an orderly set of interactions is what I think makes the whole question of how to recognize intelligence so difficult in the first place.
Because if we are no more than a complex set of interactions behaving in a way pre-determined by our evolutionary baggage, then we come to undermine our own definition of intelligence as we use it to differentiate our existence from that of something like a microbe.
These things that we believe reinforce our status as intelligent beings are relevant only to our own existence as determined by the brain structure we share. The art we produce and enjoy only serves to satisfy the evolutionary-imposed demands of the brain. It would be as invisible to an exoplanetary entity as it is now to a microbe.
Yet since we don’t see intelligence in those creatures on this planet that seem to behave with such predictability despite their incredible similarities in behaviour to us, would we likewise be able to distinguish intelligence in an exoplanetary entity?
I’m not so sure.
What do you think? Do you believe there’s intelligence outside of our planet?