{"id":240134,"date":"2026-07-02T02:32:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/consciousness-likely-not-unique-to-earthlings-paper-says"},"modified":"2026-07-02T02:32:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:32:43","slug":"consciousness-likely-not-unique-to-earthlings-paper-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/consciousness-likely-not-unique-to-earthlings-paper-says","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness likely not unique to earthlings, paper says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/consciousness-likely-not-unique-to-earthlings-paper-says.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is almost certainly no, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.ucr.edu\/app\/home\/profile\/eschwitz\">Eric Schwitzgebel<\/a>, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside.<\/p>\n<p>In a new <a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.ucr.edu\/~eschwitz\/SchwitzAbs\/SubstrateFlexibility.htm\">working paper<\/a>, Schwitzgebel and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeremypober.com\/\">Jeremy Pober<\/a>, 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 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt12042730\/\">Project Hail Mary<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}