How many intelligent beings out there in the Cosmos?

[AProudLefty]

Excluding you know who, how many do you think? The Universe is said to be limited and finite. Therefore there is a number of intelligent beings out there, past, present and the future.

If the multiverse theory is true and the number is unlimited, what does that tell us about ourselves, epistemologically and philosophically?

Would you feel elated or feel the existentialist anguish of it all?

What thinken thus my fellow JPP philosophers?

 

[Cypress]

The armchair philosopher would begin by asking,

How do you define life? DNA-based life only emerged once* in 3.5 billion years on Earth, so the emergence of life does not seem like it spontaneously happens at any point in time. Would we even recognize alien life if we saw it?

We have no coherent theory for how biological molecules emerge from inert chemistry. If we do not understand that, how are we going to really know what we are looking for?

How do you define intelligence? There are multiple intelligent life forms on this planet. If technology is the demarcation criteria, would we even recognize alien technology?

As to the multiverse, we do not know if the laws of physics and chemistry would be the same in other universes. Some people (aka, the fine tuners) claim if you changed the physical constants found in this universe by any amount, it would make biological potential or any kind of order impossible.





* There is a clear distinction between abiogenesis from non-biological matter, and speciation from existing life.