Version 3.1 Astrobiological Perspectives on Consciousness Rodrick Wallace, PhD Division of Epidemiology The New York State Psychiatric Institute * November 18, 2010 Abstract The Stanley Miller experiment suggests that amino acid-based life is ubiquitous in our universe, although its varieties are not likely to have followed the particular, highly contingent and path-dependent, trajectory found on Earth. Are many of those life forms likely to be conscious in ways we would recognize? Almost certainly. Will many conscious entities develop high order technology? Less likely. If so, will we be able to communicate with them? Only on a basic level, and only with profound difficulty. The argument is straightforward. Key words: astroethology, consciousness, culture, information theory, technology 1 Introduction In spite of a social construction as such (e.g., Penrose, 1994), conscious- ness is no great mystery, constituting a basic evolutionary adaptation that has been with us for the better part of a half-billion years (R.G. Wal- lace and R. Wallace, 2009, and references therein). Bernard Baars’ global * Box 47, 1051 Riverside Dr., New York, NY, 10032, wallace@pi.cpmc.columbia.edu 1 Nature Precedings : hdl:10101/npre.2010.5286.1 : Posted 18 Nov 2010