LogFAQs > #979589070

OhhhJa posted...

As far as we currently know, consciousness may be exclusive to carbon based lifeforms or it may not be.

I see no reason why it would be. The electrochemical potentials that make up our consciousness are generated primarily by sodium and potassium ions. The membranes across which they're generated, ion channels that generate them, and ligands/receptors that trigger their generation are all carbon-based, but they don't have to be. We've produced plenty of inorganic systems that receive, process, and respond to stimuli using electrical impulses. The only thing really separating those systems from our own system of doing the same thing is that we've got a more complex network.

Even looking more at naturally-occurring life, while carbon is certainly the most viable option for organic-like chemistry (it sits in a particular sweet spot as far as available bonds and bond strength goes, giving it a chemical versatility that no other element can match), there's no reason a similarly complex system couldn't arise using another element as the base. All that's fundamentally needed is ion exchange to create an electrochemical gradient, and no carbon is directly involved in that process.