I agree that it is probable that any life which maintains what we would define as "intelligent" characteristics would evolve a physical form which closely resembles us human's however intelligence even on our own planet, even amongst our own species is not as common as most people think heh. Seems likely to me that a planet could come and go without a single intelligent species ever existing on it.

We make this assumption forgetting that the only other species we know of with comparable intelligence isn't humanoid.

That assumes sentience is a common goal for all cellular life.

Not necessarily. All life evolves toward a state of perfection. Sentience could just be the bi-product of highly evolved organisms. As I often say, "Man was not meant to think about the meaning of life. We were meant to eat, drink, reproduce, and protect ourselves as efficiently as possible". Okay, maybe I don't say that often, but I have before. The point is that nature isn't trying to evolve toward a state of consciousness. Rather, it's forcing every species to do the best it can to survive, and early humans were so good at doing what they [i]needed[/i] to do to survive that we actually had the intelligence and time to do what we [i]wanted[/i] to do, like thinking.

Perfection? You need to clarify what you mean by perfection. Life doesn't evolve towards anything, natural selection is what determines how biological organisms change over large timescales. The animals that evolve better traits which allow them to reproduce are the ones who prosper. A crocodile would not benefit any more from a brain capable of critical thinking than a human would benefit from gaining 3 extra stomachs. Intelligence is merely a trait just like sight, hearing, a central nervous system. Human's evolved to be intelligent because early intelligent humans were able to adapt to their environment better, therefore reproduce. I wouldn't call this perfection it's just adaption. Man wasn't meant for anything different than what a beetle was meant for. All we can do is recognise our biological strengths and play to our advantage Hah i'd argue that not every human would value thinking the same way. Our brains evolved due to biological and environmental stresses present millions of years ago. It's postulated that the areas of the brain involved with social interaction are larger than in other members of the great ape family due to the increased difficulty in child birth due to the disproportionate size of the human skull to the rest of the body. This meant that early human's needed to socialize in order to aid each other, those who worked together lived and we're able to pass on their genes to the next generation. tl;dr Human's evolved to be intelligent because it helped us exist within our enviroment and allowed us to reproduce. Intelligence is not inherently superior and should not be held to a higher standard than any other evolutionary trait. Sentience is just as remarkable as the ability to walk.

State of perfection, in this case, is relative to the organisms environment. I think I should have clarified that I don't think nature is actually [i]trying[/i] to reach a state of perfection. Rather, it's something that happens randomly via natural selection. Giraffes have long necks to feed from tall trees. crocodiles have a second pair of eyelids to protect their eyes while under water, etc, etc. Nature pushes all species to a point where they are best equipped to survive. [quote] Human's evolved to be intelligent because it helped us exist within our enviroment and allowed us to reproduce. Intelligence is not inherently superior and should not be held to a higher standard than any other evolutionary trait. [/quote] I agree with this entirely. Sentience is a side effect of natural selection. Actually, I think we might be totally in agreement and the only problem is semantics.

But we still haven't addressed the problem of why all sentient life is in humanoid form. There could have been a crab like race or a bug like race. Like in mass effect my main gripe was that almost each race was humanoid and or mastered English. The probability of that is unlikely at best

Well the only sentient life we can base any assumptions on are humans, which puts some pretty big limitations on our model, but it's the best one we have. We need to look at what exactly intelligence is. We can do so by describing the characteristics of an intelligent being. They are lateral thinkers, good at pattern recognition, problem solvers, good planners, , self-aware, communicative, capable of reasoning and good at learning. Now all these things lead to a being capable of understanding the world around itself as well as the being's relation to said world. However if such a being were a four legged creature it would be confined to using it's mouth as the only real method of interacting with the outside world. Any sufficiently intelligent creature would from an evolutionary standpoint favor genes which increased ones ability to interact with the world. Therefore the ones that could better manipulate the world would survive and produce children statistically better at manipulating the world around them. Walking on two feet, allowing ones hands to be freed to do any number of tasks is a pretty big advantage to an intelligent animal. Therefore such an animal would inevitably evolve traits that maximised said potential, as they would be synonymous with reproductive success. That being said, there may be an even more efficient method of interacting with the outside world we have no yet observed. That's why I said it's a pretty lousy model.

[i] which all life strives for[/i] i call humanist bullshit. sincerely - the Bluewhale (they gave up their legs to swim) [url]http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_whales_have_hip_bones[/url]