Philosophy, Aliens and Astrolinguistics

This is my abstract for the conference "Philosophed 2015: Philosophy of Mind". Ukrainian translation is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5yA-nWAuBS2RDBVd25hVUtwT2s/view?usp=sharing 

Here I criticize the anthropomorphic patterns in CETI (Communication with Extraterrestial Intelligence) and reject human cognitive universals that are imposed on the alien life forms. I suggest movement to be a linguistic base and a point of contact between terrestrial and extraterrestrial intelligences.

The Solaris Mystery:

Opposing the Terrestrial CETI Patterns

Science Fiction about Communicating with Extraterrestrials

            Kris Kelvin, a protagonist of the novel “Solaris” by Stanisław Lem, is drawn into the stalemate while exploring a sentient ocean that covers planet Solaris. The researchers to no avail endeavour to find any succession, causality and structure of the ocean’s intelligence. In return for human struggling attempts, Solaris itself investigates scientists, embodying their deepest memories and thereby hurts their feelings unknowingly. Two intelligent species try to communicate with each other but find no point of contact.

            Stanisław Lem managed to feel subtly something that SETI [1] projects usually seem to ignore: that is a striking incommensurability and inconsistency between human and extraterrestrial minds. A plausible alien encounter will finally disprove a Protagoras’ claim “Of all the things the measure is Man” and challenge humanity to cease imposing its categories on the rest of the Universe.

Anthropomorphic Tendency in Astrolinguistics

           Astrolinguistics is vulnerable when conniving at the all-encompassing efficacy of terrestrial languages, especially those artificial ones constructed by mathematicians and logicians. Dr. Hans Freudenthal, who came up with an idea of the interstellar language based on logic and mathematics, wrote: “Mathematics may be supposed to be universally known to humanlike intelligent beings” (Freudenthal, 1960). A SETI researcher Guillermo A. Lemarchand and a space artist and journalist Jon Lomberg, following the tradition of Iosif Shklovsky and Carl Sagan, believe that “the basic principles of our science and the science of extraterrestrial beings should be fundamentally the same [the principles of mathematics, physics, chemistry etc.]” (Lemarchand, Lomberg, 2011).

All Earthling attempts to message ETI also demonstrate the anthropomorphic way of thinking about aliens. The Pioneer plaques as well as the Arecibo message, which date back to the 70s, require the knowledge of binary digits, geometry and chemistry to be decoded by a recipient. Almost none of the unbiased scientists could correctly decipher a pictorial message of the Pioneer plaques. Needless to say, that the chance for extraterrestrial life to understand it is vanishing. Even the Voyager golden records, containing sounds and images, are “comprehensible to a scientifically literate society” (Sagan, 1978). Images with some linguistic representation, which were seen as a powerful way to transmit unambiguous interstellar messages, still imply prerequisites of the same space and time perception, vision and hearing (a priori forms of sensibility). All messages for extraterrestrials have hitherto been based on the preconceived expectations that human cognitive maps would be transformed into cognitive universals.

Mathematics and Logic are Not the Base for Interstellar Communication

Unfortunately, mathematics cannot be considered a universal language as long as we suppose after John Locke that the idea of number is not innate. Pirahã language, analysed by Daniel Everett, contains no words for numbers and the Pirahã people are believed to be incapable of learning elementary arithmetic operations. SETI researchers envision that civilized intelligence, developed enough to receive radio emissions, should have had science and mathematics. Yet the cosmological principle is rather rough, homogeneity of the Universe is questioned and our bulk of knowledge about the outer space cannot be regarded ubiquitous. Physical laws do not go on record as guaranteeing the universal application of the human concepts of life and consciousness.

While constructing a means of CETI, Earthlings get bogged down in their intelligence, whereas what we really need is to go outside our ken and delve into something that stretches far beyond the limits of our understanding. That reminds me of how Anselm of Canterbury defined the Christian God – “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. Nevertheless, religion at least provides the faithful with a slight idea of God through the symbolic mediation of the Scriptures. Aliens are much more complicated than God is as they can be described neither apophatically, nor cataphatically.

Movement as a Key to Communication

A physicist David Bohm put forward an idea of the Universe as an undivided entity. It is a language that discerns this wholeness, so to avoid a fragmentation David Bohm offers to use a rheomode (“to flow” from Ancient Greek) that does not emphasize on the subject-verb-object structure of sentences, but takes movement as primary and incorporates into the language structure by allowing the verb rather than the noun (Bohm, 1980). Although Bohm’s assumption can be doubted, the idea to use movement as a key to communication is rather reasonable, because movement, even an implicit one, is the only evidence that may link terrestrial and extraterrestrial lives. Let us face this hypothesis on the surface of our skin, in bacteria, which are alien to our body.

Bonnie L. Bassler maintains that bacteria communicate with each other using chemical signal molecules. A bacterium Vibrio fischeri hits a certain amount of molecules that “tell” it the number of neighbouring bacteria and thus enable quorum sensing, when the bacteria community acts simultaneously as a multicellular organism and makes bioluminescence (Schauder, Bassler, 2001). Using chemical language biologists can interfere some new molecules into bacterial “conversations”, supporting the interaction between beneficent bacteria and preventing communication of the malignant ones. Despite containing no mutual semantic constituents, such a “stimulus – response” communication may be a linguistic base for the first contact.

Individual Approach in SETI

We need to admit that perhaps no universal communication network is possible. To search for laws in a place with no repeated regularity is a defeat of science. My solution is an individual view on every case and a face-to-face communication (then, planetary protection regulations need to be revised). Here philosophy is more flexible to forge a special approach to the Other, that does not hold it in slight regard and does not see it as an appendage of human omnipresence.

SETI feeds us with humble pie so that we stop spreading arrogantly the limitations of our consciousness to the whole world. Intelligence filter must not indicate the worth of our alius companion. So is an attempt to establish a link with an alien life vain? In the end of the novel, Kris Kelvin stays on the planet because “leaving would mean giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal one, perhaps only imaginary” (Lem, 1970). It gives us hope that a delicate touch would enable us to reveal the mystery of a taciturn life.

Works Cited
1. Bohm, D. (1980): Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge).
2. Lem, S. (1970): Solaris translated by Kilmartin, J.; Cox, S. (London: Faber and Faber).
3. Lemarchand, G. A., Lomberg J. (2011): Communication among Interstellar Intelligent Species: A Search for Universal Cognitive Maps. In: Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence ed. D. A. Vakoch (New York: State University of New York Press). pp. 371-395.
4. Freudenthal, H. (1960): Lincos: Design of a Language for Cosmic Intercourse (Amsterdam: North-Holland).
5. Sagan, C.; Drake, F. D.; Lomberg, J. et al. (1978): Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record (New York: Random House).
6. Schauder, S.; Bassler, B. L. (2001): The Languages of Bacteria. Genes & Development 15 (12) [Online] Available at: http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1468 (Accessed 15/11/2015).

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[1] Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence