The alien hypothesis?

[John Doe]

A 'concept" is not a self-defining system; it's a
concept...concepts are not "systems" in any meening
full use of the term...and the concept for
'intelligent life', like any other concept, is as
clear and defined , or as murky and wooly, as any
given individual's expression of it in his/her
imagination...there's nothing self-defining about
it....a buncha folks have developed notions, ideas,
imaginings etc., about what they mean by
intelligent...just like any other "sign"  to glibly
borrow from Saussure...and the "referents" in this
world are real, not "arbitrary"...when a person,
including a Post-Modernist, 'refers' to his doughnut,
he/she does not really, in their heart of hearts,
believe that its 'not there' - just a linguistic
construct..the fucking doughnut is REALLY their, and
maybe the language doesn't ontologically certify this,
but everyone's BEHAVIOR does...that's what's lost on
people like Baudrillard..nobody LIVES the way you'd
think they would IF the World were a mere plasma, a
skein, of linguistically induced
hallucinations...scientists don't need this kind of
silly view, and have been figuring things out just
fine without it...and will continue to do so, even to
the chagrin of others who think equations are
"arbitrary" ; yeah- duh! - the selection of symbols is
arbitrary; but the 'referents, like Gravitation, are
not...these are real forces, or to put it as loosely
as possible, these are real things-going-on, not
verbal ciphers...


--- David Gentle <gentle_family at btinternet.com> wrote:

> > Actually, "Science" does seem to spend an awful
> lot of time (and money)  
> > investigating whether Mars could support, or has
> supported, organic  
> > life and so forth. I'd imagine that the
> probability of the existence of  
> > "life" elsewhere in the universe could be
> calculated scientiffically,  
> > i.e. via some sort of equation where the expanse
> of the known universe  
> > is moderated against the likelihood of
> environmental and chemical  
> > conditions needed to generate and sustain "life"
> manifesting  
> > spontaneously. I suspect that the odds would be
> quite good.  
> > Hypothetically-speaking, that is.
> > 
> > As to "intelligent life" or UFOs, well, that'd be
> a separate equation.  
> > Or a derivative of the first. But the concept of
> "intelligent life" is  
> > problematic in that it's another one of those
> self-defining systems or  
> > semantic constructs. And, coming at it from
> another perspective, it's a  
> > little but egotistical, if not downright
> solipsistic, to assume for  
> > oneself the mantle of supreme being in all of
> existence.
> The Drake equation:
> N=R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc xL
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation   for
> what it all means.
> 
> David Gentle
> 



		
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