The alien hypothesis?

[John Doe]

well sure...but it's not like there aren't oodles of
scientists saying exactly that: that intelligent life
as WE know it may be too narrow a definition...I mean
c'mon - Sagan chanted that mantra ad nauseum...with
good cause I believe...but if they out there are
simply TOO different from us ..SO different that we
can't "recognize" them for being inteligent, then
what's the point? Obviously, we are only going to make
a meaningfull "contact" with something out there that
resembles us..the real question is: how similar to
human is similar enough?...and this same question, as
far as I can see, lies at the heart of animal rights
issues, right here on Terra Firma....how similar to
human is similar enough for us to grant them, or
attribute to them, certain traditionally human
characteristics such as suffering, love, considered
behavior, etc...I mean, the real sticky thinking
doesn't happen at the level of adult mammals like
seals or polar bears; the litmus test of where this
gradient - if it iS a gradient - begins is oh clams,
mosquitoes, cockroaches...even carrots...so yeah, I
think we are very far from any ideal consensus as to
what is intelligent as far as terrestrial vermin are
concerned, let alone E.T.s...

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> On 16/10/2005 John Doe wrote:
> 
> > 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...
> 
> The simple point is that the concept of "intelligent
> life" is being 
> defined subjectively, or via subjective consensus.
> It's comparable to 
> the ways in which "Religion" imagines its "God/s"
> existing 
> anthropomorphically (if that's the right word).
> Humans decide or 
> project the boundaries of what "intelligent life"
> can mean; in other 
> words, "Science" creates "intelligent life" in its
> own image. And once 
> you come up with the hypotheses and get the
> calculations and 
> experimentation rolling, then you are certainly
> setting up a system. 
> Other life forms (which is the ostensible subject of
> the research) 
> might be operating within different parameters,
> might value different 
> data sets. Isn't it a bit arrogant -- if nothing
> else -- to dictate 
> what the hypothetical life forms need to be before
> you've even run 
> across them?
> 
> A-and I can imagine *really* smart extraterrestrials
> not wanting to 
> have a bar of us.
> 
> As to Baudrillard's stance on extraterrestrials,
> well ... But his work 
> (pad and pencil stuff to begin with too) isn't
> equivalent to your 
> travesty of it either. And that's part of the point
> of much Critical 
> Theory; the ways in which dominant discourses in
> cultures and 
> communities are promulgated and sustained. How it's
> really easy to use 
> language and rhetoric to dismiss ideas and beliefs
> and people you don't 
> like, or can't profit from.
> 
> Coincidentally, the exhibition reviews in the Visual
> Art section (not 
> on-line, sorry) of yesterday's paper here started
> off by citing 
> Baudrillard's 'The Conspiracy of Art' article (and
> ended by calling 
> Michael Houellebecq a "repulsive hack novelist"):
> 
> "On May 20, 1996, the French philosopher Jean
> Baudrillard shocked his 
> acolytes by declaring in a newspaper article that
> contemporary art was 
> null and void. ... 'The Conspiracy of Art' has
> recently been published 
> in an anthology of essays and interviews and it is
> even more potent 
> today than in 1996. Baudrillard's opinion is
> unambiguous. Art today 
> suffers from a kind of 'obesity' -- there is too
> much of everything. 
> When art is everywhere, it is nowhere. Contemporary
> art is nothing more 
> than a form of 'insider trading', a closed system, a
> self-referential 
> and self-reverential world. The banalisation of
> aesthetics and the 
> aestheticisation of banality are the same thing, and
> equally null. ... 
> "
> 
>
http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_2/lotringer.htm
> 
>
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10618
> 
> best
> 
> > 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...
> >
> >
> >>> 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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> 
> 



	
		
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