4.B. The Nature of ETI

Location

Student Union 323-B

Start Date

8-3-2022 9:00 AM

End Date

8-3-2022 10:30 AM

Description

  1. Faces and alien intelligence / Shao Yanming
    We currently have no theoretical or empirical evidence for the sufficient connections between biological appearance and the emergence of intelligence, nor can we imagine a normative program of communication between Extraterrestrial Intelligence (EI) and humans. In Emmanuel Levinas's ethical framework, responsibility for the others derives from the affective movements evoked by the face of the others, but this cognitive model may fail in the presence of the real others, the hetero-species. Assuming that EI appear to human beings and intervene to some extent in their daily lives, the irrational issue of faces may pose an obstacle, since human communications (whether online or offline) relies on (whether real or virtual) face-to-face approaches, and faceless or in the anthropocentric sense weird faces can bring discomforts. The perceptual intuition in this scenario is in line with human evolutionary rules, but EI may evolve different rules in its environment. Even if the corresponding rules of knowledge evolve, they may be malignant to humans because of such rules. What to do with the interactional behavior and interspecies games in this situation? One solution is to change the way humans think and act through education and training for those who are to be in contact with extraterrestrial beings, and another solution is to adjust the form of EI to human-like to blind the instinctive senses through technologies such as virtual reality, but both demand sufficient knowledge of EI.
  2. Anthropocentrism and Recognizing Extraterrestrial Intelligence / Tertia Gillett
    Intelligence is typically considered to be the characteristic that establishes human superiority over other animals and explains the evolutionary success of our species, as well as determining individual success in the contemporary world. Although the attribution of intelligence is popularly used to designate value, the particularities of the characteristics it is supposed to capture and whether there exists an adequate metric by which to measure it is contested. Here I argue that anthropocentrism is inextricable from our concept of intelligence, and this might seriously limit our capacity to look for and recognize non-human intelligences.
    First, I explore how intelligence is currently understood and measured in humans. Next, I discuss the limitations and biases that have been revealed by intelligence research in people as well as non-human animals. A small number of privileged individuals have served as paradigmatic models of intelligence, and their specific characteristics, composition, capacities, preferences, and interests have been built into the very idea of intelligence. These biases expose how value- laden the concept is and how it may be counterproductive to apply our standards of intelligence to beings much different than ourselves. I suggest that we reconsider the use of the concept of intelligence altogether in our search for ETI, and instead focus on how we might recognize specific cognitive capacities like memory in systems that are radically different from human beings in size, constitution, sensory apparatus, phenomenal experience, and taking into consideration their potentially different goals and values.
  3. Moral psychology and ETI / Dan Wueste
    It is argued that extraterrestrials would be rational (Kelly), which is one significant way in which they would be like us. That, in turn, would underlie and facilitate communication and moral judgment that reaches to us and them. If this is granted, a question worth asking is whether they would be like us in another way, namely, in having cognitive biases that are in apply when moral judgments are made. Recall that one important implication of the rationality argument relates to moral judgment.
    Moral psychology and social intuitionism: Consider Haidt on the significance of such biases in making moral judgments, which aren’t purely rational. (Embrace of Hume’s point about the passions—dog and tail. He offers an evolutionary account of our moral psychology and what he calls moral foundations. Is there a reason to suppose such would be inapplicable to extraterrestrials? Perhaps, like humans they would be prejudiced, manipulative, groupish and so on…. They might be rather like Derrick Bell’s space traders, which ought to give us pause, if only because we’d have reason to believe that they might conduct themselves vis-a-vis humans in much the same way that Europeans, for example, conducted themselves in regard to those they encountered when they arrived in the new world.

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Mar 8th, 9:00 AM Mar 8th, 10:30 AM

4.B. The Nature of ETI

Student Union 323-B

  1. Faces and alien intelligence / Shao Yanming
    We currently have no theoretical or empirical evidence for the sufficient connections between biological appearance and the emergence of intelligence, nor can we imagine a normative program of communication between Extraterrestrial Intelligence (EI) and humans. In Emmanuel Levinas's ethical framework, responsibility for the others derives from the affective movements evoked by the face of the others, but this cognitive model may fail in the presence of the real others, the hetero-species. Assuming that EI appear to human beings and intervene to some extent in their daily lives, the irrational issue of faces may pose an obstacle, since human communications (whether online or offline) relies on (whether real or virtual) face-to-face approaches, and faceless or in the anthropocentric sense weird faces can bring discomforts. The perceptual intuition in this scenario is in line with human evolutionary rules, but EI may evolve different rules in its environment. Even if the corresponding rules of knowledge evolve, they may be malignant to humans because of such rules. What to do with the interactional behavior and interspecies games in this situation? One solution is to change the way humans think and act through education and training for those who are to be in contact with extraterrestrial beings, and another solution is to adjust the form of EI to human-like to blind the instinctive senses through technologies such as virtual reality, but both demand sufficient knowledge of EI.
  2. Anthropocentrism and Recognizing Extraterrestrial Intelligence / Tertia Gillett
    Intelligence is typically considered to be the characteristic that establishes human superiority over other animals and explains the evolutionary success of our species, as well as determining individual success in the contemporary world. Although the attribution of intelligence is popularly used to designate value, the particularities of the characteristics it is supposed to capture and whether there exists an adequate metric by which to measure it is contested. Here I argue that anthropocentrism is inextricable from our concept of intelligence, and this might seriously limit our capacity to look for and recognize non-human intelligences.
    First, I explore how intelligence is currently understood and measured in humans. Next, I discuss the limitations and biases that have been revealed by intelligence research in people as well as non-human animals. A small number of privileged individuals have served as paradigmatic models of intelligence, and their specific characteristics, composition, capacities, preferences, and interests have been built into the very idea of intelligence. These biases expose how value- laden the concept is and how it may be counterproductive to apply our standards of intelligence to beings much different than ourselves. I suggest that we reconsider the use of the concept of intelligence altogether in our search for ETI, and instead focus on how we might recognize specific cognitive capacities like memory in systems that are radically different from human beings in size, constitution, sensory apparatus, phenomenal experience, and taking into consideration their potentially different goals and values.
  3. Moral psychology and ETI / Dan Wueste
    It is argued that extraterrestrials would be rational (Kelly), which is one significant way in which they would be like us. That, in turn, would underlie and facilitate communication and moral judgment that reaches to us and them. If this is granted, a question worth asking is whether they would be like us in another way, namely, in having cognitive biases that are in apply when moral judgments are made. Recall that one important implication of the rationality argument relates to moral judgment.
    Moral psychology and social intuitionism: Consider Haidt on the significance of such biases in making moral judgments, which aren’t purely rational. (Embrace of Hume’s point about the passions—dog and tail. He offers an evolutionary account of our moral psychology and what he calls moral foundations. Is there a reason to suppose such would be inapplicable to extraterrestrials? Perhaps, like humans they would be prejudiced, manipulative, groupish and so on…. They might be rather like Derrick Bell’s space traders, which ought to give us pause, if only because we’d have reason to believe that they might conduct themselves vis-a-vis humans in much the same way that Europeans, for example, conducted themselves in regard to those they encountered when they arrived in the new world.