From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Question about SETI:summary & response
Date: 8 Nov 92 10:50:15 CST
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

Well, I guess this was not the hot topic of the month!
Since responses were few, I give them in their entirety;
my (new) remarks are in angle <brackets>.

ORIGINAL QUERY by MINER:
     Search for Estra-Terrestrial Intelligence has recently been
greatly enhanced; in coming years even newer technological resources
can and surely will be applied to it (it seems fairly low-cost as
research goes).

     I'd like to get some reactions to the following question (I
will summarize results):

     If, after a considerable period of time, say twenty more
years, has been devoted to SETI, and still we have no reliable
indication that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, do
you think this would have any effect on your personal philosophical
outlook, and if so, what effect?  

     And if not, do you therefore consider SETI philosophically
irrelevant?

KEN WILLMOTT:

> [will 20 years of unsuccessful SETI change my philosophical ideas?]
> ...

No. Twenty years is not a long enough search to reach any
conclusions at all, *unless* it's successful. Then we really
will have a lot to stew about.

     -Ken

<Would *any* length of time suffice to allow us to reach a negative
conclusion?  If not, the philosophical question cannot be posed
_de jure_; but at some point SETI will peter out for practical reasons
if there are no results.>

NEIL RICKERT:

>    If, after a considerable period of time, say twenty more
>years, has been devoted to SETI, and still we have no reliable
>indication that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, do
>you think this would have any effect on your personal philosophical
>outlook, and if so, what effect?  

Since that is exactly the result I expect, it will not change my outlook
at all.

>    And if not, do you therefore consider SETI philosophically
>irrelevant?

I haven't thought about whether it should or should not be 
philosophically relevant.  I already consider SETI to be 
scientifically irrelevant.

<Very interesting and unusual perspective--care to elaborate?  My guess
would be that you're coming from a fairly conservative Judeo-Christian
worldview.  (Only a guess :-)>

COSMA SHALIZI:

>[Would no results after 20 years of SETI change our philosophies?
  Is SETI philosophically irrelevant?]

  No, and "It should be, but it isn't," respectively. Certainly, the mere
discovery of ETI will not change any of the more technical aspects of
philosophy, though conceivably actual contact with aliens _might_ lead to
new ideas on, say, perception, or the mind-body problem, or even 
aesthetics. But simply noticing that someone is broadcast "1 1 2 3 5 8 13" 
at 21cm should have no effect - nor should not finding any such thing. 
In either case, it is already well-known that we are plains apes, 
living in a narrow band of dirt and slime on  lump of metal circling an
undistinguished star in an obscure corner of a common place galaxy, 
and that when we die we rot, unless our friends took the trouble to 
burn or freeze us. This should do as much for our general attitudes as the
discovery that we are alone; or that we are not alone; but it would 
take something like finding out that we are to Them as the Melanesian
cargo-cultists are to us* to even shake our hubris.
If it turns out we are alone, the reaction will be not "life is a tiny
aberation in the universe" but "My, aren't we special."
*: Not that Melanesians are a separate species, obviously, but that the
cargo-cults were (and are) ignorant, unsophisticated and often 
self-desructive.

<For my part, I would feel extremely uneasy if I were obliged to conclude
there is no ETI, for the very simple reason that everything we think we
know about the universe leads us to expect ETI.  I would become quite
suspicious of our present assumptions about reality.  But apparently
I am alone in, if not the universe, this apprehension :=|>
-- 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor


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