My last post on alien philosophy systems (of which I was very content for a while) proposed that much like human philosophy the search for wisdom would have to be concerned with logical definitions of truth. And, having established a system of verification and falsifiability (analytic/synthetic truths, falsehoods) an alien philosopher could then enquire about the world around them. Because the world around them could be radically different from ours, and because the alien life-form itself itself could be radically different from humanity, I then posited that despite a common ancestry rooted in logic, alien metaphysics, ethics and epistemology would likely develop in a wholly different manner. One of my examples was the concept of ‘marriage/bachelorhood’ in an asexual species. Another was the concept of ‘self’ in an assimilative collective social consciousness.
I similarly posited that alien science, although built on the same mathematical logico-rational foundations as our own physics, would probably develop on a different course. Perhaps a non decimal system of counting and calculating? Perhaps the measurement of distance using colour intensity? Alas our conceptual and language barriers prohibit us from really envisaging such a different numeric concept.
However, with all the above I made one huge, easily made and comfortable assertion. That the building blocks of logic and mathematics as we know them within our space-time dimension are correct. By which I mean, I ignored the possibilities of multiple universes and alternative dimensions.
In the event of multiple universes I can propose the following, paradoxical statement of human and alien philosophy. We can know such things as analytic truths things that are universally true of themselves, but their universality is subjectively conditioned and restricted to our universe alone and are not necessarily nor universally true in any alternate universe.
Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End tells the story of mans first encounter with extraterrestrial life. A fleet of immense ships hover over the earths major cities for a number of generations, constantly in contact with the earth, they are aware of the existence of the ‘Overlords’ but human eyes never see them. Eventually the Overlords come down to earth and reveal themselves, their reason for seclusion becomes obvious, they have the form and likeness of demonic beings that resemble those from human mythology. They are asked if they had visited earth before, hence explaining the ‘devil’ as a cultural memory passed down through the generations. They respond: “It was not precisely a memory. You have already had proof that time is more complex than your science ever imagined. For that memory was not of the past, but of the future.”
The Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl was said in some mythologies to have departed his people, but to have promised his return on the day of Ce-acatl, in the year of 1 reed. In 1519 the Spanish explorer Cortez landed at Veracruz, and it is said fulfilled the prophecy with unerring accuracy. Similarly in Mayan mythology the deity Kulkulcan was said to have prophesied his return in the eighth year of Katun 13 Ahau, in that year (1527) Francisco de Montejo landed on the Yucatan peninsular to begin the slaughter of the Indians. In June 1971 Manuel Elizalde Jr led an expedition on Mindanao, in the Philippines, to discover the isolated Stone Age tribe of the Tasaday. They were expecting his arrival, as he had been prophesied by their ancestors.
Short of believing that people have the powers of prophecy, or that the ‘great white gods’ of the Aztec and Mayans really were personified in the Conquistadors, we must look elsewhere for an explanation. One of them is the concept of the hyperhistorical sphere and retrocasuality. These theories argue for the effect preceding the cause. In other words for the direction of time to point in a different direction to that with which we are familiar. Furthermore speculation persists about the flexibility or curving nature of time and the existence of superliminal Tachyon particles.
A theory of retrocausality could hypothesize that the Spanish were the cause of the Aztec and Mayan legends that preceded their arrival. Explanations vary, but usually settle upon subconscious mental activity, a theory that nicely fits in with Jung’s archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Now aside from alien philosophy, although relevant eventually, the theory of the hyperhistorical sphere and retrocausality also has implications for human religious beliefs. Those which throughout history have been attributed as being miraculous occurrences or visions, could perhaps better be understood as explicable intrusions of other-dimensional beings into our space and time. This isn’t as ridiculous as it may at first sound, nor is it purely theoretical. With this proposition the archetypes are not merely culturally inherited metaphors or symbols but real living entities existing both in the mental sphere of the collective unconscious and in the real physical world. Psychology and some radical psychiatrists categorise these as psychoid experiences.
A psychoid experience is neither ‘real’ in the ordinary sense of the word, nor is it mere hallucination, it is considered to be a hybrid of the two, combining elements of the mental life and the physical world. Now before we get too sceptical a note from renowned psychiatrist Stanislav Grof “This would, of course, make these experiences (psychoid experiences) extremely difficult to study by traditional scientific methods, which depend on sharp distinctions between real and unreal or material and psychological events.” Grof concludes that to study such phenomena one would need to combine an examination of physical evidence in sync with psychological perspectives interpreted with an open mind to new consciousness research techniques and radical hypothetical physics (such as retrocasuality).
Let me then return to alien philosophy by considering our response to the serious study of UFO phenomena. One thing can be said about such research, irrespective of whether such phenomena are real, it is confronted with investigative difficulties that our present state of knowledge is unable to solve.
Firstly we do know that it is very unlikely that intelligent life (capable of interplanetary travel) exists within our solar system. Therefore any such planetary based extraterrestrial life must come from beyond our star system. In order for that alien life-form to travel to earth they would have to travel extraordinary distances. This would require a technological knowledge far superior to our own.
Such interstellar travel requires that:
i) Travelling at sub-luminal speeds the life form must have enough life sustaining resources to complete the journey. Exceptions to this rules are a system of stasis controlled by powerful computers. Or a type of life-form that has a completely different (slower?) metabolism to our own.
ii) Alternatively alien science may have engineered space vehicles capable of achieving transluminal travel.
iii) Also alien science may have engineered a means of travelling outside of the dimensions of space and time and travel through hyper-space.
iv) They could also of course come from a completely different dimension and universe altogether and have mastered the science of inter-dimensional travel. Not travelling merely through space and time but across dimensions, entering into our world, or our dimensional reality in seemingly extraordinary fashions. Lets say as an example, entering the physical world through a subconscious portal. In other words, through what we call a psychoid experience.
Let us consider all of the above, and particular the last possibility. An alien species that was in possession of this sort of technology, would in all likelihood also be in possession of other kinds of technology, the likes of which we couldn’t even begin to imagine. They could possess consciousness influencing technology that worked on both the individual and the transpersonal plane. If all this were true, our experience of such lifeforms, in possession of such technology, would be akin to that of fantasy, visionary, hallucinatory, or even psychotic experiences. Let’s take one further step, what if, for whatever reason, this inter-dimensional life-form, in possession of such technology was capable of exploiting human research creating confusion and thereby disbelief?
Stanislav Grof explores these possibilities in his book The Holotropic Mind. He comes to the following conclusion. If extraterrestrial life exists, particular inter-dimensional lifeforms, that are capable of travelling to earth as a product of an advanced technology (as yet) beyond our understanding, then we are confronted with a seeming convergence of two paradoxically opposed viewpoints. The Rational finally meets the Irrational.
Interplanetary travel, of the kind we have spoken of, would represent the greatest achievement and triumph of rationality and science. Yet the lifeforms we would encounter and the reality-phenomena of their dimension or technology and thought processes would be so unusual, that we could easily equate them with the world of the magical or mythical. The reality-phenomena of such lifeforms could far exceed, in weirdness and irrationality, even the prerational thought processes of primitive human culture, the creative imagination of artists and the hallucinations of those that we have labelled and condemned as insane.
The conclusions of my first post, and the universality of analytic truth even in alien philosophy, holds true if the alien life form exists within our dimension.
But if the alien life-form from within our dimension has mastered transluminal travel, has found and can manipulate hyperspace, or can even perform inter-dimensional travel, then it’s philosophy may have transcended or altered the boundaries of logic and truth and taken on a Post-Rational character distinctly of its own.
And if the alien life-form exists in a different dimension, then irrespective of whether it has mastered inter-dimensional travel, it is possible to assume that their philosophy could be anything from: rational, pre-rational, post-rational and maybe even non-rational.
What can be said then is that we therefore could not conceive of an alien philosophy that was capable of developing such scientific and technological insights into the universe(s) all the while we define our boundaries with rationalism.
But lets not worry, the purposes of such speculations are not an attempt at becoming some sort of interstellar Wittgenstein. The field of philosophicus-extraterrestrialis is ripe for the harvest, so long as we know our starting point is enquiry and logic within this universe and dimension and our end point is inter-dimensional post-rationalism, that still leaves us all the fun in-between bits, such as reproductive ethics in asexual alien society, and knowledge of the self within a consciousness collective. I look forward to us working on such things in the future.
There is often no guidelines. Should we draw it at the species line?
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