Re-cognizing human in an epiterrestrial context

Sensing Epiterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) (Part #14)

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Human incorporation as epiterrestrial: The point is frequently made that humans can only "see" a very small proportion of the electromagnetic spectrum -- of which the remainder can only be rendered "visible" through various instruments (available only to the very few). The argument has suggested that, irrespective of any definition of "electromagnetic", there is a context in which humans are cognitively embedded which constrains that to which attention is typically given in navigating "terrestrial" challenges. Arguably other forms of "intelligent life" may be associated with "non-visible" domains within that context -- however "context" is understood in terms of dimensionality, given the 10 to 26 envisaged by string theories.

Metaphorical framing: In this sense humans may be essentially epiterrestrial -- but as a particular instance in a far broader spectrum of "intelligent life"-- however that might come to be understood by the future (possibly in the light of subtleties of category theory).

In developing this argument, extensive use has been made of indicative metaphor -- consistent with the challenge of "sensing" such possibilities through "combinatory play". However, even with respect to the sense of "identity" associated with being "human", Kenneth Boulding's words merit consideration:

Our consciousness of the unity of the self in the middle of a vast complexity of images or material structures is at least a suitable metaphor for the unity of a group, organization, department, discipline, or science. If personification is only a metaphor, let us not despise metaphors - we might be one ourselves. (Ecodynamics; a new theory of societal evolution, 1978, p.345)

The comment of the poet John Keats is similarly relevant:

A man's life is a continual allegory -- and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life -- a life like the scriptures, figurative.

Understood in this way, humans are effectively embedded in an epiterrestrial context with other lifeforms -- best framed by metaphors in the absence of any other comprehensible mode of "definition", especially given the sense that their "existence" may have a quality of potentiality such as is formally described by probability functions. Such issues are fruitfully explored by Vasily Nalimov (Realms of the Unconscious: the enchanted frontier, 1982) as separately discussed (Nalimov's probabilistic vision of the world).

Human identity: The speculative comment with respect to the Euler identity may help to frame new ways of thinking about human embedding in an epiterrestrial context -- thereby refining a sense of the essence of human identity and of being human in a period in which many are faced with "nothing" and a "pointless" existence. This is discussed separately in a section on Enabling a reconciliation between one and nothing: p and the mysterious Euler identity (¿ Embodying a Way Round Pointlessness ? 2012).

If some such paradoxical relationship is fundamental to epiterrestrial intelligent life -- and to being human -- this is a challenge to the constraints associated with conventional framings of identity, as with the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It calls for imaginative consideration of other framings capable of embodying cognitive paradox (cf. Universal Declaration of the Rights of Human Organization: an experimental extension of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1971).

Such considerations frame the issue of how the undefinable "exists" -- especially when it is the essence of intelligent life. The restrictive understanding of the embedding of human identity within a terrestrial context, suggests that it might be better considered as embedded within an epiterrestrial context within which other (wave) forms of intelligent life might also "dwell", offering an interpretation of the classical Biblical phrase: in the world but not of the world (John 15:19).

The challenge to comprehension takes a different form in the light of the imaginative enthusiasm of astrophysicists for the integrative framework of a "multiverse" (or "meta-universe") of "unimaginable" complexity -- with little indication of its implications for human identity. Individuals are however free to respond proactively to such imaginings with their own creativity, as separately explored (Being a Poem in the Making: engendering a multiverse through musing, 2012; Enactivating Multiversal Community: hearing a pattern of voices in the global wilderness, 2012).

Rather than framing the integrative challenge in terms of "external" intelligent life, this recognizes the complementarity of the "internal", as indicated above by a primary foundational relation (Implication of Indwelling Intelligence in Global Confidence-building: sustaining the construction and dynamic of psychosocial reality through questioning, 2012). This is variously associated with combinatory play and phenomenological grounding (recognized as fundierung).

Such speculative possibilities also encourage consideration of how the sense of being human and engaging with the world may evolve through centuries to come. Given the transition from Neanderthal to Cro-magnon, how might creative combinatory play and synaesthesia feature in a future cognitive mutation, as separately discussed (Authentic Grokking: emergence of Homo conjugens, 2003)?

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