Philosophy and problems of the definition of Extraterrestrial Life

TL;DR

This paper explores the philosophical challenges in defining 'life' and 'intelligence' for astrobiology, highlighting the roles of conventions, preconceptions, and philosophical analysis in clarifying these complex concepts.

Contribution

It introduces an extended critical philosophy approach, Epistemo-Analysis, to analyze and improve the conceptual foundations of defining extraterrestrial life and intelligence.

Findings

Philosophical prejudice influences definitions of life and intelligence.

Analysis distinguishes between arbitrary conventions and content clarification.

Epistemo-Analysis offers a new framework for conceptual clarity in astrobiology.

Abstract

When we try to search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence, we have to follow some guidelines. The first step is to clarify what is to be meant by "Life" and "intelligence", i.e. an attempt to define these words. The word "definition" refers to two different situations. First, it means an arbitrary convention. On the other hand it also often designates an attempt to clarify the content of a pre-existing word for which we have some spontaneous preconceptions, whatever their grounds, and to catch an (illusory) "essence" of what is defined. It is then made use of pre-existing plain language words which carry an a priori pre-scientific content likely to introduce some confusion in the reader's mind. The complexity of the problem will be analyzed and we will show that some philosophical prejudice is unavoidable. There are two types of philosophy: "Natural Philosophy", seeking for some essence of things, and "Critical (or analytical) Philosophy", devoted to the analysis of the procedures by which we claim to construct a reality. An extension of Critical Philosophy, Epistemo-Analysis (i.e. the Psycho-Analysis of concepts) is presented and applied to the defintion of Life and to Astrobiology.