Читать книгу Astrobiology - Группа авторов - Страница 15

When we deal with moral problems that relate to life in the universe we are presented with a great challenge in relation to knowledge. Considering that astrobiology itself is a transdisciplinary form of knowledge [1.7], the way it connects disciplines must be done in a way that avoids any kind of reductionism. It is interesting to note that the NASA Astrobiology Strategy [1.23] encompasses a diversity of disciplines and each is given a place in this new scenario.

It does not put biology above (and here we are differentiating ourselves from exobiology) other scientific disciplines, but also involves planetary sciences, law, epistemology, etc. A goal of the NASA Astrobiology Strategy is to foster interdisciplinary science. “Astrobiology is multidisciplinary in its content and interdisciplinary in its execution. Its success depends critically upon the close coordination of diverse scientific disciplines and programs, including space missions” [1.28]. Astrobioethics, as well as Astrobiology, requires the participation of each discipline according to the need that emerges in the study process.

In this sense, astrobioethics, working from different areas of knowledge, reminds us that reality is complex and that we must live up to the circumstances. Perhaps the emergence of the need to have these new perspectives is not an isolated phenomenon regarding astrobiology and astrobioethics alone but is part of a much broader context. This would not be strange; after all, science is a product culture and obeys the demands that each era requires. We see today that it is increasingly crucial to address different aspects of reality as an interconnected whole, and not only to know it in theory, but also to know how to apply it. The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is an example of this. What happens to one country is no stranger to what happens to other countries, and it is also foolish to worry more about the economy than public health, because in the end one affects the other. In addition, when implementing health measures in different countries, it is not only the recommendation to prevent a disease that counts, it is also necessary to consider the idiosyncrasies that each context possesses. Reality teaches us what is not taught in college.

Astrobioethics must learn from the lessons we already have on Earth because, after all, whether we want it or not, astrobiological ethics is conditioned by a biogeocentric approach [1.1] [1.4] [1.5]; that is, the paradigmatic dependence we have where we only use as a reference the knowledge we have about life on Earth.

That any moral way of proceeding against extraterrestrial life will necessarily have to be linked to what we have learned on Earth represents the greatest epistemological challenge of astrobioethics. This in turn represents an ontological limitation since we cannot escape our human point of view. But we are no stranger to it in relation to the living beings that inhabit this planet. Anthropocentric conditioning could be overcome if a thinking being alien to the human species could establish a system of values by which to compare it to ours. At present, this is not the case and does not appear to be so anytime soon. On the other hand, we also have the reason-centric conditioning [1.27], on which we base our morals from reason. If not, will it be possible to conceive of other moral systems that do not depend on reason?

The attempt to develop an “inclusive” astrobiological ethic must face this epistemological problem which has no solution for now, but this does not mean that we stop working on it. Even if we do the mental experiment of assuming that a way of life has already been discovered, we could raise four scenarios:

 The first: discovery of microbial life forms.

 The second: discovery of primitive life forms, like those that inhabit the Earth (such as dolphins, dogs, giraffes, lions, ants, etc.).

  The third: discovery of intelligent life forms that are unable to communicate with us.

 The fourth: discovery of intelligent life forms with interplanetary communication capacity.

The first case is more likely to happen in our Solar System, on Mars or below the surface of Europa, Jupiter’s Moon. The moral approach in this aspect is obvious, since these microbial life forms would not have a moral system of their own, it would be us who would establish the ethical system of action. Although the second case is not too far away in terms of a moral approach, at least we could identify a certain type of protoconsciousness as happens in some terrestrial animal species, or understand how they behave in order to respect and evaluate how to deal with it.

It also depends on how we might disrupt their habitat or interact with those extraterrestrial life forms. The ethical normative aspect would have greater weight whenever there is a possibility of intervening in their ecosystem. It would not be the same to detect extraterrestrial life forms on exoplanets that we cannot visit to detect it on a nearby planet and be able to have some degree of impact on it.

The third case would have more of an impact on us than on them, in the case of detecting intelligent life forms that may not be able to communicate with us, but we do detect them. This scenario does not seem highly likely now (and here the convenience of the mental experiment, because we can imagine it). However, if that were the case, it would have a significant impact on how we understand life in the universe. In this scenario, since we cannot communicate with them much less visit them, we would not have the possibility to exchange moral systems to establish an authentic astrobiocentric way of behavior. We would be limited to rearticulate what we are as intelligent beings sharing existence with other intelligent beings, but at the moral level we would still be conditioned by the ethical perspective based on the biogeocentric approach, so that even if there are considerable implications both for the natural and social sciences, we would still be watching with eyes anthropocentric to our peers’ smarts.

The fourth scenario is closer to a science fiction one, but sometimes science fiction gets ahead of the facts and helps us imagine scenarios and develop interesting arguments. If a communication with intelligent life forms were to take place, the epistemological gap would be more affected than in the other cases since it represents a rather rich cognitive element.

In this exchange of information, the elaboration of an astrobiological code of ethics with an astrobiocentric approach would find its most developed form, since it will be based not only on one reference, but on two. Assuming, of course, that in this communication there is a minimum of mutual understanding and there is no threat presented by it. This scenario is hard to imagine and less likely to happen. What most likely could be expected to happen is scenario one, considering the current state of the search for life in the universe. That being the case, our problem on how to establish an astrobioethics criterion with an appropriate epistemological foundation will have to be limited to an inevitable anthropo-bio-geocentric bias.