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.
1.3 Astrotheological Issue
It is interesting to think about the implications that the discovery of life in other worlds would have on theology. It would not be the first time that a scientific discovery would modify or infuse the spiritual world’s perspective on the universe. The antecedent of this can be seen in Darwin’s theory of evolution and the passage of the geocentric model to a heliocentric one in the Copernican turn.
The positivism of Auguste Comte thought that after passing through the theological state and the metaphysical state, you would follow the state science, where the hubris of humanity would finally surpass the other forms of knowledge to give way to one in which science leads the way (this is known as the law of the three states). In the theological state, human beings explain the world through supernatural beings; in the metaphysical state, reason supplants these beings to give an explanation of your environment; and finally assumes the positive state, in which the explanation based on scientific evidence predominates, which is the one that would eventually be established as the one form of knowledge that leads us to truth, freeing us from any form of theological thought [1.16].
Religion still exists and, in some countries, is even stronger today. Perhaps analyzing the etymological origin of the word religion will help us to understand it in another way and not as positivist thought was trying to do.
“The word religion comes from the Latin religare which means ‘to bind together.’ Religion in this sense would be the construct that for a long time has allowed us to unite our world, giving shape and meaning, giving us a character of teleological beings, or beings that seek a purpose, which is not given a priori but is rather developed [1.3].”1
If we understand religion as giving meaning, then its function can be better understood, since it is not a question of worshipping certain gods or one in particular, but of offering the meaning that human beings need to guide their lives. Religious experience is a dimension of the human being that cannot be left out. Religion can be understood as a natural phenomenon, which is a cultural product that society has needed to give meaning to its environment, and has been so for thousands of years, leaving an undeniable imprint on the human mind [1.17].
On the other hand, the universality of religious experience can also be understood as a form of perennial wisdom, as Aldous Huxley explains:
“To this the fully developed Perennial Philosophy always has and, in all places, given fundamentally the same answer. The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology [1.18].”
If we understand it from this perspective, religion is not a secondary accessory for humanity. For a person it can be dispensable, since you can be an atheist and use the sense of religare in other activities such as science itself (an extreme version of this can be seen in the Religion of Humanity by Auguste Comte, where science was an important part of the cult).
If we have this perspective, it is important not to forget the theological aspect in astrobiology, regardless of whether one is a believer or not, because it is a relevant issue to consider and has an impact on the way we see the world of millions of people on Earth. The mere discovery of a second Genesis would potentially have significant implications for the way we see the world. Based on this we could speculate and say that religions will adapt. Perhaps there are religions more flexible to this type of new
