The Recognition of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Are Humans up to it?

Derek Pugsley

SETI strategies tend to overlook the uncertain nature of intelligence. How can we search for intelligence when we do not really know what it is? This paper explores the nature of intelligence and tries to identify its essence. It questions the validity of the human model of intelligence that is used to measure intelligence in terrestrial animals and underpins SETI projects. It concludes that we may only be able to recognise intelligence in an extraterrestrial animal from its behaviour and proposes several patterns of behaviour that could be used.

Keywords: SETI, extraterrestrial intelligence, ET behaviour, nature of intelligence, human model of intelligence