The beauty of thinking about other civilizations is it provides a due balance for materialist views, where instead of a universal truth, the question becomes what values and principles would be sufficient for us to co-exist with more (and less) advanced beings without respective reduction to foodstuffs, pets, or slavery.
To a more advanced civilization, we are chimpanzees who are both outwardly intelligent, but also tremendously dangerous, and so on what basis could they establish trust with us, or could we establish trust with a civilization of others? As Graham notes, math is one indicator that we are capable of apprehending the universe around us, but given the infinity of life and its necessary physical conditions of beginning and ending, and evolving in aggregate using tools and principles, it's not sufficient. Maybe one way to ensure trust is to share DNA, so that we become each other and we are all "us" - or, perhaps the Girardian mimetic concept generalizes such that it is better to preserve our differences so that we are not competitors for the same resources, and so that we can co-exist with an obvious other but without an existential threat or intrinsic power struggles.
Are there existing moral or philosophical systems that are suited to this problem? Probably, I'm not a religious scholar, but the golden thread that links them seems pretty consistent in attempting to derive alignment to an external truth. The proto-Christian tribe of Essenes, from whom John the Baptist originates and who was the one who baptized Jesus into what became Christianity (solving a weird bootstrapping problem, imo) espoused the values that became the first Church, so there is a historiographical way of looking at moral systems instead of as dogma. Outside religion, in the search for these values that would be suitable for a community of inhabitants, I've come to suspect this is what freemasonry is about, and while not about aliens, I was impressed by their allegorical emphasis on tools instead of doctrine as the landmarks for discovery.
The essential question to me is, once you have accepted there is an other that is greater, or a place that is elsewhere, does it matter whether it's a dude with a beard, multi-armed flying blue people, or an ineffable oneness? That there is a concievable elsewhere beyond your current limits, there must therefore be some point or idea to align and orient yourself to so as to be able to relate to the other beings who have discovered the same point outside our current perspective.
It's all very meta, but it implies a logical and even rational case for some guidance or alignment to this otherness to navigate our present, and that isn't material. The value of the idea of an "alien" truth is it is a means to reconcile secular rational thinking and moralism with universal, essential, or spiritual values, and that could be a very useful tool.
To a more advanced civilization, we are chimpanzees who are both outwardly intelligent, but also tremendously dangerous, and so on what basis could they establish trust with us, or could we establish trust with a civilization of others? As Graham notes, math is one indicator that we are capable of apprehending the universe around us, but given the infinity of life and its necessary physical conditions of beginning and ending, and evolving in aggregate using tools and principles, it's not sufficient. Maybe one way to ensure trust is to share DNA, so that we become each other and we are all "us" - or, perhaps the Girardian mimetic concept generalizes such that it is better to preserve our differences so that we are not competitors for the same resources, and so that we can co-exist with an obvious other but without an existential threat or intrinsic power struggles.
Are there existing moral or philosophical systems that are suited to this problem? Probably, I'm not a religious scholar, but the golden thread that links them seems pretty consistent in attempting to derive alignment to an external truth. The proto-Christian tribe of Essenes, from whom John the Baptist originates and who was the one who baptized Jesus into what became Christianity (solving a weird bootstrapping problem, imo) espoused the values that became the first Church, so there is a historiographical way of looking at moral systems instead of as dogma. Outside religion, in the search for these values that would be suitable for a community of inhabitants, I've come to suspect this is what freemasonry is about, and while not about aliens, I was impressed by their allegorical emphasis on tools instead of doctrine as the landmarks for discovery.
The essential question to me is, once you have accepted there is an other that is greater, or a place that is elsewhere, does it matter whether it's a dude with a beard, multi-armed flying blue people, or an ineffable oneness? That there is a concievable elsewhere beyond your current limits, there must therefore be some point or idea to align and orient yourself to so as to be able to relate to the other beings who have discovered the same point outside our current perspective.
It's all very meta, but it implies a logical and even rational case for some guidance or alignment to this otherness to navigate our present, and that isn't material. The value of the idea of an "alien" truth is it is a means to reconcile secular rational thinking and moralism with universal, essential, or spiritual values, and that could be a very useful tool.