심심해서 외계인과 헤겔에 대해서 써봤어요. 재미로 쓴 거라 리비전도 제대로 안 거쳤으니 가볍게 봐주시면 감사하겠습니다. 영어를 잘하진 않지만 (교수님이 영어못한다고 뭐라한적도 있어서...) 한국어는 더 못하기에, 그냥 영어입니다.
Regardless of whether we actually find out that aliens exist or not, it is metaphysically possible that aliens think the same way as we do. They might employ the same set of thought categories as we do, and they might also use the language of mathematics to build their UFO's to get to the earth. However, is it metaphysically necessary that aliens have the same ways of thinking as we do? -- This question, in my opinion, is very crucial in philosophy.
If we start philosophy from determinate ways of thinking anything, we cannot ground our logical tools in any metaphyscially necessary way. This is because it is we who took this determinate structure of subjectivity as opposed to that. Any appeal to determinate grounds from which we can begin philosophy can tell us that our structure of subjectivity is such and such, but it does not tell us whether it cannot be otherwise. This would mean that we cannot gain any metaphysical necessity of aliens' ways of thinking, because some other beings could operate in a different way. For example, if we take a Kantian stance in that any thought categories we employ cannot be investigated, precisely because any effort to put anything under our scrutiny entails that we are using the given set of thought categories, it is only metaphysically possible that aliens think in the same way as we do. A determinate set of our faculty of cognitions, e.g. intuition and reason, could be otherwise. We simply cannot metaphysically necessitate a certain determinate structure, precisely because we took it for granted as a starting point of our knowing.
In contrast, however, Hegel derives our structure of subjectivity without appealing to any determinate ground. He begins his Science of Logic from what is, that is, pure being or what is completely indeterminate. This means that if he somehow does not make any arbitrary leaps that allow for any other metaphysical possibility of aliens thinking in a different way from we do, and if he gets at a complete set of thought categories, whatever we find in SL will be ways in which any intelligent beings must think of anything. This is because unlike the case in which we could have different determinate structure of subjectivity, it cannot be the case that they have different ways of thinking. We started from indeterminate, and as long as Hegel succeeds in deriving different set of thought categories, there simply is no room for any arbitrariness. For example, in Hegel's Logic of Concept, we see a living thing that metabolizes as a thought category derived from the pure being (footnote: analogous to Evan Thompson's autopoiesis.). This means two things. First, it might be physically possible that aliens could be made out of a completely different set of materials, but they would have to have their organs moving for the sake of the whole. If we somehow disconnect some of their organs from their body, such organs will not function anymore. Aliens will not, for example, be like a set of chairs, because a set of chairs does not lose its essence if I remove certain amount of chair from it; nor did the chairs I have "disconnected" have different essence, like stomach that stops digesting what we have eaten. Aliens, just like us, will "suffer" like we do, if their organs are cut off from them. Second, more importantly, aliens, if they have any intellectual capacity, will see themselves and human beings in a same way. They will understand that we will have some sort of pain if we have our organs cut off or disconnected from our body. Ways in which we express our pain may be different, but that metabolic form that determines aliens and human beings, if Hegel succeeds in doing it, will be the way in which any living things can be and thought.