What if all of the sudden, like in the movie Arrival, weird black eggs drop from the sky and some unknown entity wants to talk to us - beings whose biology, culture, psyche and environment are radically different from ours?<br /><br />Philosophy of Language playlist: <a href="https://bit.ly/2LkHSyS" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://bit.ly/2LkHSyS</a><br /><br />This video introduces some basic paradoxes of language, most notably through a study on the kids' acquisition of the American Sign Language and Quine's "Radical translation" thought experiment. From there it moves on to the problems, portrayed in the movie Arrival (2016), Polish writer Stanisław Lem's works and NASA's attempts to equip Pioneer 10 and 11 with pictorial messages to extraterresial life - before finally introducing a more general discussion of the possibility of communicating with aliens, explored in André Kukla's philosophical paper from 2008.<br /><br /><br />Films referenced:<br />Arrival (2016)<br />Solaris (1972)<br />Wittgenstein (1993)<br /><br />Literature:<br />Ludwig Wittgenstein, (1953). “Philosophical Investigations”<br />Noam Chomsky, (1957). "Syntactic Structures"<br />Laura-Ann Pettito, (1987). "On the autonomy of language and gesture: evidence from the acquisition of personal pronouns in American Sign Language"<br />Willard v. O. Quine (1960). “Word and Object, Ch. 2”<br />Saul Kripke (1982). “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language”<br />Steven Pinker (1994). “The Language Instinct”<br />Immanuel Kant (1788). “Critique of Practical Reason”<br />Stanisław Lem (1968). "His Master's Voice"<br />André Kukla (2008). “One World, One Science”<br /><br />A nice blog post about the possibility of communicating with aliens: <a href="http://kfbaker.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/could-we-communicate-with.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://kfbaker.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/could-we-communicate-with.html</a><br /><br />Meanwhile, my blog: <a href="https://bebeflapula.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://bebeflapula.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br />Thanks for watching! Maybe hop on board and subscribe to the channel, idk. If you want to support me, fuel me with green tea: 💲 <a href="https://www.paypal.me/bebeflapula" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://www.paypal.me/bebeflapula</a> 💲<br />...<br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGSKYWdC6R8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGSKYWdC6R8</a>