Extraterrestrial Intelligence + Interdisciplinary Collaboration
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How might thinking about non-human Others generate productive ways to enrich, diversify, and broaden SETI science?
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
For the second year, the Making Contact workshop will be hosted by Breakthrough Listen at UC Berkeley in California. This year's theme is Multispecies Ethics and Epistemology. The Workshop will feature lectures and interactive activities from philosophers, anthropologists, animal studies specialists, and historians of science who will elucidate questions like: What are humans' responsibilities to non-human animals? How can humans ever know what it's like to think like an extraterrestrial?
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LOGISTICS
WHEN: 10 a.m. — 5 p.m. Monday August 12th
10 a.m. — 5 p.m. Tuesday August 13th
Breakfast and lunch are catered.
Dinner hosted by Breakthrough Listen @ Gather, 6 p.m. Monday.
WHERE: Campbell Hall, U.C. Berkeley, 6th Floor
WHAT: Titles + Abstracts Here
STRUCTURE
Making Contact 2019 seeks to drill down on insights from the first workshop that featured Indigenous studies scholars, feminist epistemologists, futurists, historians, policy makers, and storytellers. This year, we focus on a narrower topic: how humans and non-human Others interact as a way to imagine extraterrestrials. The workshop will be more small scale, informal, and in-person. The end goal is to start to form a future-facing ethical statement that contends with radical ways of knowledge-making and being.
Read the Workshop Proposal here.
Contact Claire Isabel Webb clairewebb@berkeley.edu for details about viewing remotely..
PARTICIPANTS
SCIENTISTS
Radio technology, technosignatures, extraterrestrial intelligence, machine learning, AI technology, instrumentation
MODERATOR
multispecies ethnography, feminist epistemology, history of science, anthropology of the Other
PHILOSOPHER
Values, Metaethics, Epistemic Justification, Moral Considerability, Interspecies Ethics
ANTHROPOLOGIST
Multispecies Ethnography; Anthropology; Science and Technology Studies
COGNITIVE SCIENTIST
Language, linguistic reference, symbolic cognition, social aspects of language
R GUSTAV STEINHARDT
ANTHROPOLOGIST
ethics, cognition, social cooperation
HISTORY
theory of evolution, minds of humans and non-human animals, history of science
LITERATURE
Image and agency of Non-human nature in North American; ecocriticism; eco-phenomenology, science studies
PHILOSOPHER
Epistemology, Philosophy, Other Minds
HISTORY
artificial intelligence, automated vehicles, machine ethics, software development
BREAKTHROUGH LISTEN
Astrobiology, science communication, SETI, METI
PLEASE EMAIL CLAIREWEBB@BERKELEY.EDU IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND
DAY 1: MONDAY AUGUST 12
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
OPENING REMARKS
Claire Isabel Webb + Dr. Andrew Siemion
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
SETI SCIENCE
Dr. Steve Croft, Breakthrough Listen
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM
MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY + INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD
Claire Isabel Webb
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
SEEKING SHARED VALUES WHILE WE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE
Dr. Chelsea Haramia
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
LUNCH
CAMPBELL HALL, 6TH FLOOR
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM
IMAGINING EXTRATERRESTRIALS: INSIGHTS FROM DARWIN
Greg Priest
2:30 PM - 2:45 PM
COFFE BREAK
4:00 PM - 4:15 PM
BREAK
TBD
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM
WRAP UP + REFLECTIONS
Breakthrough Listen, Claire,
Group
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
PAUSE
GROUP
DAY 2: TUESDAY AUGUST 13
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
RECAP, PLAN
Claire Isabel Webb
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
SOCIAL COOPERATION AND MORAL COGNITION
R. Gustav Steinhardt
11:00 AM - 11:30 PM
HOW THEY MIGHT APPEAR: CODIFYING THE ETHICS OF NON-HUMAN ENCOUNTERS
Annie O'Connor
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
TROLLEY PROBLEMS AS ACOUSTICAL ILLUSION: THE PARADOX OF MACHINE ETHICS
Thomas Krendl Gilbert
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LUNCH
CAMPBELL HALL, 6TH FLOOR
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
WORKSHOP: JOY, PLAY, AND MORAL SPACE
Dr. Chelsea Haramia
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM
WHAT AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL OCEAN OF PLASMA [PROBABLY] DOES NOT HAVE
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
COFFEE BREAK
TBD
4:30 PM - 5:00 PM
END: REFLECTIONS
Claire + Breakthrough Listen
5:00 PM - ?
Drinks?
Contact the Organizer
Claire Isabel Webb, Ph.D. Candidate
History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
NASA 2019–20 Fellow in Aerospace History
Breakthrough Listen Research Associate