Meaning, Reason, and the Visitors

This flow traces the novel’s challenge to confident definitions of reason and the assumption that intelligent beings must share human ways of communicating.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Problem of Reason

The Problem of Reason Definitions Under Pressure Valentine Pilman questions whether humans know what reason is well enough to identify it in an alien being. Familiar definitions often distinguish humans by appealing to qualities that may be difficult to prove or define. An Unstable Standard The discussion reveals that human certainty about intelligence is partly self-congratulatory. The Visitors’ silence cannot simply be treated as proof of irrationality or as evidence that they intended a message.

Contact Without Communication

Contact Without Communication A Circular Argument Noonan asks how humans could recognize another rational species. Pilman points out that common answers circle back on themselves: communication is taken as proof of reason, and reason as proof of possible communication. The Limits of Projection The exchange warns against assuming that human concepts of intention, language, or psychology apply to the Visitors. Their artifacts may be the only evidence, and even that evidence does not reveal their intended meaning.

The Animals Beside the Picnic

The Animals Beside the Picnic A Change of Perspective Pilman’s picnic analogy imagines small animals trying to interpret a group of visitors’ litter. The animals’ failure to understand is not a defect in them; the picnic may simply have had no relation to their lives. Humanity’s Place The image asks whether humanity is similarly peripheral to the Visitation. It does not prove that the Visitors ignored people, but it makes that possibility impossible to dismiss.

During Noonan and Pilman’s discussion

Later in the same discussion

Near the end of the discussion