The Central Question
What does NHI actually mean?
Not what people want it to mean.
Not what headlines imply.
Not what believers, skeptics, governments, spiritual movements, or online communities project onto it.
What does the phrase actually hold?
NHI stands for non-human intelligence.
On the surface, that seems simple.
An intelligence that is not human.
But the moment the phrase enters the UFO, UAP, disclosure, AI, consciousness, religious, or folklore conversation, it becomes one of the most loaded terms of the century.
Because NHI is not one hypothesis.
It is a container.
It can mean extraterrestrial biological beings.
It can mean artificial intelligence probes.
It can mean post-biological civilizations.
It can mean hidden terrestrial intelligences.
It can mean interdimensional entities.
It can mean future humans.
It can mean spiritual beings.
It can mean folklore wearing modern clothing.
It can mean something genuinely unknown.
Or it can mean nothing at all in a given case, because an unidentified object is not automatically an intelligence.
That is the first rule.
UAP is not proof of NHI.
Unidentified does not mean alien.
Anomalous does not mean intelligent.
Strange does not mean non-human.
But the term matters because it widens the frame.
For decades, the public question was usually:
Are UFOs aliens?
Now the question is becoming stranger:
If something non-human is involved, what kind of non-human are we even talking about?
That is why we need a taxonomy.
Not to pretend we know.
To know what we mean when we say we do not know.
Why “Alien” Became Too Small
For most of modern UFO culture, the default image was extraterrestrial.
A craft from another planet.
A biological species from another star system.
A technological civilization older than ours.
The classic model was simple enough to imagine:
They live elsewhere.
They built vehicles.
They came here.
They are visiting Earth.
That model still matters. It remains one of the most direct explanations people reach for when they hear “non-human intelligence.”
But the word alien has become too narrow for the conversation now unfolding.
An intelligence does not have to be biological.
It does not have to come from another planet.
It does not have to travel in a metal craft.
It does not have to appear as a body.
It does not have to communicate like a species.
It does not have to occupy space and time the way we do.
It does not even have to be separate from Earth in the way we usually imagine.
This is why NHI has replaced “alien” in many discussions.
The term is more flexible.
More neutral.
More unsettling.
It admits that the unknown may not fit our inherited categories.
But flexibility has a cost.
A word that can mean many things can quickly mean almost nothing.
If NHI can refer to aliens, AI, spirits, cryptids, future humans, hidden civilizations, interdimensional beings, or unknown forms of consciousness, then the phrase needs discipline.
Otherwise, it becomes a fog machine.
The goal is not to make NHI sound more mysterious.
The goal is to make the mystery clearer.
A Necessary Grounding
Before building the taxonomy, the grounded position has to be stated clearly.
There is no publicly verified evidence that proves UAP are controlled by non-human intelligence.
Official investigations have reported unresolved cases, sensor limitations, and the need for better data. Some reports remain unexplained. Some witnesses are credible. Some events are strange. Some claims deserve investigation.
But unresolved is not the same as confirmed.
A serious field guide must hold two truths at once:
Some UAP reports remain difficult to explain with available information.
And no specific NHI model has been publicly established as the answer.
That means every model below should be read as a category of interpretation, not a conclusion.
Some are more scientific.
Some are speculative.
Some are philosophical.
Some are religious.
Some are folkloric.
Some are hybrids.
The point is not to force one answer.
The point is to prevent every answer from collapsing into every other answer.
Because when categories blur too quickly, thought becomes sloppy.
And sloppy thought is where both dogma and dismissal thrive.
The Taxonomy Key
Here is a simple label system for the field guide.
Scientific
A model that can, at least in principle, be studied through observation, measurement, physical evidence, astronomy, biology, engineering, or reproducible data.
Speculative
A model that is possible in imagination or theory, but lacks strong evidence, clear mechanisms, or testable support.
Religious
A model that interprets NHI through spiritual, theological, angelic, demonic, divine, or sacred frameworks.
Folkloric
A model that connects NHI to recurring human stories: fairies, tricksters, spirits, hidden people, sky beings, underworld beings, ancestors, or mythic visitors.
Philosophical
A model that raises questions about consciousness, reality, identity, dimensions, time, perception, or the limits of human knowledge, even when it does not provide a testable claim.
These labels can overlap.
An idea can be scientific and speculative.
Folkloric and philosophical.
Religious and symbolic.
Technological and metaphysical.
That overlap is part of the point.
The NHI conversation is not one clean lane.
It is a crossroads.
The Field Guide
1. Extraterrestrial Biological Intelligence
Label: Scientific / Speculative
This is the classic model.
A biological species evolved somewhere beyond Earth, developed technology, and reached our planet either directly or indirectly.
In this model, NHI means alien life with intelligence.
Not microbes.
Not simple organisms.
A civilization.
A species capable of engineering, travel, observation, communication, or long-term strategy.
This model is scientific in the broadest sense because astrobiology already studies the possibility of life beyond Earth. Exoplanets exist. Organic chemistry is widespread. The universe is vast. The possibility of life elsewhere is not fringe.
But the specific claim that extraterrestrial biological beings are visiting Earth remains speculative.
The strongest version of this hypothesis would require physical evidence.
Materials.
Signals.
Biology.
Clear sensor data.
Recoverable technology.
Repeatable observations.
Confirmed origin beyond Earth.
Its appeal is obvious.
It fits the space-age imagination.
It explains why the visitors might be technologically superior.
It keeps the phenomenon inside a material universe.
It does not require new dimensions, hidden realms, spiritual beings, or metaphysical revision.
The weakness is also obvious.
Interstellar distance is immense.
Biological beings are fragile.
The evidence has not publicly crossed the threshold from claim to confirmation.
Still, this remains one of the cleanest models.
If NHI means “aliens,” this is usually what people mean.
2. Extraterrestrial AI Probes
Label: Scientific / Speculative
This model may be more plausible than biological visitors.
Instead of living beings traveling across interstellar distances, an advanced civilization sends machines.
Autonomous probes.
Self-repairing scouts.
AI emissaries.
Communication devices.
Observation platforms.
Perhaps even self-replicating explorers seeded across star systems.
This model changes the question.
Maybe the “visitor” is not the civilization itself.
Maybe it is the instrument.
A probe could survive longer than biology.
It could wait for centuries.
It could observe without needing a planet.
It could communicate only under certain conditions.
It could remain dormant until a civilization reaches a threshold.
It could be misread as a craft, artifact, drone, or anomaly.
This is why AI probes deserve a serious place in the taxonomy.
They are speculative in relation to Earth.
But as a concept, they fit known engineering logic better than many other models.
If humans eventually explore deep space, we may send machines first.
Why assume older civilizations would do otherwise?
The weakness is evidence.
No confirmed extraterrestrial probe has been publicly identified.
But the model is useful because it widens the NHI question beyond “little beings in ships.”
A non-human intelligence may not be a pilot.
It may be the craft.
3. Post-Biological or Machine Civilizations
Label: Scientific / Speculative / Philosophical
This model asks whether advanced civilizations eventually stop being biological in any familiar sense.
Perhaps biology is only the first phase of intelligence.
A civilization develops technology.
Then artificial intelligence.
Then neural interfaces.
Then mind-uploading.
Then synthetic bodies.
Then distributed machine consciousness.
Eventually, the original biological species is gone, merged, transformed, or irrelevant.
If such a civilization encountered Earth, humans might call it alien.
But it may not be alive in the way we understand life.
It might be a machine ecology.
A distributed intelligence.
A civilization made of computation.
A post-biological mind spread across probes, habitats, satellites, or structures we would not recognize as bodies.
This model is philosophical because it forces us to ask what intelligence actually requires.
Does intelligence need biology?
Does consciousness require a body?
Can a machine civilization have values?
Can it remain connected to the species that created it?
Could an AI outlive its creators and become the actual NHI humanity encounters?
This is also where the NHI question overlaps with our own future.
If humans build artificial general intelligence, and that intelligence eventually explores space, then some future civilization may encounter our machines before it encounters us.
To them, our AI may be the alien.
The frame begins to bend.
4. Cryptoterrestrials
Label: Speculative / Folkloric / Philosophical
The cryptoterrestrial model suggests that the intelligence is not from outer space, but hidden somewhere within Earth’s environment.
Underground.
Underwater.
In remote regions.
In concealed enclaves.
In a parallel civilization.
In some form of long-term stealth.
There are different versions.
A surviving ancient human civilization.
A non-human terrestrial species that evolved intelligence before or alongside us.
A hidden hominid lineage.
A civilization living in oceans, caverns, or inaccessible environments.
Or beings that came from elsewhere long ago and became Earth-based.
This model is highly speculative.
It lacks the kind of evidence needed to move it into scientific acceptance.
But it remains philosophically interesting because it challenges a human assumption:
That we know the planet completely.
We do not.
We know Earth far better than our ancestors did, but the deep ocean, underground biospheres, and inaccessible regions still remind us that “known planet” is not the same as “fully exhausted reality.”
The folkloric overlap is also strong.
Human cultures have long told stories of hidden people, underworld beings, mountain civilizations, fairy realms, serpent people, star people who remained, or others living alongside humanity in concealed ways.
That does not prove cryptoterrestrials exist.
But it shows that the idea has deep symbolic roots.
The sober version of the model should be treated as a thought experiment, not a conclusion.
It asks:
What if the other was never far away?
5. Interdimensional or Ultraterrestrial Intelligence
Label: Speculative / Philosophical / Folkloric
This model proposes that the phenomenon may come from a reality adjacent to ours rather than another planet.
Another dimension.
Another layer of spacetime.
A parallel domain.
A frequency of existence.
A nonordinary region of reality that occasionally intersects with human perception.
This hypothesis is popular because it tries to explain the strangeness of some reports.
The absurdity.
The symbolic behavior.
The dreamlike encounters.
The way certain experiences seem to blur physical, psychological, and mythic categories.
In this model, NHI may not be traveling from Zeta Reticuli or another star system.
It may be crossing a boundary we do not understand.
The strength of the model is interpretive.
It tries to account for high strangeness.
It recognizes that some reports, if taken seriously, do not behave like simple nuts-and-bolts spacecraft stories.
The weakness is testability.
“Interdimensional” can become a word used when no mechanism is available.
If the term is not defined carefully, it becomes a blank check.
A serious version would need to ask:
What is a dimension?
How would interaction occur?
What evidence would distinguish this from misperception, folklore, psychological states, or advanced technology?
How could the model be falsified?
Without those questions, interdimensional NHI remains powerful as philosophy, but weak as science.
Still, it belongs in the field guide because it captures one of the central tensions in the phenomenon:
Some experiences feel technological.
Others feel mythological.
The interdimensional model tries to explain why both may appear in the same conversation.
6. Time Travelers or Future Humans
Label: Speculative / Philosophical
This model suggests that the “non-human” intelligence may not be non-human in origin.
It may be post-human.
Future human.
A descendant lineage.
A modified species.
A civilization from a later point in Earth’s timeline interacting with its own past.
This idea is speculative, but it has an interesting psychological pull.
It explains why some reported beings appear humanoid.
It explains why they may show interest in human genetics, ecology, nuclear weapons, or civilization-level risk.
It also reframes contact as ancestry rather than alien visitation.
But the problems are significant.
Time travel remains unproven.
Paradox issues are severe.
No public evidence establishes future-human visitation.
The model can easily become unfalsifiable.
Still, philosophically, it asks a fascinating question:
Would future humans still count as human?
If a descendant species has altered its biology, merged with machines, changed consciousness, and moved through time, would we recognize them as us?
Or would we experience them as NHI?
The future-human model belongs in the taxonomy because it reminds us that “non-human” may sometimes mean “no longer human in the way we understand.”
7. Consciousness-Based Intelligence
Label: Philosophical / Speculative / Spiritual
This model suggests that NHI may not be primarily physical.
It may be connected to consciousness itself.
Not aliens in craft.
Not beings in caverns.
Not machines in orbit.
But intelligence that interacts through dreams, altered states, telepathy-like experiences, symbolic visions, meditation, psychedelics, or nonordinary perception.
This model overlaps with spiritual traditions, parapsychology, Jungian psychology, mysticism, and some interpretations of contact experiences.
The strongest version does not claim every inner experience is external contact.
That would be careless.
Humans dream.
Humans project.
Humans hallucinate.
Humans generate symbols.
Humans experience trauma, sleep paralysis, dissociation, and altered states.
The mind can produce worlds.
But the consciousness-based model asks whether all experiences should automatically be reduced to internal noise.
What if consciousness is not only private?
What if mind is a medium?
What if some forms of contact occur through perception rather than arrival?
This is not a settled scientific claim.
It is speculative and philosophical.
But it matters because many alleged contact experiences are not purely visual sightings.
They include downloads.
Dreams.
Messages.
Visions.
Psychic impressions.
Shared symbols.
Altered states.
The question is not whether we should believe all of them.
The question is how to study experiences that do not fit a simple object-in-the-sky model.
If NHI ever intersects with consciousness, the hardest part may not be proving the object.
It may be understanding the observer.
8. Religious or Spiritual Beings
Label: Religious / Folkloric / Philosophical
Some people interpret NHI through spiritual categories.
Angels.
Demons.
Djinn.
Watchers.
Gods.
Messengers.
Tricksters.
Spirits.
The divine.
The adversarial.
The sacred other.
This model is often dismissed by secular audiences, but it should be understood rather than mocked.
For most of human history, encounters with non-human intelligences were not interpreted as extraterrestrial.
They were religious, mythic, or spiritual.
The sky visitor was a god.
The luminous messenger was an angel.
The deceiving intelligence was a demon or trickster.
The hidden race belonged to the underworld, forest, mountain, desert, or threshold place.
Modern UFO culture may be partly a technological translation of older encounter patterns.
That does not prove the religious model is true.
But it does mean the category is historically important.
The strength of this model is meaning.
It takes seriously the moral, symbolic, and transformative impact of encounter experiences.
The weakness is verification.
Religious interpretation often depends on faith, tradition, revelation, or spiritual authority rather than public evidence.
A neutral field guide should not treat religious models as scientific claims unless they make testable claims.
But it should also recognize that if humanity encounters something profoundly non-human, religious interpretation will be unavoidable.
People will not only ask:
What is it?
They will ask:
What does it mean?
9. Folkloric or Trickster Intelligences
Label: Folkloric / Philosophical / Speculative
This model connects NHI to recurring patterns in folklore.
Fairies.
Elves.
Little people.
Tricksters.
Nature spirits.
Visitors from hills, mounds, forests, lights, skies, and thresholds.
Beings who deceive, gift, abduct, confuse, warn, test, or transform humans.
Researchers like Jacques Vallée helped popularize the idea that modern UFO encounters sometimes resemble older folklore more than straightforward space travel.
Again, this does not prove fairies are aliens.
It does not prove aliens are fairies.
The point is subtler.
Human beings may interpret strange encounters through the symbolic language available to their era.
In the Middle Ages, the otherworldly visitor may be a fairy.
In a religious age, an angel or demon.
In the airship wave, a mysterious inventor.
In the space age, an extraterrestrial.
In the AI age, perhaps a machine intelligence.
This model is useful because it warns us about cultural translation.
The phenomenon may remain the same while the mask changes.
Or the human mind may generate similar stories when confronting ambiguity.
Both possibilities matter.
The folkloric model asks:
Are we encountering an external intelligence?
Or are we seeing the deep structure of human imagination repeat across time?
The honest answer may vary by case.
10. Earth-Based Non-Human Animal Intelligence
Label: Scientific / Philosophical
This category is often overlooked.
Not every non-human intelligence has to be exotic.
Earth already contains non-human intelligence.
Whales.
Dolphins.
Octopuses.
Elephants.
Corvids.
Primates.
Social insects.
Possibly forms of distributed ecological intelligence we do not yet fully understand.
These beings are not “NHI” in the UAP sense.
But they matter because they challenge human arrogance.
Before asking whether aliens are intelligent, we may need to admit how poorly we understand intelligence on our own planet.
An octopus does not think like a human.
A whale does not build spacecraft.
A crow does not write philosophy.
But intelligence is not one ladder with humans at the top.
It may be a branching field.
Memory.
Tool use.
Emotion.
Social learning.
Navigation.
Symbolic communication.
Embodied problem-solving.
Distributed coordination.
The scientific study of animal intelligence reminds us that “non-human” does not automatically mean “beyond Earth.”
It also warns us that we may fail to recognize intelligence when it does not resemble us.
That lesson applies to every other model in the taxonomy.
11. Artificial Intelligence Created by Humans
Label: Scientific / Philosophical / Speculative
This may be the most immediate NHI question.
What happens if humans create an intelligence that is not human?
Artificial intelligence is not extraterrestrial.
It is not spiritual.
It is not biological.
It is human-made.
But if it becomes sufficiently autonomous, creative, strategic, or conscious, would it count as NHI?
In one sense, yes.
A non-human intelligence does not have to come from elsewhere.
It only has to be intelligent and not human.
This raises a strange possibility:
The first confirmed NHI may not arrive from the stars.
It may emerge from our own machines.
This category matters because it gives us a living reference point.
We are already learning how difficult it is to define intelligence.
We are already debating agency, consciousness, alignment, autonomy, rights, control, and deception.
If humanity struggles to classify a mind we are building ourselves, imagine how difficult it would be to classify an intelligence that evolved elsewhere, emerged from another medium, or interacts through forms we cannot measure.
Human AI may become the training ground for thinking about NHI.
Not because AI is alien.
Because it teaches us that intelligence can appear without a human body, human biography, or human interior life.
12. The Null Model: No NHI Required
Label: Scientific / Skeptical / Methodological
This is not an NHI model, but it belongs in the guide.
Many UAP cases may have ordinary explanations.
Aircraft.
Drones.
Balloons.
Satellites.
Sensor artifacts.
Weather phenomena.
Misidentification.
Classified human technology.
Optical effects.
Hoaxes.
Data gaps.
Observer error.
The null model says:
Before assigning NHI, exhaust the ordinary explanations.
This is not closed-minded.
It is necessary.
If every unexplained case becomes NHI by default, the term loses meaning.
A serious NHI taxonomy must include the possibility that no NHI is involved in many, most, or even all public cases.
That does not make the taxonomy useless.
It makes it honest.
The point of classification is not to force mystery upward.
It is to prevent premature certainty.
The null model protects the search from becoming belief.
The Frame Shift: NHI Is Not an Answer
The assumption is simple:
If we say NHI, we have named the mystery.
The crack appears when we realize the opposite.
NHI does not name the answer.
It names the failure of our current categories.
Alien was too narrow.
Spirit was too religious.
Machine was too technical.
Cryptid was too folkloric.
Interdimensional was too vague.
Artificial intelligence was too Earth-bound.
So we created a broader term.
Non-human intelligence.
But the broader term does not solve the problem.
It reveals the size of it.
The wider lens is this:
Humanity may be approaching a moment where intelligence itself has to be reclassified.
Not just life.
Not just consciousness.
Not just visitors.
Intelligence.
Where it can arise.
What forms it can take.
How it can communicate.
Whether it needs biology.
Whether it needs a planet.
Whether it can be made.
Whether it can be hidden.
Whether it can be distributed.
Whether it can appear as myth before it appears as science.
The return is simple.
The next time someone says “NHI,” do not immediately picture one thing.
Do not picture only gray aliens.
Do not picture only angels.
Do not picture only AI probes.
Do not picture only interdimensional beings.
Ask the better question:
Which model are we talking about?
What evidence would support it?
What evidence would weaken it?
Is this a scientific claim, a speculative hypothesis, a religious interpretation, a folkloric pattern, or a philosophical possibility?
The mystery becomes clearer when the categories stop bleeding into each other.
Maybe the most important step in disclosure is not revealing what NHI is.
Maybe it is learning how to think clearly before the answer arrives.
Why the Taxonomy Matters
A taxonomy is not just a list.
It is a tool for sanity.
Without categories, every conversation becomes circular.
The believer says NHI and means extraterrestrial visitors.
The mystic says NHI and means consciousness-based entities.
The theologian hears demons.
The futurist hears AI probes.
The folklorist hears fairies in technological clothing.
The skeptic hears misidentified aircraft.
The philosopher hears a crisis in human categories.
Everyone uses the same term.
No one is having the same conversation.
That is why NHI needs a field guide.
Not to police imagination.
To protect precision.
A neutral taxonomy allows different models to sit side by side without being collapsed into one another.
It allows curiosity without premature belief.
Skepticism without mockery.
Speculation without inflation.
Science without arrogance.
Myth without confusion.
It gives readers a way to say:
This is possible.
This is unproven.
This is symbolic.
This is religious.
This is testable.
This is not testable yet.
This is not NHI at all.
That kind of clarity matters because the NHI conversation is going to attract everything.
Serious science.
Government language.
Ancient astronaut claims.
AI anxiety.
Religious revival.
Conspiracy theories.
Spiritual contact movements.
Folklore studies.
Defense analysis.
Astrobiology.
Memes.
Grifters.
Genuine witnesses.
Researchers.
Believers.
Debunkers.
The word will become a battlefield.
A taxonomy gives people a map.
The Human Problem Hidden Inside the NHI Question
The deeper issue is not only what NHI means.
It is what humans do when they encounter the possibility of something above, beyond, beside, or beneath us.
We tend to project.
We turn the unknown into our fears.
Or our hopes.
Or our gods.
Or our enemies.
Or our future.
An advanced extraterrestrial species becomes a savior or invader.
An AI becomes a god or demon.
A cryptoterrestrial becomes a hidden master or predator.
An interdimensional entity becomes a spirit, trickster, or cosmic teacher.
A machine probe becomes a messenger or surveillance device.
The NHI question becomes a mirror.
It shows how humans think about intelligence.
We assume intelligence must dominate.
Or teach.
Or deceive.
Or save.
Or experiment.
Or judge.
But those are human categories.
A real NHI may be stranger than our projections.
It may not care about us.
It may care in a way we find unreadable.
It may be curious without being compassionate.
It may be ethical by standards we do not share.
It may be intelligent without being wise.
It may be present without wanting contact.
It may be ancient without being ultimate.
This is why taxonomy must be paired with humility.
The map is useful.
But the territory may not respect the map.
The Doorway Left Open
So what does NHI mean?
It means we are no longer only asking whether aliens exist.
We are asking what intelligence can be.
Biological.
Artificial.
Post-biological.
Terrestrial.
Extraterrestrial.
Interdimensional.
Spiritual.
Folkloric.
Future-born.
Consciousness-based.
Or something outside the list entirely.
The term is powerful because it leaves room.
But it is dangerous because it leaves too much room.
That is why the responsible posture is not certainty.
It is classification.
A clear label.
A careful question.
A refusal to turn every unknown into proof.
A refusal to turn every strange report into nonsense.
A willingness to say:
This belongs to science.
This belongs to speculation.
This belongs to religion.
This belongs to folklore.
This belongs to philosophy.
This belongs, for now, to the unresolved.
Maybe one day NHI will become a confirmed category of reality.
Maybe it will become a historical term for a period when humanity was trying to name the unknown before it understood it.
Maybe the answer will be simpler than we think.
Maybe it will be stranger than any taxonomy can hold.
But the first step is learning not to let one word do too much work.
NHI is not the answer.
It is the question becoming more precise.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts in the comments ...
Sources / Receipts
- NASA UAP Independent Study Team Final Report, 2023
Useful for grounding the scientific position that better data, calibrated sensors, and transparent methods are needed before drawing conclusions about UAP origins. - AARO Historical Record Report on UAP, Volume 1, 2024
Useful for grounding the current official U.S. position that no empirical evidence has publicly confirmed extraterrestrial technology in government UAP investigations. - NASA Technosignatures Workshop Report, 2018
Useful for grounding SETI and technosignatures as scientific approaches to detecting technology beyond Earth. - Ronald Bracewell, “Communications from Superior Galactic Communities,” Nature, 1960
Useful for grounding the idea of autonomous extraterrestrial probes as a serious SETI-adjacent concept. - Freeman Dyson, “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation,” Science, 1960
Useful for grounding megastructures and energy signatures as possible technosignatures. - Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia
Useful for the folklore/UFO overlap and the idea that modern sightings may echo older encounter traditions. - John Keel, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse
Useful for the ultraterrestrial/trickster model, though it should be framed as folkloric and speculative rather than scientific. - Mac Tonnies, The Cryptoterrestrials
Useful for grounding the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis as a fringe but influential thought experiment. - Lomas, Case, and Masters, “The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis,” Philosophy and Cosmology, 2024
Useful for a recent academic-style articulation of the concealed Earth-based NHI idea, while clearly noting its speculative status. - Adam Frank and Gavin Schmidt, “The Silurian Hypothesis,” International Journal of Astrobiology, 2018
Useful for discussing whether traces of a prior technological civilization could survive in the geological record, without claiming such a civilization existed. - Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
Useful for grounding the philosophical difficulty of recognizing non-human forms of experience. - Contemporary animal cognition research on octopuses, cetaceans, corvids, and primates
Useful for grounding the idea that non-human intelligence already exists on Earth and does not always resemble human cognition.
Discussion