Analogy as a tool to communicate abstract concepts in SETI

The aim of my paper is to detect a suitable way to make our moral and religious concepts understandable to extraterrestrials in a hypothetical SETI communication. First of all, I am going to expose the reasons why I think that analogy, according to the insights of Middle Age philosophers, could be a good tool for this purpose. Then I’ll try to show that this is possible only in the context of an integrated language, using both abstract symbols and pictures, that I have already suggested in some previous papers. Two possible practical examples of this will be sketched, too, and the results of their evaluation will be discussed, showing that, at least at first sight, it seems that they could work. Further studies will be required to determine whether this method could be extended to the higher-level abstract concepts in the other fields of our culture. Finally, I’ll also argue that only the inner logic of such a language is really relevant in a SETI communication, while the symbolical apparatus is not: so, maybe the best we can do is just to use an already existent and well-tested one, that is our common alphabet.