ABSTRACT
Critics of SETI research have mustered very powerful arguments against pluralism. Their arguments stress our uniqueness, the contingency of intelligent life, maintaining that the odds are stacked against the possibility of a similar intelligence to our own occurring elsewhere. These objections are considered in the first part of this chapter. Thereafter the discussion focuses on appeals to the fact that so far no contact has been made. This appeal is sometimes described as Fermi’s Paradox, so named after the Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, who responded to arguments in favour of ETI with the throwaway retort ‘where are they?’ While it may be the case that just one authenticated contact would put an end to this dispute it is, meanwhile, important to SETI research that a resolution to Fermi’s Paradox is found.
