Beyond Our Ken

Will aliens be superior, inferior or equal to human beings in intelligence and understanding? Poul Anderson, of course, covers every option. See here. The options include the argument, somewhere in The Day Of Their Return, that there is no evolutionary reason for intelligence to increase beyond the level of any of the (many) rational species in the known space of the Technic History.

But could there be beings whose intelligence is as far beyond ours as ours is beyond that of a dog? Suppose a superior being were to tell us, "I can see the relationship between your cerebral and your mental processes but you cannot, any more than a Flatlander can see solids"? The Neptunian narrator of Olaf Stapledon's two Last Men volumes states that if one of the First Men, us, were to visit the world of the Last Men, then he would be as unaware of most of what was happening around him as a cat in London is of finance. One difference is that a cat cannot even understand that there are limits to its understanding whereas we can.

SM Stirling has a man conversing with Gods Who have to tell him that he cannot understand some of what They have to say. There are obvious limits to how this idea can be used in fiction. We have to be able to understand (most of) any narrative that is presented for our perusal.