ENTAUS

A mong the many, endlessly distracting videos pumped by nameless algorithms into my Facebook feed was one that alleges to be of an airline pilot’s encounter with what, upon first glance (prompted, of course, by the click-bate title itself—something about a pilot and unexpected UFOs suddenly appearing) appears to be a mysterious, seemingly cubical UFO soaring by the airliner at a somewhat lower altitude. This affords us an occasion to meditate on  a  number of issues that must be faced as we withdraw to the epistemic safety of the familiar, and try to approach the unfamiliar or the anomalous without credulity. The first voice that speaks to us here is—and perhaps should always be—the voice of the skeptic. But, if we are to be true to our commitment to absolute honesty and open inquiry, we must also be uncommitted to skepticism as a fundamental position one adopts . Skepticism is a means to an end. What end? Truth. Surely ... but (quoting Pilate to Jesus) what is truth?  ...

F ormally, a “prolegomenon” is defined as “a critical or discursive introduction to a book”—which isn’t saying much. Centuries ago, Kant (possibly the greatest philosopher since Plato—unless there are great ones after Kant) employed the term to describe a shorter summary of his much more expansive Critique of Pure Reason , in which he charts the very limits of human knowledge, famously circumscribing it within the bounds of possible human experience. The object of both the longer Critique and the shorter Prolegomena was “metaphysics”, which aspired to be a kind of science—a definite human knowledge —of things like substance, necessity, possibility and other such abstracta. Its classic subjects were said by Kant to be: God, immortality of soul (life after death)—and human freedom. Kant asks: is a “science” of such subjects even possible? If so, what are its conditions of possibility? These works tried to answer those questions. What resulted was a radical, yet rather humble (and humbl...