against Vallée’s “Five Arguments Against The Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects” & an initial attempt at rational ufological speculation

The following reflections were written in the form of a draft of an article, where I attempt to revisit the thinking of Vallée in an effort to move decisively but not entirely dismissively beyond him. This post can be read in part as a commentary on this paper in which he argues specifically against the ETH.

In a series of works, ufologist Jacques Vallée proposed what we can call a “unified field theory” of the UFO phenomenon. It attempts to gather together a set of phenomena under one theoretical concept, where UFO phenomena are but one among many that fall under the concept.

But as many have shown or pointed out, Vallée’s approach has a number of flaws. Indeed, there seem to be fundamental conceptual and methodological problems with his basic approach. Even if we evaluate the work as a kind of “hermeneutical” exercise—as, e.g., Kripal reads Vallée (Kripal 2010)—it is still, as we have argued, inherently problematic.

As perhaps a way to account for its apparent flaws, Kripal attempts to ground Vallée’s thinking in “gnosis”, and therefore to attempt to read Vallée as a kind of (contemporary) gnostic thinker. While such a reading may seem plausible (and Kripal certainly makes a convincing case in Authors of the Impossible), for philosophical and even practical reasons we believe this to be misguided, as we have already pointed out here. The “gnostic” tendencies in Vallée’s thinking on the subject of UFO encounters and how to make sense of them is simply not helpful in advancing the study of this phenomenon—certainly not on its own. While a gnostic reading is in many ways interesting, it does not help in advancing a scientific understanding of the phenomenon. This is not because science is a superior form of knowledge, reasoning, etc. It is because with “gnosis”, the danger is (ironically) to close down an honest and open engagement with the UAP phenomenon in all of its anomalous aspects, to come to a belief about it before we make a serious effort to engage the phenomenon on its own ground. Part of what science helps accomplish at a philosophical level is to find some ontological ground against which we can theorize/conceptualize phenomena more clearly, so that a certain model can be derived which, in turn, may be subject to testing. We realize that the reply here would be that the phenomenon does not allow for such—at least not in any conventional sense. We grant that this is of course a possibility (indeed, even a likelihood), but we also assume that it is possible to determine some relevant conceptual/theoretical and experimental framework that is adequate to the phenomenon—possibly by showing in which precise ways the phenomena challenge existing scientific methods and concepts (much as most anomalies do in the history of science, for example in the transition from classical to quantum physics, etc.). We therefore reject gnosis as a valid basis for the project to which Vallée has made (we believe) a significant contribution: the theoretical explanation and understanding of the data for the UFO phenomenon.

What we want to eventually propose, instead of a gnostic (or in general a “non-rational”) grounding, is an entirely different (rationalist) strategy, drawing on the rich philosophical possibilities of Spinozan thinking, something which has not yet been attempted (certainly not in any depth) and which we hope will bring clarity and new focus to Vallée’s basic unified-theory kind of approach.

1. Being v. Meaning. In general, there are two aspects to the UFO phenomenon, derived from the different ways one can approach the problem: in terms of its “being” or reality, or in terms of the “meaning” the phenomenon has for those who report or who’ve had UFO encounters. (This is the crux of the very productively friendly ongoing debate between myself and Bryan Sentes over at Skunkworks.) Let’s briefly consider each in turn.

In terms of “being”, one treats the phenomenon as an element of reality, that is: as an objectively real phenomenon that presents a set of data or evidence (of a characteristically anomalous sort) which calls for a scientific account—a scientific theory of some kind that can provide explanation and understanding (to the extent that’s possible). Note that here the so-called “extraterrestrial hypothesis” or ETH is not a properly scientific theory (or account) of the phenomenon since it only concerns itself with describing what the object is or where it could have come from—not in how it can do the things that the evidence shows us it does (we mean to refer here both to the anomalous flight characteristics of many UFOs, as well as the frequently reported psychological or psychophysiological effects reported). Later we will stress that this is merely an hypothetical working assumption to give structure to our observations of the phenomenon, and to help clarify the phenomenology. Demonstrating convincingly that some UFO observations are observations of extraterrestrial craft of non-human origins, while profoundly significant on its own, would not illuminate the nature of the phenomenon any more than descriptive terms generally do. I may know that one of the things that just entered into my room is a cat or a dog, but I wouldn’t know what those creatures are in terms of the respective biology they possess, or how they might be related to each other and to me, or how they are physically or psychically structured. The ETH doesn’t get us very far.

Now, in terms of the “meaning” of the UFO phenomenon, we look at it as something which may not necessarily be an element of reality in an “objective” sense (which is the presupposition of the ETH, for example), but only to the extent to which people believe something about what UFO phenomena they claim to have seen. Whatever else it is, it is most definitely (and irrefutably) something which some people claim to have seen for themselves, or is something at least believed it—even if the believer didn’t have a UFO encounter per se. Such belief, whether or not there is an objectively real object behind is, is nonetheless the site of human meaning. The “meaning” side tries to be very ontologically neutral; indeed, we can say that here the reality is “bracketed” in a manner similar to how a traditional philosophical phenomenologist would approach the study of phenomena: they examine not what thugs really are (their ontological structure) but merely how they make their appearance (and some would go so far as to conflate the two: the way things appear is constitutive of their being—their ontological structure). This then allows the theorist to consider strictly cultural, or sociological, or even political questions. It just doesn’t matter what the UFO really is; belief in it alone is revealing. And we know human beings are meaning-makers. Surely this is an important aspect of the UFO phenomenon.

Considering the being/meaning distinction, Vallée’s theoretical project doesn’t easily fit on either side. In a way, it appears to straddle both sides of the divide. It is the meaning and significance of the UFO encounter which is, for Vallée, an indication of, or clue to, the reality (the being, the ontology) of the UFO itself: he looks at the structure of human meaning produced in the aftermath of (allegedly, at least) objectively real anomalous encounters with objects or phenomena in, and coming from, the sky (although not necessarily—as we shall soon see) as evidence for what the phenomenon as a whole really is: a “control system” of some kind, guiding or (more sinisterly) manipulating human culture and society for some unknown reason. For Vallée, the “meaning” humans have made out of their anomalous encounters with sky-bound objects (and many other phenomena of high strangeness besides) is evidence of another order of being altogether. In other words, Vallée wants to work backwards from the meaning to the ontology (the being) of UFOs. In the process he is led, or so he believes, to radically and drastically expand that phenomenon’s “being” to encompass much more besides the classic UFO experience of modern times. In this way Vallée has come to very much disparage the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” or ETH. Let’s take a look at exactly why.

1.2Vallée’s discontent with the ETH. Early in his UFO investigations, Vallée became convinced that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is a deeply flawed hypothesis, one which cannot really account for the UFO phenomenon as a whole: it can’t account for all of the relevant data—or so he claims. In a paper he wrote just as he was returning back to the UFO scene (he describes a self-imposed hiatus during the mid to late 1980s, ending with his publication of Dimensions in 1987, not long after the death of his mentor J. Allen Hynek), Vallée carefully articulates (to quote the title of the paper itself) “Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects” (Vallée 1990). They are (we quote directly from the abstract to the aforementioned paper):

(1) unexplained close encounters [meaning landings of UFO craft] are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;

(2) the humanoid body structure of the alleged “aliens” is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;

(3) the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;

(4) the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and

(5) the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives

To which Vallée adds as a closing comment in the abstract “three of which are provided in outline form as a conclusion to this paper” (Vallée 1990, 105).

It’s hard to assess his arguments here, since many rest on controversial or tendentious claims—for example that there are “numerous” UFO landings (1), or abductions (2), manipulations of space and time (5) and so on. What is not controversial is that such things are alleged in numerous reports; what is controversial is that the allegations are veridical. The best we can do is provisionally assume that the things referred to are in fact real phenomena (and in a moment, as we explore reasons for the ETH itself, we’ll see that there’s some reason to believe some of it) and examine the arguments themselves. Vallée refers to the set of arguments as “five contradictions” since his strategy is to find out, in each case, where and how the relevant aspect of the ETH runs into a fundamental problem: or a “contradiction”. Not quite the classic reductio ad absurdam of the philosopher or mathematician, but in the ballpark. Let’s consider each “argument” in turn.

2.1 Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Vallée offers as a rough estimate, based on a number of considerations (which don’t specifically concern us here), one hundred thousand landing events, or so-called “close encounters of the third kind” (“CE-3” for short) if we were to use the well-known classification scheme of Hynek (Hynek 1972). He suggests that this number is still too conservative an estimate, so that the actual number is likely far higher (his total volume of landings estimation is fourteen million in forty years!). He wonders “[w]hat objectives could extraterrestrial visitors to the earth [the surface of which, he is careful to note, is clearly visible from outer space—unlike, say, the surface of Venus] be pursuing, that would require” fourteen million landings? Like with many of these “arguments” as we shall see, it isn’t hard to provide plausible justifications for what Vallée questions. In this case, wouldn’t it stand to reason that there are likely numerous different non-human intelligent species landing on the earth? After all, only a casual acquaintance with the existing ufological record would be enough to convince you that we are likely dealing with multiple different sorts of vehicular objects with likely different underlying technologies (and even different technologies being employed for different flight or landing maneuvers). UFOs also appear to manifest as any number of phenomenologically distinct types (ovoids, luminous orbs, triangles, discs, cigars, etc.), and if phenomenological distinctness in any indication of possible distinctness of origination and/or engineering (why would we lump together things that appear to be distinct?—Vallée will try as we will see), then we are likely dealing with independent orders of intelligences making their way onto the surface of the earth, occasionally intercepted by a lucky (or unlucky—depending) human witness. Vallée points out that most sightings of the “third” kind happen in geographically remote locales, which would lend credence to the notion that intelligent beings of some kind are attempting to land without a strong likelihood of encountering human beings. Elsewhere Vallée ruminates on the seeming absurdity of some of the reported activities of these putative landers: scooping up dirt or sampling vegetation, and so on—activities that would seem odd for an advanced species with radically advanced interstellar propulsion systems. We admit it does seem odd—but without direct contact, or an understanding of the beings’ culture(s), we really have no basis on which to speculate about that specifics of an observation (aside from the incredulity of the whole scenario to begin with—a question we won’t specially address here). So, it seems that we can dispense with Vallée’s first “argument” against ETH.

What about the second?

2.2 Extraterrestrial Physiology. Vallée argues that, given the bipedalism and overall morphology of the “vast majority of reported ‘Aliens’”, they “do not appear to differ from the human genome by more than a few percent” (Vallée 1990, 110). Furthermore, argues Vallée, biological life on earth evolved under very specific physical conditions—conditions that, given their specificity and narrowness, could not be reasonably expected to be reproduced elsewhere. Yet, the “aliens” that are reported have remarkably similar, human-like features. Do we really have a basis, however, upon which to even consider such questions? As we have no real understanding of the extent to which biological laws (if there be any), like the laws governing the evolution of life on earth, are universal—although there is good reason to suspect they are, as Kershenbaum has persuasively argued (Kershenbaum 2020)—it’s really hard to assess Vallée’s “argument” here. If biological laws are consistent across habitable planets—which makes sense given that it’s reasonable to suppose that life, whenever it does evolve, will do so under suitably similar conditions as found on the earth, which is in its sun’s habitable zone, meaning that any evolved life would be from a highly unique planet, again like earth—then Vallée’s argument really falls apart. The best we can say is that we just don’t know how common our physical morphology is from one habitable planet to another, or whether (for example) advanced technological intelligence seems to be associated with bipedalism. Furthermore, some UFOs manifest in very deeply bizarre forms, so that it’s not clear whether the object itself is the “being”, or whether it is a vehicle that could carry a being—yet another set of questions that has yet to be resolved in any meaningful way. Vallée also questions the survivability of these “aliens” in our atmosphere, as some appear to breath our air with no problem, wondering again how it could possibly be a being from another planet—but then answers his own question by observing that some sort of biogenetic engineering could be at work. Indeed, but we just don’t really know—many of these things are possible. Furthermore, as to how such beings, as are typically reported in close encounters, can survive space travel itself: curiously Vallée doesn’t specifically address that part of his “argument” here in any sustained way (although what he claims are five arguments against the ETH really turn out to be five questions the ETH is, according to him, at pains to answer). We’re left just with the suggestion that sustained space travel would somehow be deleterious to biological beings (and we know it will be a challenge, given the radiation exposure we already can predict on long space journeys). But as Knuth et al. (2019) have shown, at the velocities and accelerations which some UFOs have already demonstrated to various radar systems, these objects are clearly capable (assuming they can sustain the flight profiles observed so far for long enough) of rapid interstellar travel, very quickly achieving relativistic speeds (something which, as we now well know, involves rather predictable dilations of space and time for different observers; although there is the possibility that the objects are engaged in more exotic forms of relativistic travel—for example, they might be manipulating the surrounding spacetime itself, as is allowable by general relativity). Since the power required for such accelerations observed is enormous, clearly these objects have some as-yet unknown means of both generating and harnessing the required energies in ways that are not destructive to themselves or their surrounding environment (at least not on short timescales—a fact worth considering in its own right). Supposing these or similarly powered objects were occupied, they could easily make the journey to numerous nearby stars in hours, days or even a few short weeks of travel. If they can harness the required energy for that without destroying themselves or their local environment, one could reasonably assume they have mastered radiation shielding techniques (indeed, their craft may be employing principles of subatomic physics that really change the very conception of travel itself). So, survivability for long periods of interstellar travel would not seem to be that implausible—especially if the trip can be arbitrarily short for the passengers onboard. How Vallée proposes to rule any of these possibilities out requires premises that, as we’ve shown, just don’t yet exist. So much for the argument against alien physiology—we just don’t see the “contradictions” Vallée thinks he sees. (As an aside, it should be noted that, from the perspective of relativistic space travelers, experiences of Earth and it’s history would be radically different from our non-relativistic experiences of our own history. Kevin Knuth has made some interesting speculations on this point, noting that the same crew would arrive one day and then, in a few short weeks of their onboard time, return to Earth possibly thousands of years later. We could easily imagine that from this relativistic perspective, the individual activities of the beings on the Earth would be more or less uninteresting, since, a few weeks from your spacefaring perspective, all of those beings and their cities, governments, and histories will have evaporated.)

2.3 Abduction Reports. Vallée next considers how abduction reports are used to support the ETH, which needs little explanation: abductees often report being taken aboard UFOs they first see as craft. Ergo, we can justifiably assume that (at least some) UFOs are manned and built by non-human intelligent beings of unknown planetary origin (curiously, the logical possibility that they are from earth is considered at the end of Vallée’s essay, as we’ll see).

The fundamental problem with all abduction reports is that they are almost entirely constituted by first-person reports alone and are frequently only “recalled” under an already suspect method of investigation: hypnosis. To make matters worse, many abduction accounts indicate that the experiences reported happened either during or following altered states of consciousness of the reporting persons involved. Some reportedly occur just before sleep, others during what seems to be a sleep episode. Even when reports indicate that the alleged abductee was fully awake, the encounter frequently involves some alteration in the consciousness of the experiencers. If we add to this that the very recall or memory of the events themselves often occurs already under a rather questionable altered state of consciousness—hypnosis—we get a very shaky evidentiary foundation for abduction reports. Given that all accounts are purely first-person in nature, and many involve altered states of consciousness of the persons involved, or require altered states of consciousness to even bring the memory back to conscious recollection, the epistemic status of most if not all abduction reports must remain questionable at best, since it is not possible to corroborate the witness testimony either with independent witnesses (that is, crucially, persons not specifically involved in the alleged abduction itself: i.e., bystanders) or non-first-person (NFP) telemetry or data. As many serious ufologists have pointed out over the years (e.g., McDonald 1969), the gold standard of evidence is multiple channels of corroborating evidence substantiating eyewitness testimony (ideally with more than one eyewitness account being simultaneously corroborated by the NFP data). Aside from the claims of Hopkins (1981, 1996), this standard has never been met for abduction reports, and so they remain inherently dubious. Many advocates for the veracity of abduction accounts, however, have attempted to criticize this insistence on doubting first-person testimony on the grounds that it is biased by long-standing philosophical-metaphysical prejudices in science. For example, Mack (1994) argues that an a priori commitment to a materialist philosophy biases any scientific evaluation of this evidence against “subjective” accounts of any phenomena, let alone abduction reports[1]; others, including Vallée himself, have argued similarly. This indeed seems to be the consensus in the abductee community itself. But surely one can doubt the veracity of abduction accounts without specifically being committed to “materialism”—unless one can show that such (scientific) materialism is the only philosophical ground for such doubt, a proposition that is itself dubious.

Vallée, however, is not interested in evaluating the epistemic status of abduction reports; rather, as we have seen, he takes issue specifically with the ETH, and so in this case he wants to deny that alleged abductees are encountering spacefaring extraterrestrials. As with his previous consideration of the ETH in connection with CE-3 reports (that is, craft landings), Vallée is searching for “contradictions” within the ETH. His procedure is to assume for the sake of argument that ETH is true, and to then examine how this assumption plays out in specific scenarios. We’ve already looked at his attempt to discern the contradictions in scenarios involving close encounters of landed craft and the physiology of the beings seen; now he attempts to find contradictions in the ETH for the typical abduction scenario. He begins with the basic phenomenology of abduction experiences, which

are characterized by what the witnesses report as being transported into a hollow, spherical or hemispherical space and being subjected to a medical examination. This is often (but not always) followed by the taking of blood samples, various kinds of sexual interaction, and loss of time. The entire episode is frequently wiped out of conscious memory and is only retrievable under hypnosis.

His “argument” consists of a series of further assumptions and observations. For example, it is reasonable to assume, he claims, that “such visitors would know at least as much as we do in the fundamental scientific disciplines such as physics and biology” (1990, 112). Furthermore, he writes,

the visitors would presumably know as much about medical techniques and procedures as our own practitioners. Today the average American doctor can draw blood, collect sperm and ova or remove tissue samples from his or her patients without leaving permanent scars or inducing trauma. The current state of molecular biology … would already permit the same doctor to obtain unique genetic “fingerprint” information from such samples.

And yet, he wonders, why do the alleged alien space visitors conduct what by all accounts is a rather oddly primitive type of scientific, medical or sexual experimentation on the alleged abductees? He continues:

The means of permanently erasing the memory of the victims through the use of appropriate drugs are also available in the current pharmacopeia. Whatever the supposed “Aliens” start are doing, if they actually perform what appear to be shockingly crude and cruel simulacra of biological experiments on the bodies of their abductees, [it] is unlikely to represent a scientific mission relevant to the goals of extraterrestrial visitors. The answers may have to be sought in other directions.

It must be admitted that the behavior of alleged extraterrestrial abductors really is strange, but, as we are without any credible evidence independent of the first-person accounts themselves regarding extraterrestrial beings, we are not in a position to specifically rule out the ETH based on these speculative assumptions Vallée introduces. For example, consider the following possibility. It is already established that many abduction experiences occur under or during altered states of consciousness or require altered states in order to access the memories themselves (suggesting that the memories have faded like dreams). If we assume, as Vallée himself does, that the ETH is true, then couldn’t we also reasonably assume that the nonhuman abductor has introduced (or at least is capable of introducing) very sophisticated mind/brain altering substances (or energies) into the bodies of the abductees, such that they have a very distorted recollection of the events, if they can remember them at all? Vallée elsewhere argues that there is a deceptive element to the whole UFO phenomenon (something dubbed the “trickster” hypothesis in the UFO research community)—perhaps in this case there is good reason to assume that an element of deception is in play, especially if we are assuming the truth of the ETH already. Intelligent beings interested in studying human life would have to be deceptive to some extent, as it is plausible to assume that any reasonably conscious and intelligent living being (from amoeba to humans) would not want to be entrapped and studied. If the ETH is true, furthermore, then it would suggest there are laws of biology replicated elsewhere throughout the universe (pace Vallée’s poor arguments to the contrary we considered in the previous sections) and perhaps with them, for advanced intelligent extraterrestrial species, certain “laws” of psychology—fear or dislike of entrapment being, perhaps, one of them. Here, then, a limited thesis of deception can be of help, yet Vallée seems unaware it could be usefully employed to answer some of his questions. We can conclude that there really is not significant “contradiction” here with the ETH. It is, in fact, perfectly consistent under reasonable assumptions.

2.4 A History of Alien Contact? Part of what we will refer to as Vallée’s “post-conventional” thought involves a sustained argument to the effect that UFO encounters (in some form) have occurred throughout human history—a thesis that has led to the so-called “ancient aliens” hypothesis (a notion around which a rather unfortunate mélange of dubious television and online “documentaries” have formed). “The mounting proliferation of evidence,” Vallée writes “for similar phenomena not only before 1945 but during the 19th century and indeed in the remote past of our culture has become convincing,” even though some ufologists are wont to disregard it (Vallée 1990, p. 113). Vallée then proceeds to argue, hypothetically, that “[i]f it can be established that the phenomenon has indeed existed throughout history, adapting only its superficial shape but not its underlying structure to the expectations of the host culture, then we are unlikely to be dealing with extraterrestrials doing a survey of the earth”. And, of course, this was precisely what Vallée does think he’s established in the now-classic works Invisible College (1975) and especially Passport To Magonia (1969), so that, by modus tollens, we arrive at the ultimate conclusion: the ETH explanation of UFOs is likely wrong. However, besides not actually providing justification for the hypothesis itself (in the essay, that is), it remains a rather tendentious argument, one which we will have occasion to evaluate in the coming sections of this essay.

With this brief section on the “history” of UFO encounters we come, then, to the heart of Vallée’s position: that in fact the UFO phenomenon on the whole is the manifestation not of extraordinary technological objects (of various forms) carrying spacefaring intelligent beings from another planet somewhere in the universe, but rather of some adaptive phenomenon responsive to the geographically and temporally local expectations of witnesses of an as-yet unknown form or kind. Interestingly, Vallée reminds readers that he was able to show how, very curiously, unknown aerial phenomena of the past managed to not only mimic human expectations (in terms of gods, demons, faeries, dwarves and now spacefaring ETs) but also managed to “[remain] consistently one step ahead of human technology”. Thus we had the anomalous “airships” of the 19^th century, and more recently the spaceships of the 20^th century, in addition to the strange genetic/biological/medical experiments frequently reported in abduction cases that come just as biogenetic engineering started to enter popular consciousness. But again, we have much suggestion, and little argumentation. And if there is an argument here, it’s not a very convincing one, as it crucially depends upon Vallée’s idiosyncratic reading of the history of UFO encounters (and it seems fairly plausible that there would be such a history) as the manifestation of some unknown phenomenon willfully manipulating human society.

2.5 “Physical” Consideration: Phenomenologies of the Strange. In the closing paragraphs of “Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects” Vallée uses what should be his fifth “argument” against the ETH to assert what phenomena actually have to be explained by any UFO hypothesis, but here he indicates that there may well be a dimension of “high strangeness” even to the putatively “physical” observations themselves. He writes that the phenomena include not only the observations of apparently physically structured vehicles or “craft” of various morphological types, but also “objects and beings that exhibit the ability to appear and disappear very suddenly, to change their apparent shapes in continuous fashion and to merge with other physical objects.” This, Vallée interprets, indicates something truly unique, and seems strange “in terms of ordinary physics because they suggest a mastery of time and space that our own physical research cannot duplicate today” (Vallée 1990, 114). Vallée then goes on to speculate on a number of possible theories of the UFO phenomenon based on an assumption that “these sightings [could] be confirmed either by direct observation by photographic evidence or by the weight of statistics”—the latter being particularly mysterious (what “statistics” could stand in for direct observational data that would not always remain dubious on its own, we wonder?).

As with abduction accounts considered above, reports of sightings of “beings” and the like with such morphological anomalies as shapeshifting must remain in the same epistemically dubious category, just because of the paucity of multichannel corroborative data. However, there are a few cases with some degree of multichannel corroborative data that would seem to be particularly vexing, not of course involving beings, but rather of strange behavior of objects.

While it’s unclear exactly what happened, as far as the phenomenology of the event, during the Japan Airlines incident over Alaska in the 1980s several onboard crew members (the captain and copilot) witnessed what appeared to be an extremely large UAP of some kind (shaped in general like a “walnut”), which at one point seemed to disappear from view, only to be suddenly found behind the aircraft. This incident was recorded on radar as well, but as the disappearance occurred between one radar sweep and another (the sweep arm rotates at a fixed rate, so between one return and the next, there is a gap: the radar doesn’t supply continuous track data for its targets), it’s hard to know if the object just went somehow (discontinuously) from one location instantaneously to the other, or if it travelled the intervening space from its initial to its final observed location, behind the plane. Reading an early report of the incident, one discovers a number of complicating factors, including the presence of several smaller UAPs in and around the larger one, and the fact that, at the time of this odd appearance/disappearance, the plane was engaging a turn (although it appeared on radar that the UAPs were keeping pace with the plane throughout—but a closer examination of the case is certainly in order as it is fairly complex). John Callahan, the FAA investigator tasked with the case soon after the incident, went on record in 2001 and confirmed that the data seemed to indicate that the largest of the objects disappeared then reappeared behind the plane, which was a 747 traveling in the .8 Mach range (Maccabee 1987, “postscript”). Calculations done by Knuth et al. in 2019 (the paper where we also find detailed calculations for the Nimitz encounters) simply (and judiciously) sidestep this strangeness by assuming the object took some continuous path in space. We have to ask here: what else could be done in order to make such calculations? If you can’t make this continuity assumption, it’s hard to even give meaning to the concept “travelled”. Making this conventional and rather reasonable continuity assumption revealed an incredible acceleratory force of anywhere between 60 and 70-80 g-forces—this for an object appearing to be larger than the 747 it was at times trailing. (The reader is encouraged to examine a skeptical reading of this incident; we leave it to them to determine the cogency of that skepticism.)

In another incident no less dramatic, though involving far fewer and far smaller objects—this one a single spheroid estimated to be about 2-3 feet in diameter—we have what at one point appears to be an object dividing into two. This is the Aguadilla, Puerto Rico incident caught on a FLIR camera, and is by now well-known (and a case we have already mentioned elsewhere). The object, which is seen rather clearly on the video flying along a relatively straight path out towards the ocean from land, isn’t particularly anomalous in terms of its flight characteristics while traveling over land. It was estimated, by a detailed videographic analysis by the SCU, to have been traveling at about 80-90mph. What is anomalous, however, is how it appears to enter the water without a significant decrease in forward velocity, and then to resurface, traveling as if it hadn’t just changed traveling media. A spheroid traveling with consistent velocity at any speed is anomalous enough. A balloon would be carried with the wind. A drone is easily capable of these observed speeds, but a completely spheroid drone with no obvious propellers or exhaust trailing behind? And then one dipping into and out of the water while maintaining upwards of 80mph? And then one that appears to bifurcate? It’s hard to come up with a strictly physical hypothesis for what the object could be that can do all of these things together. It is an anomaly not just in what it does, but also, much more deeply, in what it could possible be described as. Macroscopically visible objects don’t divide at will, this while submerging and resurfacing at 80-90mph. Do we have one or two objects? Is it an “object” in a purely “physical” and conventional sense? Here even the appearances—the phenomenology itself—are anomalous, not merely the observed flight characteristics. At one point in their comprehensive study of the video, the SCU notes that for a short time, in the time just preceding the object’s apparent bifurcation, an increase in the FLIR-measured temperature of the object is observed accompanied by an apparent increase in its size (see pp. 30ff in their report). What are we dealing with here? It’s hard to say.

3. Explorations of rational ufological speculation. For all of these reasons Vallée seeks to find “new hypotheses” capable of handling the great variety of strangeness found in UFO reports over the decades, but he seems more eager to jump to his favored unificatory conclusions, rather than to consider more independent explanations for separate cases. As we have stressed, the phenomena he considers don’t justify his attempt to draw all UFO phenomena together under one unifying idea—his “Control System Hypothesis” for example, which he favored in the 1970s. His attempt to refute or to diminish the appeal of the ETH strikes one as a classic instance of a conclusion in search of an argument, especially since his “arguments” against the ETH hypothesis are painfully superficial and wholly unconvincing.

We must be much more patient in seeking out separate explanations for separate UFO encounters, while also realizing that similar means or technologies (if we momentarily accept the concept for the sake of argument) may be on display just because of the universality of the laws of nature to which nonhuman intelligences (of differing sorts) might have access which we do not. It seems far more plausible to reason that we are dealing with not only independent technological forms, but also independent nonhuman intelligences—a fact made highly plausible by even the most conservative estimates for the frequency of intelligent life in the (observable) universe, using the famous Drake Equation. Even so, Vallée should be credited with recognizing the need to question the paradigmatic assumptions on which the sciences proceed to investigate the phenomena of nature, and his arguing for more concerted effort to think “outside the box” as the saying goes.

For example, it must be admitted that many of the strange physical appearances of UFOs we’ve mentioned here may be explicable as effects of a higher-dimensional object intersecting with a lower-dimensional field of physical existence, and perhaps also too the strange “psychical” effects like telepathy might be correlated with this dimensional intersection. It may be that the kind of isolating confinement we experience as the kinds of three-dimensional, time-bound creatures we are (or seem to be) would be totally disrupted by the intersection of our experience by a higher-dimensional being for which our three-dimensional confines are irrelevant. If we take the classic “flatland” thought experiment to the level of consciousness, on analogy with how certain physical objects present barriers to two-dimensional creatures which are irrelevant for three-dimensional beings, it may very well be that a “telepathic” experience (say, like those reportedly had by the children of the Ariel School encounter) is indicative of the ability of a higher-dimensional being to access our three-dimensionally bound mind because the barriers that are true for us simply vanish at that higher dimensional level of physical structure. This is of course wildly speculative, but working in this way we are able to arrive at some sense of what, conceptually, is at stake in trying to account for a suitably relatable set of UFO phenomena—maybe not all UFO phenomena, but some important and telling subset of it.

What is really needed, however, is not just the speculative explorations Vallée (correctly) advocates for; rather, what is needed is some attempt to philosophically constrain the speculations so that we are not simply lost at sea, for speculation is a danger when it far exceeds the bounds of current human knowledge and understanding. For example, staying with the “higher-dimensional hypothesis” for a moment (the HDH), let’s see what’s at stake.

To begin with, we have a problem with our physics: it is largely confined to a four-dimensional world of interactions: three spatial and one temporal dimension. It is even unclear, on the grounds of Einstein’s relativity theory, what to make of that theory’s  fundamental theoretical object: the spacetime metric. It is given a simple form as an interval, computed as the sum over the four spacetime dimensions. It constitutes an absolute of the theory: the total interval is a quantity which all observers must agree on, and it is defined in relation to the fundamental postulate of the relativity theory itself, namely, that the speed of light is a constant for all observers. However, it is a strange object: while the three spatial dimensions have a certain integer value, the temporal part is unique in that it has the opposite sign from the three spatial dimensions. Time still stands out as unique. It may be that there is no possibility for an additional temporal dimension: that no matter how many more spatial dimensions there may be, there is always only one temporal dimension, the “same” throughout the manifold. I would like to suggest that this uniqueness to time should give us pause to reflect how there will be only one undivided universe, not many universes in parallel or otherwise.

This, perhaps, is the first constraint on speculation we should consider: that we not proliferate “realities” or “universes” but rather adopt a radically simplified “monism”: one universe, but with multiple intersecting “levels”—what I would like to call “orders of being”, planes that express a particular configuration of matter/energy projected at a certain level of dimensionality. It may be that there is a “higher” law of dynamical movement from lower to higher dimensional projections/expressions, as matter/energy moves from one particular configuration or projection of dimensionality to another.

If this multiple dimensionality is right, consciousness must also have to “spill” outward to other possible dimensional configurations: “upwards” to higher ones, and “downwards” to lower ones. It may simply be that what we call “psi” is nothing more than the primary mind-matter relation at one particular dimensional configuration intersecting with that of another. All of this, of course, happens within one and the same universe. But now, from this larger perspective—and I would like to introduce Spinoza’s concept of the “infinite substance” which “contains” an infinite number of “attributes” that each express completely this one, undivided infinite substance, a concept which can help us domesticate this seemingly wild speculation—it follows that the laws discoverable for one particular dimensional configuration must be dynamically evolved in order to reach adequacy for a description of the characteristic movement and behavior of phenomena relative to a “higher” (or “lower”) dimensionality. Here it makes sense to speak of “meta-laws”: laws of the passage from one level to the next.

All “paranormal” phenomena would then potentially be conceivable as nothing but indications of this passage or intersection between the dimensional configurations. We further speculate that it must be possible to deduce the laws of the higher order from the point of view of the lower order, and thus gain a sense of the meta-law involved, by examining the anomalous behavioral and morphological characteristics of objects indicative of this higher dimensionality. We must first proceed on the assumption, then, of some clear model of this multilevel, multidimensional configuration space before we can begin to make sense of some sizeable subset of all UFO data. In this way we can convert speculation into testable hypotheses. But it remains to be seen what coherent model of such a possibility can be produced which is also answerable to the UFO data itself (rather than just speculatively posited), since it requires making a number of not inconsiderable changes to physics as currently written down and understood, and using such to accurately model the observations we have.

In this way we see there is no need to immediately disparage the ETH as Vallée seems wholly insistent upon, and we also see no immediate need to jump prematurely to a unification of the phenomena, which Vallée eagerly wishes to do. The unification we find will likely be at another level of analysis altogether.

---

[1] See also Blumenthal (2021) for an extended account of Mack’s work on abductions and abductees.