Note on the perils of skepticism

I just wanted to post a note about—and I think this is more or less accurate—a UFO skeptic (at least of a sort) whom I think it worth going meta-skeptical on. Luis Cayetano has a rather rich blog that is certainly worth a dive into, and he has gone some way in exposing the unfortunate ugly underbelly of the U.S. UFO research community, showing that some of its more prominent members not only have questionable politics (but that’s a fraught topic, and something I will not dwell on in this blog at all), but also a dubious relationship to the truth. However, I question whether Prof. Cayetano (a biology Ph.D.) is not setting up, with the very form and content of the blog, a kind of grand straw man (or even ad hominem or genetic fallacy) tactic that only serves to reinforce what we already think we know about science, truth, reason, and the usual litany of abstractions used to draw the line in the sand between what is, and what is not, acceptable as a topic of serious scientific or academic work—or between what we ought to believe, or not (certainly a good bit more of a dangerous drift in one’s skepticism, when it gets to that point—a sure sign of dogmatics).

 One essay of his on his “ufologyiscorrupt.com” website is a perfect example (not to mention the very title of the blog itself: a general statement that is either conveniently vague, or plain false). One only need to witness the title of this essay: “Why UFOs are (almost certainly not) extraterrestrial, interdimensional, supernatural, etc.”.

Well, as readers of this blog have already seen, such claims (that a UFO is this or that) must really be examined not by means of abstract a priori pronouncements that serve to signal one’s safely conventional stance vis a vie UFOs, but by a detailed consideration of those cases which cannot be easily explained by conventional premises (of either science or common-sense), and so which cannot be simply dismissed. We must work with only with the best cases, and then work case-by-case, examining the details of the evidence on offer in each one. The true skeptic must be drawn to these (and especially these) cases by what in logical analysis we like to call “The Principle of Charity”. Indeed, here I am reminded what the philosopher Deleuze once remarked somewhere, saying that one cannot really offer an authentic criticism of something unless out of love. Right: caritas, for the sake of knowledge.

Returning to the title of the essay, one is, then, already suspicious. For example, the latter claim about UFOs being “supernatural” is not really something the serious UFO research community takes seriously (and I hope what Prof. Cayetano is not trying to suggest is that there is nothing serious to that community); so, that’s an easy straw man to dispatch. As for the first two claims of which we are, it would seem, going to get a critique: well, we are certainly owed an analysis of key cases, and an evaluation of what it is we can reasonably conclude (or not) from them, as I am trying to do in the whole of this blog you are reading. Additionally, the very title alone mixes claims of wildly different epistemic merit or purpose. The first (the ETH) is in fact a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence we have which indicates the presence of structured craft with measurably anomalous flight characteristics (like we have with Nimitz, as we saw in the previous post). Whereas the second claim is a speculative conjecture as to how we could frame that and similarly anomalous evidence. And the third is, well, just fraught. (I mean, everything, no matter how bizarre, is part of one texture of reality which we need to think and theorize—nothing “super” about it. It is whatever and however it is. If nature abhors a vacuum, as Spinoza reportedly claimed, then that same nature is everything—strangeness and all. At least, that’s my working philosophical assumption, and we will certainly be exploring that one later.) 

Why write a title that is a mash-up of all this stuff? Again, this makes me skeptical of the skepticism...

We will have occasion to reflect on the “Interdimensional Hypothesis” (IDH) at some point later in this blog, but we should simply note that, if by “interdimensional” one means objects existing in a spacetime of more dimensions than our own, then as a matter of speculative conjecture, this does not seem unreasonable at all. As an attempt to explain at least some of the anomalous evidence we have, it is perfectly reasonable—as speculation. For example, we are all familiar with those YouTube demonstrations of the strangeness of a two-dimensional world intersected by three dimensional objects (one should in this connection read, of course, Abbot’s Flatland). By conceiving what the two respective worlds would be like, we can come to some speculative conclusions about what the UFO may in fact be (an object moving within an expanded set of spacetime dimensions momentarily intersecting with a lower-dimensional spacetime such as ours), and what the physics of this kind of scenario might have to be.

Science is always given to speculative conjectures; they just have to be thought with and against the available evidence. IDH would need more than just UFO speculation to become accepted scientific theory, of course. (We would need something perhaps more fundamental—say, experiments in high-energy physics, where higher-dimensionality is not at all considered absurd or unreasonable. Just take a look, for example, at this University of Waterloo doctoral thesis in physics that provides a nice non-technical overview of the issue of higher-dimensionality within theoretical physics.) But we can surely say that this is at least one among many speculative possibilities that actually is worth exploring in some serious detail. So it is an interesting question as to what would be good reasons to accept the IDH explanation of UFOs. On its own, the UFO evidence we have, of course, does not imply the IDH; no amount of data on its own proves any one hypothesis (let us not so easily forget the underdetermination thesis that occupied us previously). But why can’t it be suggestive of it? Looking into Cayetano’s essay for guidance or enlightenment on the matter, we find, instead of a serious consideration of the logic (or lack?) of the IDH in a scientific context of genuinely anomalous evidence, a mostly a priori series of assertions or observations (no demonstrations in specific cases) about how there really can’t be UFOs at all—how all evidence for the existence of UFOs (as genuinely anomalous phenomena) is going to turn out to be perfectly explainable. By which he really means: explainable with no significant alterations in current scientific paradigms of explanation and understanding. That is: it’s going to all turn out to be “normal” science stuff, stuff that we can already understand perfectly fine without having to worry too much. We will be eventually returned to the cliché of the ordinary. If that is true, why bother mentioning any hypotheses for UFOs at all? Again, we smell something rotten...

Which brings me to my final point, really a question for Cayetano: so, what is the evidence we have, and what is it evidence for? Well, it seems that Cayetano, like many so-called skeptics, confuses two issues.

The first issue is that of simply establishing that there is something profoundly anomalous, with certain (sometimes measurable) characteristics which eludes conventional explanations. (The video above, analyzed by the SCU in great detail, seems to show a relatively benign-looking object moving with a propulsion system which is hard to account for, but which enters the water without noticeable loss of forward velocity, and then appears to bifurcate into two.) But we already know that in principle every anomaly can be accommodated by an existing theory or paradigm, suitably modified. From this one should be humbled into realizing that very few observations will constitute “unassailable” evidence for anything (I guess what he wants is a photo of ET waving hi? Or just a picture of ET?). So in the first instance, the evidence we amass should be evidence that there is an anomaly, not in an absolute and “unassailable” sense, but in the sense that if we try to account for these anomalous observations in conventional ways, the resulting explanations look more and more arbitrary or ad hoc. Like what occurred throughout Antiquity and into the Early Modern period as astronomers tried to maintain the Ptolemaic astronomical system (derived as we know from Aristotle): in order to get the theory to work out right for what we could observe about the orbital motions of certain planets, you had to introduce more geometrical complications so that you ended up with many absurd circles-with-circles orbiting fictitious but mathematically required axes of revolution. Surely something was wrong there. And surely something is wrong here when we have to concoct an account that can somehow very easily dismiss all the camera footage as flawed or misinterpreted, all the corroborative eyewitness testimony for the things videoed as dubious, and all the simultaneous radar data as being erroneous (all of which points to the existence of objects with “unassailably” absurd measurable kinematics). One suspects here dogmatic dismissal, not a reasonable skepticism that actually engages systematically with the data.

We have argued that this evidence for anomalous UAP does, in fact, exist. But as we have explained in detail, showing this is just an exercise in the establishment of our definite ignorance or lack of understanding about something that actually exists (which we can see, measure and detect in various ways to have anomalous characteristics) but whose nature, origin (or even purpose) quite simply eludes us. (The video referenced here, by the way, is one of those cases which, while presenting some very anomalous observational evidence caught on infrared camera, nonetheless really requires further investigation in order to more confidently establish the existence of a genuine anomaly. As with many government- or military-sourced UAP datasets, one problem is secrecy in the interest of national security, and so on. Yet another level of epistemological difficulty plaguing a struggling ufological science, which we must think through carefully. It is made far, far worse by recent developments within the military, an ironic twist to what had looked like a new era of transparency. Not so fast, as The Debrief reported in this otherwise fascinating report on yet another hard-to-account for, multiple-eyewitness military encoutner (thanks to Bryan Sentes for bringing this one to my attention!).)

But, establishing, with some set of evidence, that there is an anomaly is, however, quite a different exercise from determining what evidence there is to support a given hypothesis which tries to explain the anomaly. Let me say it again, in even plainer language: supplying evidence for the existence of an anomaly (which needs to be explained by some hypothesis or other) is quite a different task from finding evidence to support any given hypothesis that tries to offer an explanation of the anomaly.

To be clear, the menu of items listed in Cayetano’s essay—ETs, ID, the supernatural—are various and sundry, but they are all attempts to make sense of something anomalous: they are attempts to make sense of (to explain) the UFO evidence itself. It’s just that Prof. Cayetano doesn’t think there is, or ever will ever be, a there there to be explained by these claims. If there is actually a there there (a genuine anomaly), then these claims take on a rather different significance.

And to be even clearer: to say that there is a genuine anomaly, as opposed to just an anomaly simpliciter, is to say something very specific, even quite strong: it is to say that conventional premises are not enough to explain the phenomena. It is to say that the phenomena likely require additional premises outside of conventional thinking. The question then is: how far outside of that conventional thinking do we need to go? The claim on the table (which we have been at pains to establish in previous posts) is that we at least need to introduce the notion that we are most likely dealing with a non-human technology. But this only goes as far as trying to say what the UFO is (a technological object of unknown non-human origin); it does not even begin to try and explain how it could have been created to do the things we see it do. And that is a question squarely in the ballpark of physics, and makes this anomaly not just existentially (biologically, culturally, socially) significant, but also potentially of momentous significance for theoretical physics as we know it. Even if one wants to reject some particular hypothesis that tries to tell us what the UFO is (alien or not, natural or not, and so on), or where it comes from (our spacetime, or some higher-dimensional one) one will still be left with a profound physical mystery: how do they do what we observe them to do? (When you add to this other, more puzzling, aspects of various UFO incidences, the scientific questions become even more difficult, and one is forced to countenance even further departures from conventional thinking. We shall reserve a meditation on that issue in latter blog posts, as we take it up, in part at least, when we soon return to Vallee and the enigmas of UAP theory.)

So, on the one hand we’re trying to establish evidence for an anomaly for which, on the other hand, we must try to offer explanations, via hypotheses. That there is evidence for an anomaly in need of explanation is one thing; whether any particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence we have is quite another (and disputing a hypothesis, just to be clear, doesn’t, of course, impugn the evidence for which it is an explanation, which would be like disputing the Einstein theory in order to inveigh against gravity). But the real question, which seems to get buried or forgotten in these attempts to dismiss the aliens or dimensions or supernatural thing is this: what is the best explanation of the best data on UFOs that we do have? Again, if we go from the content of Cayetano’s essay itself, we have the answer necessarily implied by the author’s a priori convictions: whatever UFOs are, they will never contradict what we already know; they will eventually be explained by normal science. The claim on the table is that it can’t, and so Cayetano, like many skeptics who don’t actually engage the best evidence, simply begs the question. Or worse: they argue from the conviction that it must be so, so it is.

I assume Cayetano knows all of this (he is it would seem a practicing biologist). So, one wonders: why does he not simply engage in an analysis (within his essay!) of the evidence which these hypotheses (ETH, IDH, etc.) are contrived to explain? Instead, he uses the essay as an excuse to rehearse what, on closer analysis, is just his a priori commitment to the inexistence of the UFO as a genuine anomaly (that is, as something that cannot be explained in conventional terms—which, crucially, does not mean it is incapable of explanation tout court ... yet another subtlety Cayetano seems to bulldoze over).

Now for the ETH, says Cayetano, we need bodies, we need biological samples, we need materials. But of course, this doesn’t really exist, as he (correctly) writes:

“No unassailable evidence exists that we’ve been visited by otherworldly beings. None. Such evidence could conceivably exist in the form of alien bodies/biological remains/samples (for which a host of scientific analyses could be conducted, for example genetic or protein chirality tests), fossils, metals or other materials from spacecraft or their fuel, radioactive decay products, the spacecraft themselves, or gravitational anomalies in the solar system detected by LIGO. Presenting and making available something from these categories to the scientific community would likely decisively resolve the issue in favor of an intelligent non-human presence on Earth. It is highly significant that no such evidence has ever been demonstrably forthcoming.”

One wonders, of course, at the last sentence, and whether that’s not coming dangerously close to the dogmatic pronouncement that declares and there never will be! But even aside from this, the statement really indicates a confusion on Cayetano’s part, once again. Of course it is the case that, with some of this evidence he lists, if we had it, we quite possibly would have “unassailable evidence” that UFOs are really extraterrestrial in origin. Although, as I am wont to do, we must pay very close attention to what the logic of this situation would actually be. For example, we actually do have samples from an anomalous aerial vehicle of reasonably certain provenance, samples which are actually demonstrably anomalous, but it would be hard to use this to show conclusively that we are dealing with something “extraterrestrial”—everything in the universe is made of the same basic stuff! We’d have to see how the materials are structured, and at what level (the molecular, the atomic, etc.), and then we are only proceeding on speculation, for we have to again ask: what would constitute proof that some substance was, at least likely, of “extraterrestrial” origin? It’s a very difficult question. Much of this will always remain inconclusive. And yes, not “unassailable”. Very little in science is ever “unassailable”. Rather, the conclusions (which are mostly inductive inferences) of science are always subject to revision, and as such are not “unassailable”. There’s just more or less assailability (if I might be permitted a neologism).

So, are alien bodies what’s needed to make the ETH a good one, at least as a working assumption? That is of course an absurd requirement, and it misses the point. Rather, in order to see that the ETH is actually quite reasonable, one has to work from what specific evidence there is—an exercise we have done here in detail (see “Transcendental Skepticism”). So, without an analysis of those cases, we won’t really have a sound skeptical foundation. With this case-based analysis (which we have sketched in previous posts and will continue sketching in future posts), we have (as we’ve shown) good evidence from which we can make the reasonable conjecture that, in some UFO cases, we are in fact dealing with what at least appears to be a structured craft of profoundly anomalous maneuverability not accountable for by any known or even conceivable technology human beings (could) possess. If this is sound, then (notwithstanding Vallée’s position, to which we return in the next post) the ETH is likely true (it is probably true), and Cayetano is simply wrong. But this is an inductive argument working from the evidence we have, not the “unassailable” (but would it be?) physical evidence we could hold in our hands (the old “I won’t believe it until I can kick its tires” chestnut). We don’t need that evidence to accept the ETH. (I hope that’s clear by now.)

We are dealing with what is, at this early stage in the concerted and serious scientific investigation of the phenomenon, a purely observational science, and thus one must apply standards of evidence and proof appropriate to that. As Aristotle famously remarks early on in his famous study Nicomachean Ethics, one shouldn’t really seek any more exactness or precision from a subject than the subject-matter itself allows, and with the UFO phenomenon it doesn’t allow much, unfortunately. It’s a very elusive phenomenon (something we will specifically address in future posts), but one for which we, nonetheless, now possess a number of very compelling bodies of observational evidence (pun is very slightly intended there). We are, like science as a whole, confined to reason with the evidence on the basis of induction. One should really focus their energies there, and not on the epistemological low-hanging fruit…

So, I can’t and won’t make a general assessment of Cayetano’s position or his blog (which is not my intention anyway), but I can say that this essay is a perfectly reasonable general skeptical stance without it having been shown to work in specific instances, for specific cases. It’s to the logic of the specific that we must always turn. Otherwise, we will only have as much certainty as our preferred hermeneutical circles will allow.

*Correction (05/31/2022): a previous version of this post claimed the Aguadilla UAP recombined after having apparently divided into two; in fact a recombination is not apparent. (Thanks Robert Powell for pointing this out!)