Of workshops and colloquia: a foray into ufological circles and discussions

Before April is entirely lost to the past, I owe my four readers something of an apology, as I had promised an account of my travels (both geographical and intellectual) over the last month or so. Now that at least three ufologically-related events have been firmly tucked under my belt, and before I embark on yet another odyssey of exploration (domestic and foreign), I should write up some of my experiences, findings, musings, speculations and general puzzlement.

Before I get to the past, let’s deal with the future.

While attempting to fulfil my duties as president and acting director of the Society for UAP Studies, and lecturer in philosophy, I have been trying to work out some of my ideas on matters related to the study of  UAP—which of course inevitably brings one to the doorstep, if not the very interior of, the “ETH”. And with that one must inevitably wonder about the nature of the “ET” in the H. But—as you have come to expect, perhaps, from me as a philosophically-inclined writer on ufological matters—one must wonder even more fundamentally, as my friend Bryan Sentes has often stressed, about the very concept of “intelligence” and what is presupposed by it. Having been positively (and sometimes negatively—but in a good way!) influenced by Bryan’s subtle questioning and interrogation of the issue, I am increasingly more inclined to think that while it might be somewhat obvious (for some cases, both historical and future) that there is an intelligence behind some (and by no means all) UAP, because of the radical empirical distance between human and nonhuman, non-terrestrial being, coming to know what that intelligence is, and the extent to which the notion of ‘technology’ is suitable for such being, is going to be a much harder question to resolve. And I think it will be complicated by the fact that, most likely, there will be a great range of kinds of intelligence in play, each perhaps with a characteristic relationship to the tools they fashion and use. Some perhaps will seek to ambiguate the dichotomy—pronounced for homo faber—between creator-user and tool used. What SETI expects, for example, is to detect technologically-induced atmospheric peculiarities in the distant worlds whose spectra we are just now being able to study in detail (thanks of course to new and more powerful observation technologies); and with even more powerful technologies of observation, to perhaps see the megastructures and other shiny add-ons that a technology-using extraterrestrial civilization would construct atop their world. But as water worlds might be more common, this could be complicated by beings who prefer an oceanic and submarine lifestyle. But the presupposition here is that there will be differences in these distant world’s observable, physical characteristics that will point to technology and hence to the operation of some extraterrestrial intelligence. Indeed, the historical irony here is that science has fallen back on the favorite “proof” of theologically-inclined intellectuals (and “natural philosophers”) of the 17^th and 18^th centuries: the “Design Argument”. William Paley, of course, gives us its classical form (which we quote at length):

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. ... There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. ... Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

From which we are supposed to derive the conclusion that there must be a grand Designer, God…

SETI, of course, seeks to establish not that there is God, but that, if we happen upon the equivalent of a watch on some distant world, then “there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed” it “for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use”. The presupposition here being that its “contrivance” and “design” is manifest—that is, plainly and unambiguously given. Surely this is only the case because our recognition—in Paley’s famous little thought-experiment—is given by an object of our own familiar design.  And equally as surely for Paley, Nature Herself manifestly exhibits a design which requires there be a Designer. The modern scientific rejoinder to this logic is a double critique: (i) the attribution is an anthropomorphic projection and illicit generalization to all of nature (no caps), who operates (ii) by blind (unintelligent) chance (with a logic all of its own: the logic of random but constrained and therefore knowable circumstance: enter evolutionary biology—the Darwinian reply). Yet, if we focus just on the artifice of the object itself, we might convert this theological argument into an argument for the (inferential) existence of ETI on a distant world, thus resurrecting the theological argument and repurposing it for SETI. But what about the argument that Paley was anthropomorphizing: projecting a human concept of design onto nature? Well, but if we don’t attempt the projection onto nature as a whole, and hence use the concept of design, patterned after something clearly human in origin, illicitly in that way, then we can (surely?) use it as the basis for recognizing the designs of another designer like ourselves, right? Well, that would seem right—except that we’d have to be able to recognize those designs as designs—an “artifice” distinct from the general pattern of the “natural world” which would not to us indicate the existence of an intelligence. So, are the necessarily anthropomorphic concepts of design, artifice etc. harmless in this case? We are back to the N = 1 problem: we only have one example of “technology” and (supposedly) nonnatural “artifice” to go on, and that’s the shiny, polluting, invasive and adjunct apparatus of modern technoscience, which inserts itself all over the globe in ways that, for us, seem both obvious and (to some) unfortunate. Yet to a distant observer, perceiving us with a radically distinct set of presuppositions (that perhaps do not entail a radical distinctness between tool and user/being, or between being intelligent and being natural—i.e., a “nature” of nonseparable wholes and parts), it might be that we are seen, together with our tools, as part of one whole system of (natural) being. And if those distant, extraterrestrial observers (and maybe they have stopped by already?) cannot (or will not) separate us from nature as we separate ourselves from it, then wouldn’t we expect silence from them, overlooking us for a larger view of the whole? (Notice, this is not the “ant” hypothesis many like to toy with when it comes to thinking about the possible nature of an ETI; rather, I am saying that it might just be incompatible conceptual presuppositions—which has nothing at all to do with a supposed difference in intelligence—that inhibits contact or communication. They needn’t be “hyper-advanced” for there to be a communicative mismatch … yet another dubious anthropomorphism I suppose: “advanced” by what measure?)

This gives you some sense of the kind of questions and problems to which I’ve turned my mind in recent months. I only go on at length about this because I have submitted (with Bryan) two abstracts to two run-of-the-mill academic conferences which propose to broach the subject of UAP in relation to the ETI hypothesis—but in an effort to problematize any future “contact” scenario. Or at least to interrogate it in a more fundamental philosophical register. But not only ETI. I have proposed that even the UAP itself, as it inhabits what I’ve called a “liminal” space (intersecting the known while at the same time exiting it), presents a more subtle challenge as they, by their own appearances (and there are important differences among the various UAP encounters that are rather pertinent here), problematize our conceptual space of recognition. We see them—but how? We attempt to conceptualize them—but how? Their empirical distance from us (in more ways than one) suggests a more fundamental problem: one of quite radical difference, something that is even anterior to “otherness” or “alterity” (to use the philosophical lingo). It’s a kind of difference that occasions (I want to argue) a new space of conceptual possibilities, something outside the coordinates of “natural” v. “artificial” and so on. Or in any case the UAP are an occasion (at least for some encounters) for a significant alteration and change in our concepts. But we have to think ourselves into this new space, thinking with these phenomena as they challenge those concepts we have ready-at-hand for them.

One conference is being held in Budapest in July by the Society for European Philosophy. The other, perhaps more funky of a conference, is being held in late October in Tempe Arizona here in the U.S. by the Center for Philosophical Technologies in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (quite a combo); this is at the Arizona State University. (But though I’ve submitted my abstract, the email address to which I’ve sent it no longer seems to function, and two of the conference organizers have yet to respond to my email of several days ago … which has me worried.) My point of departure for these talks will be the philosophy of Kant, who, as you may have guessed, is my intellectual hero of sorts, whose thinking I really believe is one of the most helpful when trying to navigate the stormy seas of the unconventional. Kant’s thinking acts like a wheel and rudder as the winds of wild (and frequently credulous) speculation blow from one side, and the rocky shore of conventional skepticism, which perpetually threatens to run the ship aground, fast approaches from the other. I do want to sail these seas, but I want to weather the storm and find calm waters in hopes of the discovery of another port-of-call altogether, at which the anchor can be dropped and the real adventure might begin (free of old encumbrances—a kind of New World, indeed)…

There is a third conference to which I’ve sent an abstract, but this one is a conference on (basically) foundational issues in the theory of probability and probabilistic inference, and I am second or third author (with some others in the UAP Studies community). And here we are attempting to interrogate the problem (in Bayesian inference theory) of prior probabilities, which seems to always militate against truly “new empirical observations” that compel progress in science: if every potential anomaly is always given a very low probability against the more likely conventional explanations of it, then science cannot change—it cannot find a new paradigm formed around and suited to the specifics of the anomaly itself. Rather, it will always seek to extend the dominant paradigm (by introducing any number of paradigm-saving hypotheses). Yet, we know that science has changed; indeed, we accept that change is part of the very essence of science as such (as a method of discovering the structure of nature, the dazzle of the real). So, we might ask (following the so-called “transcendental” method of Kant—whom I have yet to introduce to this project!): how is scientific change possible, since we know that it does change? That is: what are the conditions of the possibility of scientific theory change—even radical theory change (as in the transition from Aristotle to Galileo-Kepler-Newton)? It has to rest with the acceptance of scientific anomalies, or at least with the embrace of the (un-theorized) new. But how does this happen? Since it cannot be an exactly rational procedure internal to a given paradigm, then change must be extrinsic to a paradigm, and must derive from the inner structure of the phenomena themselves, which compel the creative postulation of new theory. That is, the anomaly represents a potentially new framework with respect to which there will be new meaning to certain key concepts. Thus, the assignment of the prior probabilities must be contextualized or relativized: either the prior probability of an extraordinary hypothesis (that there is a genuine anomaly not strictly explicable by means of existing science) is determined relative to the existing paradigm—in which case the probability will be very low—or it is given relative to a new paradigm, which would be the one implied by the anomaly itself. In this case, we would have to examine the priors relative to a context of anomalies: if the existing paradigm suffers from several or many, then this would raise the likelihood that we, indeed, have a genuine anomaly and have reason to believe that the extraordinary hypothesis is more likely than not (especially if the anomaly can be linked to other anomalies in some systematic fashion). At least this is my (so-far only partially-baked) contribution to the paper. We’ll see…

I will also be traveling, on the 9^th of May, to the second iteration of the Archives of the Impossible, which is Prof. Jeffrey Kripal’s initiative at Rice University to collect, house and make available a whole range of documents and other sundry resources related to—and what should the term here be?—the uncanny, the strange … that which doesn’t easily fit in with the conventional. Here I will meet the more “woo” crowd (though I hate that term). For my own part (and not to predetermine myself as dogmatic) I represent something of an alternative view of the alternatives. As I’ve attempted to outline in my blog posts over the course of the previous year (and it’s official: though I have slowed my writing these past several months, Entaus is one year old), I am trying to work out a kind of empiricism of the unconventional.

Yesterday in the shower (where lots of ideas seem to percolate from the depths of my unconscious—water is truly rejuvenating to the soul), I had an insight into what it seems that I am trying to say. Let me try to recover this flash of a thought: In the 17^th century, Science came to embrace two traditions—the one speculative and conceptual, disciplined by mathematics and elaborated as metaphysics; the other experimental, almost alchemical in a new sense but disciplined by the mathematical and the metaphysical. This produced something remarkable: as the great philosophical writer on the New Science Sir Francis Bacon would conceptualize it, through the synthesis of these traditions, human beings were given a new power of creation. Heretofore hidden potencies of Nature were expressed and brought to light, removed from the darkness of natural secrecy, and opened to the power of human understanding, control and intervention. The metaphysical and mathematical descriptions of Nature, passed through the alchemy of experimentation, produced new forms under the direct control of the human experimenter. Newton (secret alchemist by night) would then show that we could discharge the metaphysical specifics (those “substances” or “essences” of the old medieval Schools) yet retain the structure of relationships that reliably and consistently produced certain observable results or predictions, which could then form the basis of our understanding of Nature: we might not know what gravity itself, metaphysically speaking, is (Descartes had proposed that it was really a plenum of material “vortices” and so really was a matter of frictional forces pulling on things), but its formal, mathematical structure could be given (as a certain characteristic equation, that expressed the right structural relationships between the relevant phenomena). Fast-forward to the breakthroughs of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: we could now not only reproduce and control phenomena heretofore totally unknown to human beings (the phenomena of radiation and radioactive decay surely were all around us, but imperceptible and uncontrollable), but could bring into being phenomena possible but not so far expressed by nature herself. For example, fission, and of course the atomic bomb, wasn’t a process or technique nature seemed to care to express on her own (aside from the randomness of radioactivity); yet, human beings managed to express it for her (for better or for worse). Fusion, the basic process behind the sun, was the very origin of our own life here on Earth (and the process behind the creation of the atomic elements on which that life relies), is already expressed everywhere in the universe, and is a process we are on the verge of mastering for ourselves: Imitatio Dei. Various quantum processes are underway everywhere—but quantum entanglement is much rarer in nature; yet, we can bring this into being (difficult though it is) and make nature express it. What other processes, like fission, still yet remain entirely hidden within the bosom of nature but which, unlocked by the key of insight, will be made manifest—perhaps for the first time in the history of the universe? Surely the entire range of what we now call “paranormal” might be said to be a kind of hint, a dim suggestion of what is possible on the basis of principles of nature yet unknown to us? 

How much of our knowledge is simply a function of our perhaps rather peculiar portion of the universe to which we have, for contingent reasons, a certain kind of access? We’ve been thrown into the world at a certain time and place, and though through our vision and our extended perception (by means of more exotic electromagnetic and gravitational interactions) we see everywhere the things we see here in our immediate experience, how much of what we experience isn’t representative of this vast expanse of the Real? The New Science, if it taught us anything, taught us the humility of patient empirical engagement with nature, which by a painstaking process of experimentation and theorization, slowly but surely reveals what is hidden. Nature is the ultimate horizon outside of which there is nothing. Everything is within nature. Paranormal or not. We have only to go deeper to get the unexpressed (or partially expressed) to be more fully expressed. In this way does the human—or any other being of this kind of transformational intelligence—become a constitutive element of the very being of nature herself: a productive and creative element of the very unfolding of the real of nature. We are an expressive function of nature even as we make nature express what is hidden within her. I don’t know if this is why Kripal calls the human “two”, but surely we must have patience—the patience of the empirical.

OK, well, that was much more of an elaboration of the insight I had than I had intended—and one perhaps diluted because of the prolixity of its expression. It will have to be tightened and pared down for it to be as succinct as the original flash had seemed to me. But this is my best first attempt. Let it stand.

So much for the future. But what about the (immediate) past? Let’s talk about those three ufologically oriented events I had the pleasure to attend…

During the week of March 13^th, I attended a workshop organized by Alex Wendt and hosted by the Mershon Center at Ohio State University. The title of this event was given as “Bringing SETI Home: National Security and the Politics of UAP”. The idea was to bring in a number of scholars from a range of disciplines to discuss various national security and political issues raised by UAP—if we take UAP “seriously” (that is, as more than misperception, hoax, or instrument error). I’m not quite at liberty to disclose who exactly was present, since the taboo against the subject is still strong and a number of the scholars gathered at the event don’t want their careers jeopardized, but there were many present who are quite serious and well-respected within their respective disciplines. Indeed, I was impressed by both the range and the quality. It was only a two-day event, but it was exciting, dynamic and very intellectually fruitful. Such a profound spirit of collegiality and helpfulness dominated throughout its two days that it could be said that this event was unique—even among more mainstream academic workshops (at least that I have attended over the years). We were gathered in a spirit of collaboration and intellectual exchange while recognizing the difficulties inherent to the topic—which we always kept foregrounded as we discussed and debated. My sense was that this is precisely the kind of thing that’s needed in a field that is so young: if these were exercises in “UAP Studies”—which I’d argue they most certainly were—then we went some distance in trying to experiment with methods and discourse that could be foundational to it. It was a rich and deeply meaningful experience, to say the very least.

For my own part, I presented a talk (based on a very preliminary paper) on UAP and climate change—perhaps a strange pair. But there were papers from those involved with SETI (exploring the problematic relation between UAP and SETI); from those concerned with the politics of any potential “disclosure”; from those concerned with the ethics of a potential military engagement with UAP; and from those concerned with issues of “securitization” of UAP (and this tended to be the general concern of the workshop as a whole). We have planned to develop our papers and talks into chapters for a volume of essays, possibly titled with the title of the workshop itself. There will be three editors of this potential volume, and we’re looking to attract Oxford University Press. We’re hopeful that they’d be interested. If so, then this could very well be a watershed moment for UAP Studies. Our due date for finished papers is fixed for sometime in the middle of January of next year, so it’ll be a while before the thing sees the light of day. But it’s in the works, and should, when finally released, be a rather interesting read…

On March 16th I arrived home. I had flown into Detroit for Columbus, OH from LA, but now found myself returning to LAX (which is essentially a second home for me now) on March 20th, for one of those late-evening departures out to Europe that seem to be rather common. I booked myself onto the big Airbus 380—quite an experience in modern aviation. It’s a wonder the thing can get airborne. But airborne we were, after almost a minute of acceleration down the runway. Off to England I went for event no. 2: a one-day colloquium held in the very old university town of Durham, about a 3.5 hours (very pleasant) train ride up the English countryside from London. This was the brainchild of Prof. Michael Bohlander, the German jurist and international criminal court justice who leads up the Law department at Durham University. The colloquium’s title—“Alien Conversations: An Interdisciplinary Colloquiumon the State of Research and Policy Implications Concerning UAP and other Formsof Alien Encounter”—was a reference to a very famous (some might say infamous) event, held many years ago at MIT, organized by none other than MIT professor David Pritchard (who joined us via Zoom in Durham) along with the esteemed John E. Mack (someone whose esteem might be considered suspect by some). That event was more of a full-blown conference: “Alien Discussions” was the title given, described as a “secret MIT conference” by at least one reviewer in 1993. Mack’s and Pritchard’s event, focused on the abduction phenomenon (wave?) that saw its heyday in the 1990s, yielded a proceedings volume, and examining the table of contents one finds a roster of some of the most famous names in ufology and alien abduction studies—the very state of the art at the time.

Bohlander’s event, no less controversial even if rather less grand in form and numbers in attendance, found several interesting talks, with mine being perhaps the least of these, given its informational focus: I was invited to speak about the journal Limina and the academic society (the Society for UAP Studies) I founded last year (my talk, which, due to an unfortunate technical glitch, failed to be recorded, nevertheless seemed to be rather well-received I have to say). Of especial note was the talk by one of SETI’s more intrepid of researchers—a leader in the area of post-detection SETI studies. I am speaking of Prof. John Elliot of St. Andrews (just up the road in Scotland), who, way back in the late 90’s, pioneered the study of the question of what sort of meaningful content might be contained in a verifiably anomalous SETI signal indicative of intelligent life abroad. It’s all well and good to find a signal, and for it to pass the criteria set to establish it as of non-terrestrial technological origin; but then what? Might it contain meaningful information? Enter Prof. Elliot, whose expertise is in the area of computational linguistics (and he’s quite a brilliant mind, to boot).

Also in attendance was Sheffield University professor of media studies, communication and journalism David Clarke—of the Calvine Photograph fame. Clarke detailed his rather extensive archival work on Britain’s UFO files. Clarke asserted that (and I have every reason to believe him) he’s probably the only person on the planet who has actually read through just about every document (somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000) contained in those files, whilst he oversaw their release and archiving. And so his talk was fascinating because of the unique access he had to once-classified information released by the British Ministry of Defense (or M.O.D.). As we learned (and as perhaps many of you know), David came across a number of very interesting UFO cases—not the least of which was this set of (six I believe) photos of what appears to be a strikingly diamond-shaped UFO, with a rather obviously conventional craft in the more blurry background. Clarke—somewhat infamous in UFO circles for his more skeptical-leaning disposition towards the whole UFO thing (he’s a folklorist as well, somewhat in the tradition of well-known ufological scholar Thomas “Eddie” Bullard)—believes this to be the real deal: a genuine photo (i.e., not a hoax) that captured an anomalous aerial vehicle of some unknown kind. Debunkers have tried their hardest (as they should) to demonstrate that it could have been a hoax, or something else non-anomalous. But the very down-to-earth Clarke is adamant that these alternative accounts don’t really hold up to scrutiny: given the physical location, which he himself visited, a hoax is all but impossible—at least in terms of a string-and-model kind of job. (The interested reader is directed to Clarke’s own blog for the details.) David’s the kind of person you want thinking really hard about these kinds of things: clever, sober, rational, even-handed, balanced … a consummate intellectual sincerely interested in truth. It was a great honor to have met him (and I hope I’ll bump into him sometime in the near future).

The Durham colloquium was simply too short to get the kind of energetic intellectual exchange going that Alex Wendt managed to achieve at Ohio State—but then again, it was a really hard sell for Durham to get this on the docket, and then to have senior SETI personnel to be involved. The tensions between SETI and the UAP crowd were somewhat in evidence, especially when one prodded Elliott a bit. But you get a sense that, if we’re looking for signals afar, and now technological signatures beyond mere electromagnetic blips, why not “technosignatures” more generally? This is the push given momentum by Loeb’s Galileo Project, which has no problem with allowing UAP—near the Earth or on it—to figure into their search. After all, despite the strained attempts to distance SETI from UAP, there’s absolutely no conceptual reason to exclude UAP as candidates for an extraterrestrial signature right in our own backyard—the unconscious fallacy of NIMBY-ism be damned.

Finally, I should at least outline my experiences at my very first MUFON event as invited speaker. I thought I’d embarrass myself with my talk; but as it turned out, I don’t think I did too badly. Perhaps I erred in terms of the content, which might have been a bit too heavy. But I don’t think so: I think the audience, all 10 attendees in person, and 9 or so online, appreciated what I was trying to do, which was to find something of a middle-ground between denialist debunkerism and credulous believerism, to move beyond this dead-end discourse to something more open but more critical at the same time. Maybe I wasn’t successful in achieving this; perhaps someone else cleverer than I can do it right.

My talk was entitled “Transcendental Skepticism” and it’s based on one of my very first blog posts. Now that I think of it, as I delivered the talk on a beautiful late April evening in Orange County (it was Wednesday the 19^th), that marked almost the one-year anniversary of my blog. Interesting coincidence. So I seem to have come full circle…

What can I say about the audience and their questions? Just that I really appreciated being there, and having the opportunity to work out my ideas with a more-or-less friendly crowd. It was just that I can’t go all the way with them: I just don’t think we know enough to offer much in terms of definitive conclusions that could justify belief in the existence of specific alien beings, forms of contact, and so on—which a lot of the crowd seemed disposed to accept. But on what evidence, and why? Despite my (transcendental) skepticism, I am nevertheless open to having the experiences that they might think form the basis of such belief: contact/CE5 trips to the desert, and so on. I am really open to it all, in the spirit of intellectual exploration. And I’m serious about that. Maybe I will have different experiences altogether, and maybe I will come to different conclusions on the basis of those experiences. But above all, one must endeavor to have them, to seek them out as a treasure buried in the deepest recesses of Mother Nature. After all, if we close down the possibility of having the widest possible scope of experience, how can we say that we are living up to our birthright as human beings—as homo sapiens? And how can one profess to love “science” in the widest possible sense of the word? Only by the expansion of one’s horizon of experience can we even possibly contribute to the great story of Scientia, a book with pages yet to be written, populated with processes and structures and beings yet unfathomable and unfamiliar to us. It is the greatest story to be told.

And so there you have it—my roster of scholarly ufological explorations for the months of March and April. All in all, a rather rewarding (if tiring) intellectual experience. I look forward to early May, when I fly down to Houston for the Archives of the Impossible extravaganza, and later that same month when I embark on my second ufological European adventure—first to Germany, then to Paris, then to Portugal. I will attempt to chronicle this sojourn more faithfully in real-time than I managed for my first set of trips. But as I have too much plated for me from now and even through until then, and beyond (including preparing for Limina’s first edition), I cannot exactly promise. I can hope.

Until then, pax vobiscum.