Why we are stuck in the weeds of Philosophy (when it comes to UFOs)
Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.
I'm a little surprised that my pal Bryan Sentes hasn't subjected us to this insight- ful essay from and by Allen W. Wood, the Ruth Norman Halls Professor at Indiana Univerisity and Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford University for TLS [Times Literary Supple- ment].
Here's their essay and some excerpts from it that pertain to the back-and-forth that Bryan and I (and a few others) contend with:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/immanuel-kant-what-lies-beyond-the-senses/
"It is easy to find Kant mystifying or off-putting unless you have the time, patience and sympathy to discover and properly reflect on his remarkably original work.
"We must learn to think for ourselves rather than deferring to the authority of books, doctors, lawyers and clergy and letting them take the place of our understanding and our conscience.
"It is all too easy to suppose Kant is recommending that we be idiosyncratic contrarians, contemp- tuous of tradition, authority and the thoughts of others. But that isn’t so. By “thinking” Kant means the use of understanding or reason subject to the basic standard of universal validity. To think for oneself, by Kant’s lights, means to think from the standpoint of all others. Kant argues that the only way for individuals to become enlightened is to communicate freely with one another, so that each acquires the ability and confidence to think by using the thoughts of others as both an incitement and an (always fallible) external criterion for correct thinking.
"We do, and should, raise questions about realities transcending the sensible world, but must resign ourselves to our incapacity to answer them."
My hesitation to apply Kant or any other Philosopher's thinking to the UFO problem lies in the face of philosophy's insistence, when all else is noted, as above, that thinking comes down to human morals and ethics, which the essay linked ends up hashing for its final, protracted paragraphs.
Bryan Sentes knows his Kant, and a lot of other things, but I'm insisting that the UFO phenomenon is not subject to discourse about ethics/morality or anything else with a human overlay.
That UFOers, me included, keep trying to ram psychology, philo- sophy, sociology, and other people-oriented disciplines into the phenomenon which has caused it to remain beclouded and diffuse, unexplained.
Kant may be a wonderful prescription for the human condition, which is in dire trouble right now (for a number of reasons), but the UFO phenomenon has nothing to do with any of that, nothing.
RR
Here's their essay and some excerpts from it that pertain to the back-and-forth that Bryan and I (and a few others) contend with:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/immanuel-kant-what-lies-beyond-the-senses/
"It is easy to find Kant mystifying or off-putting unless you have the time, patience and sympathy to discover and properly reflect on his remarkably original work.
"We must learn to think for ourselves rather than deferring to the authority of books, doctors, lawyers and clergy and letting them take the place of our understanding and our conscience.
"It is all too easy to suppose Kant is recommending that we be idiosyncratic contrarians, contemp- tuous of tradition, authority and the thoughts of others. But that isn’t so. By “thinking” Kant means the use of understanding or reason subject to the basic standard of universal validity. To think for oneself, by Kant’s lights, means to think from the standpoint of all others. Kant argues that the only way for individuals to become enlightened is to communicate freely with one another, so that each acquires the ability and confidence to think by using the thoughts of others as both an incitement and an (always fallible) external criterion for correct thinking.
"We do, and should, raise questions about realities transcending the sensible world, but must resign ourselves to our incapacity to answer them."
My hesitation to apply Kant or any other Philosopher's thinking to the UFO problem lies in the face of philosophy's insistence, when all else is noted, as above, that thinking comes down to human morals and ethics, which the essay linked ends up hashing for its final, protracted paragraphs.
Bryan Sentes knows his Kant, and a lot of other things, but I'm insisting that the UFO phenomenon is not subject to discourse about ethics/morality or anything else with a human overlay.
That UFOers, me included, keep trying to ram psychology, philo- sophy, sociology, and other people-oriented disciplines into the phenomenon which has caused it to remain beclouded and diffuse, unexplained.
Kant may be a wonderful prescription for the human condition, which is in dire trouble right now (for a number of reasons), but the UFO phenomenon has nothing to do with any of that, nothing.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Saturday, June 13, 2020
11 Comments:
Your post's opening gambit shows you're being an idiosyncratic contrarian.
As I would think you understand by now, I hardly ever pose what you understand as "the UFO problem" and when I do I do so only tangentially: I've never made a secret that my concern over at Skunkworks has been _the meaning_ of the UFO mythology, not a solution to its mystery (which mystery a recent post explicitly addresses).
How you infer that for Kant or philosophy "thinking comes down to *human morals and ethics*" is beyond me....
To claim the humanities and social sciences becloud the phenomenon and leave it unexplained is patently false: these disciplines illuminate and unfold (ex-plane) its meaningfulness (as Jung was the first to do), as I've made clear on at least three occasions at Skunkworks; these approaches just don't illuminate and explain what _you_ want them to, which they can't and most importantly _have never claimed to try to do_: for that you need a natural or physical science, which would approach the problem in terms of (one side of its) reality.
To lay it out all too roughly, it's the difference between the interpretation of dreams and the research into the neurology of the dreaming brain.
You, however, or so it seems to me, are casting about for a third way of late.
Which is all to say there is no problem between what you're up to here and the work that goes in my Skunkworks.
By
Bryan Sentes, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
Read the last half of the essay. It goes heavily into the ethical/moral swamp that Kant and philosophers get stuck in.
As for UFOs, no current area of study, including Jung's tangential swing, makes sense as an approach to the phenomenon.
You think the human elements, reactions, reports, beliefs, etc. matter. They don't.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
Can't read the last half of the essay you kindly link, as I am not a TLS subscriber and I have already consumed my allotted free reads for the month. How you infer from anything the article might say that for Kant or philosophy "thinking comes down to *human morals and ethics*" remains beyond me (and since any disputing the question is strictly beyond the purview of your post, I leave it at that).
Why you insist on perversely restricting "approach[es] to the phenomenon" mystifies me: see my last example concerning dreams.
You'll remember we've been here before. I post a chain of links at Skunkworks that answer what you raise here, again.
http://skunkworksblog.com/2020/06/13/what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-wait-weve-been-here-before/
By
Bryan Sentes, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
Bryan:
I know you need to fill the UFO void with the encumbrances of academic googaw, but the phenomenon needs a breath of clear air.
I have no agenda for how one might approach a solution to the enigma.
I just know that the parcels of material I've input, you've input, John Keel slathered the phenomenon with as has everyone else, hasn't taken us further into the mystery.
Your insistence upon doping UFOs with the clutter of philosophy just irritates, that's all it does.
You're having fun messing around with the vicissitudes of Kantian thought and that's fine or cute, but it gets us nowhere is all I'm saying.
I'll provide a comment or two, upcoming, from a savant who makes the point much better than I ever could.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
I beg to differ.
You have a dogmatic assumption about what an answer might be, let alone what question we all should be asking, an attitude I find incomprehensible, to put it politely.
RE "the mystery": I just wrote about the essentially mysterious character of the phenomenon.
As I write in multiple places, who grasps after the elusive reality of the phenomenon comes up empty handed; who surrenders that quest, their cup runneth over (or their bookshelves and insight into the present moment of human being, anyway).
But, I mean, concern yourself with your concerns.
Whatever irritation the physicist feels for the philosopher of science hardly invalidates the latter's efforts. You might as well castigate Thomas Kuhn for having failed to discover the God Particle...
By
Bryan Sentes, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
You insist upon an academic debate.
I'm trying to avoid that.
The matter is quite simply that we UFOers should shun the surrounding materials cluttering the phenomenon.
That is, while UFOs as a mythology or a paranormal artifact is interesting, those things have nothing to do with the essence of the things as I see it.
You, and others, keep entrusting the topic with asides that have nothing to do with UFOs, per se.
You make the matter complicated because you like the academic veneer.
You are wasting everyone's time with your asides, as erudite as they may be. That's my point. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you offer is interesting but beside the point.
Accept that and you are on the way to ufological health, something as rare as a golden egg.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
Not insisting on an academic debate, at all!
"The matter" of the UFO in general is a theme with vista, one that transcends "the essence of the things as [you] see it."
Your insistence on what you term "the UFO per se" is narrow and dogmatic, if you insist that that is _all_ there is to the matter and every other inquiry or observation no matter how well articulated or methodologically grounded is clutter, veneer, or, worse, a waste of time and beside the point.
What is a waste of time are your pointless admonitions that never seem to grasp 1. the difference between your approach and mine, and 2. the lack of contradiction between the two: I've give you two examples (dream interpretation and the philosophy of science), neither of which, as usual, have you deigned to acknowledge let alone answer.
By
Bryan Sentes, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
You would drag me into discussions of unresolved things..
A flying saucer (UFO) is all I'm interested in. Not the overlay you wish to parlay the phenomenon with.
Dream interpretation or the philosophy of science keeps us muck and mired in academic issues that bury the mystery.
UFOs are a tangible something. Even applying Freud's thinking on the uncanny -- which fascinates me -- can't lure me away from the thing in itself.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
The irony here is that I am not trying to drag you into anything. Just because I have my concerns doesn't mean I _demand_ you share them. On the other hand, it is you who admonish me for my concerns, as if, because they are not yours, I should not have them.
And just what _are_ you on about when you write that "Dream interpretation or the philosophy of science keeps us muck and mired in academic issues that bury the mystery"? You're not even trying to understand what I bother to write.
Dream interpretation is to brain science as philosophy of science is to science as (my) "cultural" ufology is to (your) "scientific" ufology: in no case does the latter cancel the former, _because they're all doing different but complementary things_.
By
Bryan Sentes, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
But they have nothing to do with a UFO.
It's that simple. They represent a method.
Each a method that has not worked in illuminating what a UFO is.
You are locked into the simplicity of the past as if you were a UFO newbie which I know you are not.
So maybe you've just gone crazy. (I kid)
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Saturday, June 13, 2020
I asked, a while back, for responses that come from a knowledge in the topic under consideration, but some still provide stupidities.
For instance, Parakletos, a guy who started out at Indiana University but dropped out after a skirt of a few classes sent this:
The only pre-req for philosophy is Logic.
Logic is a method of thought and one clarification, from the internet, is this:
The definition of logic is a science that studies the principles of correct reasoning.
How is one supposed to deal with such ignorance, which Parakletos offers up time and time again. He thinks he's smart and trolls the internet dispensing ignorance as if it were gold coins for those subjected to his input.
I have reams of comments from him, sitting in my Blogger Spam slot but he keeps coming back, knowing his blather is not going to replace my own, here.
Fortunately, I get comments from others, like Bryan Sentes, who reflects on my own ignorance with erudition and scholarly intent; Bryan knows his stuff. Parakletos is a bane of intelligence and subjects members of the internet to dopey information and simplistic nonsense like his comment about philosophy/logic.
I'm begging you -- please don't waste my time inserting ignorant commentary. Ignore is a prelude to ignorant and I use it to sidestep responses that come my way from the lowest level of humankind, of which Parkletos is a prime example.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, June 14, 2020
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