Such topics as reasoning skills, commonly held perspectives and accurately differentiating between fact and supposition were explored in my Examiner post, Applying critical thinking to ufology. An excerpt:
Maybe you consider yourself what has come to be known as an alien abductee, or maybe one night you awoke to find some kind of entity in the room. Maybe you just stepped out for a smoke one time and if you had not happened to glance right where you did at precisely the moment you looked, you would be reading something entirely different right now. One way or the other, there are plenty of people who say something paranormal is going on, and they have been saying so for a long time now.Read more...
A relevant question becomes whether or not competent reasoning can ever be applied to the often incredible dogma of the UFO community. Is ufology ready to apply critical thinking?
It's a rare day when I find a reason to go venturing in the direction of The Examiner. Guys like Peckman and Webre have associated the site, for me, with the lunatic fringe. Crackpot claims and writers lending great weight to anonymous MUFON reports have been my experience.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I hope you find some success over there and I'll certainly come by and increase your page views. The Examiner could do with someone taking the critical approach and hopefully there's an audience for that style. Good luck.
Thanks, K-man! I appreciate both your support and encouragement.
ReplyDeleteAn audience for the critical approach? We shall see, my friend, we shall see!
Jack;
ReplyDeleteTo begin thinking critically about the "UFO" myth and collective delusion, an acolyte must first admit that the rules of evidence and reason apply to the subject just as they do everywhere, and that the so-called paranormalists' well known MO of ignoring the obvious facts of the world, appealing to the negative and special pleading are worthless.
The very idea "UFO" is irrational since the failure to identify an ambiguous visual stimulus, a negative, cannot be the basis on which to posit the existence of an extraordinary unknown. It simply does not follow. But the whole of the myth and delusion, as well as the pseudoscience of ufoolery is based on this fundamentally fallacious reasoning known as "Petitio principii"--assuming the answer--in which predisposed belief in the ideas of "UFOs" and of "UFO" reporting precedes and so generates a "UFO" story from an otherwise mundane event. Believing is seeing.
In 1896, when readers of a Sacramento newspaper hoax were conditioned to expect the arrival of the first "airship," they later reported seeing its lights, hearing its motor and the voices of its crew. "Airship" mania spread to every state that ran such hoaxes. But there were no "airships," just as there never were any "flying saucers" or nebulous "UFOs" of any kind. It was all just sensationalist newspaper and magazine filler and nothing more.
As with the Null and Psychosocial hypotheses of "UFO" reports and Scientific skepticism, real-world critical thinking exists above and beyond the irrational beliefs of victims of the "UFO" myth and collective delusion and the ufoolergy subculture of crackpots, liars and frauds trying to make a living out of promoting new-age and conspiracy-mongering "UFO" nonsense. The pseudoscience of ufoolery is history already; make belief in the irrational, antiscientific "UFO" delusion history as well.