science

i was typing this in the comment thread, but i decided to make a separate post out of it.

billy asks how i will address the so-called "typical critiques" of the ET hypothesis, which i accused him of raising as we drank and argued one night this summer. he notes that i pointed out the frequency with which these critiques (or "anti-alien-assumptions," as i'll call them) are invoked as being reason enough to dismiss their content. let me attempt to clarify what i mean:

it's the very fact that these arguments can be seen to constitute a body which can be identified as 'typical' in the first place that i want to flesh them out and see upon what they most strongly rely. remember how i kept saying that you were being an "ideological skeptic," as opposed to whatever else there is? (scientific skeptic? methodological-rational skeptic?) i want to try to present that set of assumptions and arguments which make up the 'standard' perspective (of the doubter) as clearly and comprehensively as i can...my idea is that this side considers itself to be the rational/scientific approach, and that it does so based mainly on an understanding of contemporary science, especially the fields of astronomy and physics, as an authority or a witness to the effect that the ET hypothesis must be false. basically, the argument is that our current state of scientific knowledge rests on principles that imply the impossibility of interstellar travel such as would have to have occurred for the UFO phenomenon to have even a grain of truth to it. you might say that this side operates based on the principle: if a = the statement 'UFO's are real,' and b = everything else we know, then for a to be true, b has to be false. the doubters generally begin their argument by asserting that b is not false.

the side of the believer has also become "canonized" at least to the extent that its arguments can be laid out in a way that, i think, most members of the believer-community would agree with. this side also sees itself as embodying the properly-scientific approach, mainly because it believes that taking account of the so-called evidence is the appropriate course of action in settling the question. in other words, the believer-community accuses the scientific disciplines of being unscientific because they cite themselves to support their claim that the evidence must already be unworthy of their serious attention (either it's fabricated, or it must be explainable according to what we know). the ET hypothesis simply cannot be entertained in the rational evaluative processes of those whose minds are made up that what would have to be up for revision, if a were true, cannot be up for revision.

this is to place the debate squarely within the realm of philosophy of science, and i think i'll spend a good amount of time there in my paper. however, entire epistemological frameworks are at work in this debate; this is where 'conspiracy theory,' popular culture, and disinformation come in. i'll focus on those elements in my next post, but the point is that, taken together with one's attitude towards the science questions above, the entire fabric of belief at work in either side of the ET/UFO debate most often takes an ideological form. as such, the "typical" perspectives of doubter as well as believer can withstand the theoretical contradictions contained within them...just the kinds of contradictions that reason and rationality are supposed to be able to weed out of our worldviews.

so we have theories about the world, and we may also have evidence that those theories are incomplete or wrong. to put the theory first is to do a scientific injustice to the evidence that may factually refute it; however, to put the evidence first and build a worldview around it is dangerous because of the number and variety of theories to which it can give rise. the idea of the "skeptic" is valuable here, as "one who, barring conclusive evidence, suspends judgment." most doubters are not true skeptics...neither are most believers.