A Burning Conversation
Well, not yet. But if there's one thread I'm hoping will prompt a real chat, it's in the comments to the last post re: space aliens and the "paramanormal." It will be paranormal if you do not attend. I don't care if you haven't seen "The X-Files" in 10 years -- you have something to say, trust me.
posted by Lapp at 12:26 AM
5 Comments:
"paramanormal?"
For conversation's sake, I believe that the Phoenix UFO was just something eerie and would like to believe that it was intelligent aliens with spaceships scanning southern Arizona for signs of intelligent life among the sprawl...but I have to say that I personally don't have enough data to justify this belief to anyone. That doesn't mean that I can't believe it regardless,. I'm with you, Lapp, I'm more skeptical about the overly skeptical (!) who come up with wet blanket explanations that are just as much or more a matter of belief than the supposed "weirdos" who jump to the conclusion that it means that the objects are aliens. For instance, I remember a documentary on the "Phoenix flying V" who "conclusively proved" that the lights were anti IR seeker flares dropped from a military plane that was in the area. He took the most popular example of footage of the object(s) going over a mountain in Phoenix and added his own overlay of a pattern of flares that disappeared exactly as the lights did. But, the true skeptic would disregard this skeptical explanation because witnesses verify that the object behaved not at all like a series of flares--the object(s) travel over roads without losing altitude. As a journalist you must also agree that the testimony of witnesses can be tantamount to fact when the ring of truth is present in their words and their statements are widely corroborated--as in the case of the '97 Phoenix UFO. I'm very disappointed that I didn't see the UFO, I was probably inside watching TV >:(!
I forgot to mention--Hume, Locke, Leibniz and Swanson agree--knowledge is a high degree of belief, and must be treated as belief, just with more "force and vivacity" as Hume put it. You may feel that the term "belief" is problematic because it implies something fanciful, but I don't think that it really does, as knowledge is a belief, just with a sufficient degree of certainty.
Yeah. I make up words when real ones won't do. Frankly, it's how I keep my relationship together.
cool.
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