A Troubling Observation About UFO Reality

[marduk]

Because this is an object that shows structure vs. your typical smudge, blur, streak of light, orb, etc. Therefore it cannot be anything else (a bird, plane, Venus, etc.)

By extension, would this logic apply to all anomalous structured object in the sky photos?

 

[Jeff Davis]

Not "funning around"; I've taken the ufo phenomena very seriously for 19 years and have read an extensive amount of the published ufo research available in English during these years. To reach "an effective evaluation of all the data" -- if one ever is reached -- will require a continuation of the collaborative efforts by many researchers already carried out in this country and a number of other countries. Yes, eyewitness testimony has played a significant role in what has been hypothesized about the material nature of many ufos, and in many cases has been backed up by radar and ground trace data and by unambiguous and anomalous physical effects generated by some ufos on military craft in pursuit of them and on numerous close encounter witnesses. I don't share your apparent doubt about most humans' perceptual abilities or capacities for remembering what they've seen in their sightings, encounters, or interactions, nor do I think most people would lie about such matters. I do see your point about "socially relevant influences" but, again, I don't think they are as influential as you do.

Constance, I do not doubt your your "seriousness" with respect to a real interest in UFO phenomena. I absolutely never stated that, nor have I indicated as much in the least, ever. However, you most certainly COULD have been funning around in that anything but clear post that you made, the same one I was referencing within what is the post that you are responding to. Was that sarcasm? The whole thing about feeling for CGL's family being in mortal danger, that was just plain odd. I mean it was clear he simply analogously meant a case for a "black or white" identity. Also, please do not lump me into some quickly and carelessly assessed category of skeptics that doubt the veracity of individual human perceptions, or their memories being relevant to matters UFO phenomenal. If you think this is not the case, please quote where I have made such a completely false and unintelligent generalization. Forgive me for stating as much, but it's also thoroughly uncalled for, even carelessly unethical, to even in the most generalized sense, lump me in with those who might cop to the lazy skeptical excuse that people might lying in such significant numbers with respect to the individual reporting of UFO phenomena, that it might taint the overall significance of individual reported testimony in general. I would have hardly spent well over twice the length of time, that you yourself have sincerely given the phenomena, if this were the case.

I know, with as much key interest that you obviously have placed in the phenomena, that you must familiar with the vast amount of research and subsequent summations performed and assessed by both Keel and Vallee. These are two of the most potential, and hard working minds to ever touch upon this phenomena. As one who does in fa ct possess such a degree of understanding, I'm sure you must clearly understand the immensely significant importance that the relevant qualities that I referenced do in fact determine and bear out with respect to matters of a UFO phenomenal nature. Why would you think it wise to dismiss as much. One does not require the weakness of doubt, whether in self, or others, to know and understand the subjectively malleable nature of the aforementioned characteristics of human determination, with respect to ANY consideration, let alone matters as definitely risque as those presently understood to consist of what is a solely phenomenal nature.

Instead of supporting the notion of collectively lumping the majority of individually forwarded data together, in an effort to best analyze and evaluate that informational composite, as has been done countless times before, why not shift the positional focus of investigations from what is the informationally secondary past tense, to the informationally primary source, by focusing not on the myriad of reports, but rather the individuals doing the reporting? Not in an effort to prove they are all seeing mirages, not in an effort to separate the big fish tales, from the really big fish tales, but rather to best discern UFO's phenomenal intersection with our temporal experiential reality.

The following is just a story/analogy called The Mystery Signal & The Ever Present Noise.

There were once two people, one younger, and one older. The one thing that these two people had in common was their absolute fascination with something called mystery signals.

They both knew that the mystery signal was very real, yet it was far from defined. What is it?, they thought. The noise is just as real as the signal, yet despite it's lack of a working definition, it is accessible all around each and everyone of us. How do we best objectively understand the exacting nature of this signal yet known to us? One day, the younger one had an idea. We need extremely sophisticated technologies that serve as testing devices to help us define, not the mystery signal, but rather that which is the mystery signal's only known constant companion. What!? That's not going to do us any good at all. We're not zeroing in on the mystery signal, we're chasing our tails instead of the signal!! , the older one snapped. However the younger of the two knew that he had to be patient. I must strongly contend, that there is in fact a very real method to my perceived madness. After all, unlike the highly alluring signal that we've been chasing forever, the noise is everywhere all around us, and it is constantly competing with that conundrum of a signal that we've been trying our best to understand for so long. However, in the younger person's mind he know that the fact remained that this noise must be understood as exactingly as is possible as it represents the unknown signal's only constant and accessible host. To do this, we must use our testing technology to allow us to first develop a true working understanding of the ever present noise, so that we can create a replicated sample image of it. Why in goodness' name would we need to do that, the older one spouted. I will answer you with a question, said the younger one: How else can we simulate, model, and map, the separation of this unknown and highly elusive signal, from what is the highly accessible ever present accompanying noise, unless we understand the noise's image in it's fullest and most exacting detail? This being in order for this exacting separation process to take place? What! yelled the cranky older one, the only thing any of this is going to accomplish is to get every possible interested person's head spinning so fast that we won't even be able to pay attention to the signal in the first place! Not so fast you old curmudgeon, let me break it down for you by allowing you to create a simple mapped simulation with me that illustrates the intersection of the signal with it's immediate companion the noise. The younger person began to patiently explain to the older one: Draw a small circle in the middle of a piece of paper. Now draw a much larger circle around the first little circle you drew. Color the little circle in blue, and label it "mystery signal". Now color in the bigger circle red, that's surrounding the little one, and label it "noise". Now because our testing technologies have served to definitively understand and create a working definition for what is the noise, we can use our knowledge to identify it's image, and thereby completely remove it from our simulation. What is left old timer? The older one drooled and little and then began to smile. Once completely isolated from the noise, the signal can be studied precisely for what it definitely is, in the only objective manner possible.

Within this analogy we are the testing technology, consciousness is the noise, and the UFO phenomena are the signal.

 

[Constance]

Creepy thinks it's a truck mirror.

Thank you for clarifying that Trajanus. I'd read only the last several pages of this thread (not a good practice) and did not actually understand what Creepy was arguing.

 

[technomage]

I don't see consciousness as noise. Consciousness is our means of perception and we can't step outside it to see the "signal" as it really is, because things as they "really are" without our perception of them is meaningless. We need to use our consciousness whether we like it or not and while the signal may exist independently of our consciousness (assuming it's not something we just make up), it's only when we perceive it that it is relevant.

 

[Constance]

Constance, I do not doubt your your "seriousness" with respect to a real interest in UFO phenomena. I absolutely never stated that, nor have I indicated as much in the least, ever. However, you most certainly COULD have been funning around in that anything but clear post that you made, the same one I was referencing within what is the post that you are responding to. Was that sarcasm? The whole thing about feeling for CGL's family being in mortal danger, that was just plain odd. I mean it was clear he simply analogously meant a case for a "black or white" identity.

My comment wasn't meant to be sarcastic, Jeff, but I can see how it might have come across that way. Apologies to anyone offended by it.

Also, please do not lump me into some quickly and carelessly assessed category of skeptics that doubt the veracity of individual human perceptions, or their memories being relevant to matters UFO phenomenal. If you think this is not the case, please quote where I have made such a completely false and unintelligent generalization. Forgive me for stating as much, but it's also thoroughly uncalled for, even carelessly unethical, to even in the most generalized sense, lump me in with those who might cop to the lazy skeptical excuse that people might lying in such significant numbers with respect to the individual reporting of UFO phenomena, that it might taint the overall significance of individual reported testimony in general. I would have hardly spent well over twice the length of time, that you yourself have sincerely given the phenomena, if this were the case.

Sorry if I seemed to 'lump' you into the category you describe in your first sentence. Your final paragraph in this post has clarified for me what your argument is. More about that below.

I know, with as much key interest that you obviously have placed in the phenomena, that you must familiar with the vast amount of research and subsequent summations performed and assessed by both Keel and Vallee. These are two of the most potential, and hard working minds to ever touch upon this phenomena. As one who does in fa ct possess such a degree of understanding, I'm sure you must clearly understand the immensely significant importance that the relevant qualities that I referenced do in fact determine and bear out with respect to matters of a UFO phenomenal nature. Why would you think it wise to dismiss as much. One does not require the weakness of doubt, whether in self, or others, to know and understand the subjectively malleable nature of the aforementioned characteristics of human determination, with respect to ANY consideration, let alone matters as definitely risque as those presently understood to consist of what is a solely phenomenal nature.

I don't 'dismiss' what Keel and Vallee have suggested about 'the paranormal' as a possible explanation for ufo phenomena and human experiences related to them, but I don't give it a great deal of weight since it attempts to explain one mystery with another mystery -- a far more broadly conceived mystery. I question the grouping of all 'para-normal' human experiences together as representing a single unified 'phenomenon' having a single 'source'. I especially question Vallee's suggestion that paranormal experiences reported by some ufo witnesses indicate that all ufo witnesses are being manipulated by a single purposeful agency engaged in distorting and/or manipulating human consciousness.

Instead of supporting the notion of collectively lumping the majority of individually forwarded data together, in an effort to best analyze and evaluate that informational composite, as has been done countless times before, why not shift the positional focus of investigations from what is the informationally secondary past tense, to the informationally primary source, by focusing not on the myriad of reports, but rather the individuals doing the reporting? Not in an effort to prove they are all seeing mirages, not in an effort to separate the big fish tales, from the really big fish tales, but rather to best discern UFO's phenomenal intersection with our temporal experiential reality.

I'm aware that a number of broadcasters and writers today argue for that shift in 'focus' you refer to in the language underscored above. From what I have seen and heard so far from those individuals and read here in the paracast forum it seems to me that their hypothesis is thesis-driven from the outset. That is, their goal is to dismiss 'objectively grounded' ufo data -- e.g., physical traces and effects, radar recordings, other electromagnetic measurements, and multiply witnessed demonstrations of some ufos' ability to disable mechanical controls in domestic military jets, including weapons-firing capabilities and operational and communication systems enabling these jets to function and land safely -- from consideration in favor of an attempt to understand the nature and source of 'subjective' data concerning the innumerable and various individuals who have sighted ufos and those who have encountered them at close range in the skies above earth (or in space, in some astronaut's experiences).

I find the general use of the terms 'phenomenon, phenomena' regarding ufo and other kinds/categories of 'paranormal' experiences to be unfortunately misleading. These terms have trickled down in modern usage from the field of phenomenological philosophy [currently grounding 'neurophenomenological' research now being pursued by phenomenologically informed neuroscientists and influencing the direction of interdisciplinary consciousness studies]. In phenomenological philosophy, developed over the last century, the term 'phenomenon' does not refer to an independently existing object in its objectivity or to a purely ‘subjective’ experience, but rather to the ineluctable interdependence and interrelation of subjectivity and objectivity in the experienced world. The term phenonemena refers to things as they appear to a conscious being, a subject who sees or otherwise senses phenomenal appearances by and through which we have access to the actual world in which we exist, through which we gain partial -- incomplete -- information about the nature of objective 'things' we encounter in our experience. As Kant first clarified, we are unable to know 'the thing in itself' (the ding an sich), but only its appearances to us. The ufo appearing over a farmer's field and producing reactions in both the farmer and his cattle (and often his dog) is evidently a 'thing', an object of some kind, but none of the witnesses to it are able to discern what it is 'in itself'. We can do more than cattle and dogs can in reflecting on that which we've seen and otherwise sensed in these encounters, but there is no doubt that whatever the ufo is, it is perceived --visually and also likely audially by species other than our own who have access to a broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum than we do -- and thereby dramatically affects various living and conscious species equipped by nature with different affordances enabling awareness and perception.

In phenomenology, 'phenomena' -- things as they appear to us -- thus involve both subjective and objective aspects of the world as experienced -- the 'lived world' in phenomenological terms. My own thinking being grounded in phenomenology, I thus find it questionable to suppose that ufo phenomena are all objectively 'unreal', not actual, but merely illusions or ideations injected directly into human minds by some unknown, undiscovered, intentional, and powerful source that sets out to confuse us about the nature of reality. How do we track down this source and verify its reality? So far, Keel and Vallee have merely offered the hypothesis that such a source exists, providing no evidence of it that can be used by science to test this hypothesis. But for some reason this idea of such an overwhelmingly capable source elsewhere that can control and manipulate our perceptions and our consciousness appeals to a great many people in our time. I think that idea needs to be challenged.

The following is just a story/analogy called The Mystery Signal & The Ever Present Noise.

There were once two people, one younger, and one older. The one thing that these two people had in common was their absolute fascination with something called mystery signals.

They both knew that the mystery signal was very real, yet it was far from defined. What is it?, they thought. The noise is just as real as the signal, yet despite it's lack of a working definition, it is accessible all around each and everyone of us. How do we best objectively understand the exacting nature of this signal yet known to us? One day, the younger one had an idea. We need extremely sophisticated technologies that serve as testing devices to help us define, not the mystery signal, but rather that which is the mystery signal's only known constant companion. What!? That's not going to do us any good at all. We're not zeroing in on the mystery signal, we're chasing our tails instead of the signal!! , the older one snapped. However the younger of the two knew that he had to be patient. I must strongly contend, that there is in fact a very real method to my perceived madness. After all, unlike the highly alluring signal that we've been chasing forever, the noise is everywhere all around us, and it is constantly competing with that conundrum of a signal that we've been trying our best to understand for so long. However, in the younger person's mind he know that the fact remained that this noise must be understood as exactingly as is possible as it represents the unknown signal's only constant and accessible host. To do this, we must use our testing technology to allow us to first develop a true working understanding of the ever present noise, so that we can create a replicated sample image of it. Why in goodness' name would we need to do that, the older one spouted. I will answer you with a question, said the younger one: How else can we simulate, model, and map, the separation of this unknown and highly elusive signal, from what is the highly accessible ever present accompanying noise, unless we understand the noise's image in it's fullest and most exacting detail? This being in order for this exacting separation process to take place? What! yelled the cranky older one, the only thing any of this is going to accomplish is to get every possible interested person's head spinning so fast that we won't even be able to pay attention to the signal in the first place! Not so fast you old curmudgeon, let me break it down for you by allowing you to create a simple mapped simulation with me that illustrates the intersection of the signal with it's immediate companion the noise. The younger person began to patiently explain to the older one: Draw a small circle in the middle of a piece of paper. Now draw a much larger circle around the first little circle you drew. Color the little circle in blue, and label it "mystery signal". Now color in the bigger circle red, that's surrounding the little one, and label it "noise". Now because our testing technologies have served to definitively understand and create a working definition for what is the noise, we can use our knowledge to identify it's image, and thereby completely remove it from our simulation. What is left old timer? The older one drooled and little and then began to smile. Once completely isolated from the noise, the signal can be studied precisely for what it definitely is, in the only objective manner possible.

Within this analogy we are the testing technology, consciousness is the noise, and the UFO phenomena are the signal.

I have to disagree. Consciousness [primordially ‘awareness’ and ‘affectivity*] enables perception, and perception is what links us to and enables us to comprehend the structure of the actual environing world in which we exist. Consciousness is not 'noise' that obscures signs and signals presented in our experienced world, but the means by which we are able to interpret those signs and signals to the extent possible given the sensual and mental affordances nature has provided to our species and others. Your last statement, highlighted in blue above, indicates that you are heavily influenced by the computer meme that dominates current popular culture, influencing reductive neuroscience [but increasingly challenged there] as well as popular discourse concerning ufos and "the paranormal." Implicit in this meme is the unfounded, ungrounded, belief that we can understand the nature of our own consciousness, as evolved and developed in contact with physical things in our natural environments, and even the nature of 'reality' as whole, based on our species' current computer processing technology. These unfounded beliefs have led to the notion that 'we' and other living beings exist only within a computational 'matrix' shaping a 'virtual reality' rather than in an experienced local and temporal reality produced by the natural, physical universe that has evolved over the last 16 billion years (according to current scientific theory). It is a small leap from belief in such an informational matrix -- which produces in us only an illusion of actual existence in a temporally changing/developing physical world -- to speculations nurtured by Vallee and Keel that we are being misled about the nature of reality by a "control system" that remains beyond the reach of what we can know, that indeed generates what we think we can know, and does so for some purpose of its own.

My question is: On what basis can we hope to obtain knowledge about and understanding of such a powerful and obscure 'entity' supposedly set on manipulating us and our thinking from behind a screen of invisibility? You suggest that we can do so through our own applications of "technology" [computer technology?] as we've developed it to date and rejecting our own perceptions and consciousness as irrelevant ‘noise’, and then somehow becoming able to discern the nature of the very signal by which we are -- presumably intentionally -- perplexed and manipulated. I'm sorry, but this 'idea' makes no epistemic, ontic, or ontological sense to me.


*The bracketed reference above to consciousness as primordially germinated in physical ‘awareness’ and ‘affectivity' refers to the body of work in biology and affective neuroscience produced by Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues in those disciplines, readily linked on the internet.

 

[Jeff Davis]

I don't see consciousness as noise. Consciousness is our means of perception and we can't step outside it to see the "signal" as it really is, because things as they "really are" without our perception of them is meaningless. We need to use our consciousness whether we like it or not and while the signal may exist independently of our consciousness (assuming it's not something we just make up), it's only when we perceive it that it is relevant.

Hey technomage, no you're right and I apologize if my rambling made it seem that way. Consciousness is most definitely not noise nor was it my aim to liken it to noise. It's an analogy using the old signal to noise ratio context. IMO, consciousness is the fundamental means by and within which we experience reality. UFO phenomena intersect our experiential realities and are given meaning by and of our native cognitive relationship to/with consciousness. If we study and become greatly familiar with specifically what is consciousness, we can best determine what is phenomenal information as it intersects our experiences. It's just my personal opinion that dedicating studies to descriptions of UFO relevant experience is not as significantly potential with respect to an accurate understanding of the phenomena as would be a far greater causal understanding of the fundamental experiential building blocks that our experiences within consciousness consist of.

 

[Constance]

Hey technomage, no you're right and I apologize if my rambling made it seem that way. Consciousness is most definitely not noise nor was it my aim to liken it to noise. It's an analogy using the old signal to noise ratio context. IMO, consciousness is the fundamental means by and within which we experience reality. UFO phenomena intersect our experiential realities and are given meaning by and of our native cognitive relationship to/with consciousness. If we study and become greatly familiar with specifically what is consciousness, we can best determine what is phenomenal information as it intersects our experiences. It's just my personal opinion that dedicating studies to descriptions of UFO relevant experience is not as significantly potential with respect to an accurate understanding of the phenomena as would be a far greater causal understanding of the fundamental experiential building blocks that our experiences within consciousness consist of.

@technomage is correct, and I see that you recognize and agree with his succinct statement concerning phenomenal consciousness that I took more space to express. Be aware though that the explicit goal of most of informational-computational neuroscience is to replace phenomenal consciousness and mind as understood to provide experiential access to the actual environing world we exist in with a theory of controlling algorithms resident in the brain that produce an illusion that we actually perceive and experience the world around us. @Soupie yesterday provided extracts from and a link to a paper [by an author named Moutssousis] in the UFO Stimulus thread that will interest you in this regard. Since then he has also posted a clarification of the Hoffman thesis that I believe you have also cited, perhaps in this thread.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

I gather from your last post that you think the Trent photos captured a material ufo and you cite Maccabee as agreeing. From the last writing of his about Trent that I read, that was my impression as well. I personally also think the Trent photos captured a material 'flying saucer', and I've seen one or two photos from elsewhere that are very similar to the Trent object.

Actually, no. I believe Trent hoaxed the photo's with a truck mirror. The part about Maccabee I as referring to is when he says that it can only be one of two things - but he thinks it's a flying saucer.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

By extension, would this logic apply to all anomalous structured object in the sky photos?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

 

[marduk]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

All structured craft UFO photos are either hoaxes or flying saucers?

 

[Creepy Green Light]

All structured craft UFO photos are either hoaxes or flying saucers?

Yes.

 

[Randall]

All structured craft UFO photos are either hoaxes or flying saucers?

Yes.

What about misperceptions?

 

[Trajanus]

I thus find it questionable to suppose that ufo phenomena are all objectively 'unreal', not actual, but merely illusions or ideations injected directly into human minds by some unknown, undiscovered, intentional, and powerful source that sets out to confuse us about the nature of reality.

Indeed that's absurd. Now I do believe the phenomenon (ET) seeks to misinform and confuse us. But's clearly not "just in our heads" as landing traces, injuries etc demonstrate.

How do we track down this source and verify its reality? So far, Keel and Vallee have merely offered the hypothesis that such a source exists, providing no evidence of it that can be used by science to test this hypothesis. But for some reason this idea of such an overwhelmingly capable source elsewhere that can control and manipulate our perceptions and our consciousness appeals to a great many people in our time. I think that idea needs to be challenged.

Or rejected. In light of our own advancing technology, it's surely more parsimonious to attribute the stranger encounters or aspects to ET technology rather than some mysterious, unseen force. Especially since, for all its secretiveness and trickery the phenomenon basically gives the impression of advanced ETs.

the natural, physical universe that has evolved over the last 16 billion years (according to current scientific theory).

Well, last I heard, it's 13.7 billion years old.

 

[Jeff Davis]

My comment wasn't meant to be sarcastic, Jeff, but I can see how it might have come across that way. Apologies to anyone offended by it.



Sorry if I seemed to 'lump' you into the category you describe in your first sentence. Your final paragraph in this post has clarified for me what your argument is. More about that below.



I don't 'dismiss' what Keel and Vallee have suggested about 'the paranormal' as a possible explanation for ufo phenomena and human experiences related to them, but I don't give it a great deal of weight since it attempts to explain one mystery with another mystery -- a far more broadly conceived mystery. I question the grouping of all 'para-normal' human experiences together as representing a single unified 'phenomenon' having a single 'source'. I especially question Vallee's suggestion that paranormal experiences reported by some ufo witnesses indicate that all ufo witnesses are being manipulated by a single purposeful agency engaged in distorting and/or manipulating human consciousness.



I'm aware that a number of broadcasters and writers today argue for that shift in 'focus' you refer to in the language underscored above. From what I have seen and heard so far from those individuals and read here in the paracast forum it seems to me that their hypothesis is thesis-driven from the outset. That is, their goal is to dismiss 'objectively grounded' ufo data -- e.g., physical traces and effects, radar recordings, other electromagnetic measurements, and multiply witnessed demonstrations of some ufos' ability to disable mechanical controls in domestic military jets, including weapons-firing capabilities and operational and communication systems enabling these jets to function and land safely -- from consideration in favor of an attempt to understand the nature and source of 'subjective' data concerning the innumerable and various individuals who have sighted ufos and those who have encountered them at close range in the skies above earth (or in space, in some astronaut's experiences).

I find the general use of the terms 'phenomenon, phenomena' regarding ufo and other kinds/categories of 'paranormal' experiences to be unfortunately misleading. These terms have trickled down in modern usage from the field of phenomenological philosophy [currently grounding 'neurophenomenological' research now being pursued by phenomenologically informed neuroscientists and influencing the direction of interdisciplinary consciousness studies]. In phenomenological philosophy, developed over the last century, the term 'phenomenon' does not refer to an independently existing object in its objectivity or to a purely ‘subjective’ experience, but rather to the ineluctable interdependence and interrelation of subjectivity and objectivity in the experienced world. The term phenonemena refers to things as they appear to a conscious being, a subject who sees or otherwise senses phenomenal appearances by and through which we have access to the actual world in which we exist, through which we gain partial -- incomplete -- information about the nature of objective 'things' we encounter in our experience. As Kant first clarified, we are unable to know 'the thing in itself' (the ding an sich), but only its appearances to us. The ufo appearing over a farmer's field and producing reactions in both the farmer and his cattle (and often his dog) is evidently a 'thing', an object of some kind, but none of the witnesses to it are able to discern what it is 'in itself'. We can do more than cattle and dogs can in reflecting on that which we've seen and otherwise sensed in these encounters, but there is no doubt that whatever the ufo is, it is perceived --visually and also likely audially by species other than our own who have access to a broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum than we do -- and thereby dramatically affects various living and conscious species equipped by nature with different affordances enabling awareness and perception.

In phenomenology, 'phenomena' -- things as they appear to us -- thus involve both subjective and objective aspects of the world as experienced -- the 'lived world' in phenomenological terms. My own thinking being grounded in phenomenology, I thus find it questionable to suppose that ufo phenomena are all objectively 'unreal', not actual, but merely illusions or ideations injected directly into human minds by some unknown, undiscovered, intentional, and powerful source that sets out to confuse us about the nature of reality. How do we track down this source and verify its reality? So far, Keel and Vallee have merely offered the hypothesis that such a source exists, providing no evidence of it that can be used by science to test this hypothesis. But for some reason this idea of such an overwhelmingly capable source elsewhere that can control and manipulate our perceptions and our consciousness appeals to a great many people in our time. I think that idea needs to be challenged.



I have to disagree. Consciousness [primordially ‘awareness’ and ‘affectivity*] enables perception, and perception is what links us to and enables us to comprehend the structure of the actual environing world in which we exist. Consciousness is not 'noise' that obscures signs and signals presented in our experienced world, but the means by which we are able to interpret those signs and signals to the extent possible given the sensual and mental affordances nature has provided to our species and others. Your last statement, highlighted in blue above, indicates that you are heavily influenced by the computer meme that dominates current popular culture, influencing reductive neuroscience [but increasingly challenged there] as well as popular discourse concerning ufos and "the paranormal." Implicit in this meme is the unfounded, ungrounded, belief that we can understand the nature of our own consciousness, as evolved and developed in contact with physical things in our natural environments, and even the nature of 'reality' as whole, based on our species' current computer processing technology. These unfounded beliefs have led to the notion that 'we' and other living beings exist only within a computational 'matrix' shaping a 'virtual reality' rather than in an experienced local and temporal reality produced by the natural, physical universe that has evolved over the last 16 billion years (according to current scientific theory). It is a small leap from belief in such an informational matrix -- which produces in us only an illusion of actual existence in a temporally changing/developing physical world -- to speculations nurtured by Vallee and Keel that we are being misled about the nature of reality by a "control system" that remains beyond the reach of what we can know, that indeed generates what we think we can know, and does so for some purpose of its own.

My question is: On what basis can we hope to obtain knowledge about and understanding of such a powerful and obscure 'entity' supposedly set on manipulating us and our thinking from behind a screen of invisibility? You suggest that we can do so through our own applications of "technology" [computer technology?] as we've developed it to date and rejecting our own perceptions and consciousness as irrelevant ‘noise’, and then somehow becoming able to discern the nature of the very signal by which we are -- presumably intentionally -- perplexed and manipulated. I'm sorry, but this 'idea' makes no epistemic, ontic, or ontological sense to me.


*The bracketed reference above to consciousness as primordially germinated in physical ‘awareness’ and ‘affectivity' refers to the body of work in biology and affective neuroscience produced by Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues in those disciplines, readily linked on the internet.

Constance,
I am just not comfortable with possibly offending you. You are so far off with respect to where I am coming from that I don't think I can respond in detail without seeming to be condescending. I don't wish to "go there". I never stated that consciousness was like noise, Keel and Vallee cannot be summed up so ridiculously quick and dismissively, I never stated that UFOs were unreal due to a lack of our understanding of consciousness. I also do not seek to discount ANY evidence associated with UFOs. I could go on and on.

I will say that I have noticed that a good deal of heavily book learned people are like the many musicians that I have played with throughout the years that solely classically trained. Most often their imaginations and their ability to spontaneously improvise are greatly lacking. I think it may come down to whether a person has a right or left half predisposition or leaning. I realize that neural brain maps have rendered the hemispheric brain thing obsolete, but with respect to the logical vs the abstract predisposition, I think you get the point.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

What about misperceptions?

For example?

 

[technomage]

A mirage?

 

[Creepy Green Light]

A mirage?

I'd have to see an image of it. If it's something on the order of B. Meier's "Beamships" or Walters spaceship, no.

 

[Constance]

Constance,
I am just not comfortable with possibly offending you. You are so far off with respect to where I am coming from that I don't think I can respond in detail without seeming to be condescending. I don't wish to "go there". I never stated that consciousness was like noise, Keel and Vallee cannot be summed up so ridiculously quick and dismissively, I never stated that UFOs were unreal due to a lack of our understanding of consciousness. I also do not seek to discount ANY evidence associated with UFOs. I could go on and on.

I will say that I have noticed that a good deal of heavily book learned people are like the many musicians that I have played with throughout the years that solely classically trained. Most often their imaginations and their ability to spontaneously improvise are greatly lacking. I think it may come down to whether a person has a right or left half predisposition or leaning. I realize that neural brain maps have rendered the hemispheric brain thing obsolete, but with respect to the logical vs the abstract predisposition, I think you get the point.

Perhaps we can't communicate with one another. Ah well, let it be.

 

[Randall]

For example?

See this: Case Studies In Pilot Misperceptions Of "UFOs"

 

[Trajanus]

A Different Perspective: The Trent Photographs Reexamined

Constance, did you see the comments in this blog from a few years back? You may better relate to some of them than those of Jeff Davis. Quite a sophisticated discussion. Rudiak is brilliant.