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Rich Dolan and his woo-woo

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jimbo83478

Paranormal Tyro
I would just like to play devil's advocate for a minute here and throw out some questions since everyone seems to be so heavily critical of Rich Dolan exploring something unscientific...

I certainly don't think channeling is one thing or another - frankly, I know hardly anything about it - but just because a few mindless dolts may have made a bad name for what we refer to as channeling doesn't mean it's an indication of intellectual misdirection. - What if there is something to it and we in the west are simply too left-brained to grasp it, therefor we look like dumb-asses when we experiment with it?

I agree that in the west we have established a process of determining objective truth via empirical evidence, but how can we be so sure that objective truth is any more real than subjective truth? What the hell does real mean? How do we know that life and the universe isn't there for the taking; that it isn't what we make of it? What if it is what it is and, at the same time, it is what we make of it?

Frankly, I don't think we know shit and so it just seems so futile to start choosing sides over this stuff. Given all we have learned in the last few centuries, why should we be so overconfident we now have all the answers when it comes to this stuff?

How we can denigrate Rich Dolan for delving into something unscientific like channeling when we don't even know the value of channeling? Are we not making a very bold assumption that unscientific adventures like channeling are complete wastes of time? Who knows this for sure?
 
What are you talking about? Yeah Dolan positively reviewed a book that on the surface seems to be fucking ridiculous. And some people have expressed concerns about that.

Whats the problem?

edit: hey sorry man, I was in a fucked up mood earlier. Disregard my asshole tone above. Wasnt necessary.
 
jimbo83478 said:
I would just like to play devil's advocate for a minute here and throw out some questions since everyone seems to be so heavily critical of Rich Dolan exploring something unscientific...

How we can denigrate Rich Dolan for delving into something unscientific like channeling when we don't even know the value of channeling? Are we not making a very bold assumption that unscientific adventures like channeling are complete wastes of time? Who knows this for sure?
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Well, far be it for me to have the final word on ANYTHING, however bouncing around in this field for as long as I have ... my impression about channeling is simply this ... buy cable or satellite instead ... its cheaper.

Decker
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Decker said:
Well, far be it for me to have the final word on ANYTHING, however bouncing around in this field for as long as I have ... my impression about channeling is simply this ... buy cable or satellite instead ... its cheaper.

Decker
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I appreciate your insight, as you are older than I, but what do you make of Philip Imbrogno's account of Dean Fagestrom?
 
Well, channeling has been recorded throughout history including within many of the ancient texts. Also, there is some similar stories relayed by guys like Crowley who were in contact with something in experiences very similar to channeling and even think back to David's own account of some form of contact with his grandmother with the Butthole Surfer's album. Not only this, but you hear stories about remote viewing and contact of some sort happening there, research via the Munroe Institute (eek) and other scientific studies regarding pre-death experiences and psychic studies of the more scientific nature that would lead one to believe that once you get past all the charlatans and con artists, there may be something actually going on here. I just start to wonder if this is the case, how would one know whoever you are contacting is really who you think you are contacting. Perhaps it's even a portion of yourself. I think there MAY be something there though in some form or another so I am not prepared to throw it all out yet remain skeptical.
 
jimbo83478 said:
I agree that in the west we have established a process of determining objective truth via empirical evidence, but how can we be so sure that objective truth is any more real than subjective truth? What the hell does real mean? How do we know that life and the universe isn't there for the taking; that it isn't what we make of it? What if it is what it is and, at the same time, it is what we make of it?
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Even Dolan would disagree with all of this crap. I've heard him say numerous times during interviews that he doesn't believe in this kind of relativism.

I recommend that you go back to your Plato; I haven't the patience to engage this kind of garbage anymore.
 
We discussed Dolan in a thread a few months back in detail. (I'll edit and add if I can find it.) My take on this is that for some time Dolan was thought of as impeccable by many people who read his book because it looked like it was so much more meticulously researched than a lot of the stuff out there. It looks academic. It actually has footnotes which you can follow. I would venture to say that majority opinion is still that his work is the best out there. We all eagerly await volume two.

However, as with anythng we put on a pedestal, cracks eventually appeared at the base. That's hardly Dolan's fault; it's ours. Just last week we had credible testimony from people who were on the scene at the time (as Dolan was not) that his account of the demise of NICAP was probably wrong. Decker chimed in that we need grains of salt when reading Dolan's 'research.' I don't think people are dissing Dolan's accepance of 'channeling' as much as they are his recommendation of a work that does not otherwise appear to be credible. It's a minor point. Sometimes people get themselves into an obligation to write a foreword. It's difficult to refuse. Look at Thurmond and Corso. He also seems to associate himself with people in the field who are troublesome. We explain that away because he needs to promote his book.

For myself, these incidents have caused me to take a step backwards and reassess my own critical thinking. We've kind of given Dolan a free ride here. I now accuse myself of fawning over Dolan when I ought to have been more circumspect. That doesn't mean I don't respect Dolan and his work, or that I am any less eager for his next volume. It just means has a point of view I need to recognize when I read his work.
 
Schuyler said:
For myself, these incidents have caused me to take a step backwards and reassess my own critical thinking. We've kind of given Dolan a free ride here. I now accuse myself of fawning over Dolan when I ought to have been more circumspect. That doesn't mean I don't respect Dolan and his work, or that I am any less eager for his next volume. It just means I need to recognize that he has a point of view I need to recognize when I read his work.
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I can't argue with this. In another thread, though, people we're saying stuff to the effect of "Dolan's gone off the deep end; he's totally lost it!", which I think is pretty unfair. Dolan isn't somehow bound by some code that says, because he's released a nonfiction UFO-related book, he's barred from holding any stock in something that hasn't been backed up with hard evidence that everyone can see.

Plenty of historians have, say a deeply held belief in the Christian "God". Does the "woowoo" nature of this belief undermine their knowledge as historians? Of course not, to say that would be insulting. It's just another side to their person.
 
The problem with Richard Dolan

As pointed out by The Clueless One, in the interview last night, Richard Dolan is a really nice guy that asks you to trust him. That is getting more and more difficult. He has great respect for the Project Camelot couple who have the same solipsistic philosophy as David Icke. He tells us that a person getting messages from a ouija board is honest. He tells the gullible, wanting to know what is going on with UFOs, that people like Robert Dean and Paola Harris are worth listening to. For an historian who's charismatic delivery could easily be lecturing at Universities around the world, he continues to promote the should-be-defunct charlatans in the exopolitics circuit. Listening to his interview last night, was really sad, as he has done some of the best lectures, and his book 'UFOs and the national security state' is a great read, but the rigor in his research is very questionable now. His anonymous sources, that are understandable in the field, is tolerated by the student because of the trust one develops for the author's veracity. Dolan's veracity is sadly in serious question...
I would really like him to do an interview soley on some of the heinous crimes he has uncovered about the U.S. government. For me, he was the person that outed the relationship between the Bush's and the Hinckleys prior to that "troubled, lone gunman", John Hinckley Jr. shooting Ronald Reagan. And his investigation of 9/11 is excellent. It is easier to check his research on those things.
 
I pretty much disagree with everything you said. Did you even listen to the interview you cited at the start of your post?

While I disagree with Rich's view that you shouldnt 'throw out' a researcher based on only one case, I do respect his right to have a certain attitude and show respect to other people. Looking at the Harris situation - I think that because she seems to think that such an obviously bunk case is "the real deal" then I am more than comfortable ignoring her entirely in the future.

Rich on the other hand is willing to see what else she has to offer. Fine, whatever. I would hardly call that "promoting her" (or other charlatans) like you mentioned.

And Bob Dean is certainly not someone who is considered not worth listening to. He has made some out there claims lately but from what I can gather his participation in the UFO thing is based on a pretty solid foundation (a military UFO encounter).

Clearly Rich isnt going to dismiss the entire Camelot roster (he actually mentioned that he has problems with many of their interviews). I feel like we were listening to two different interviews.

EDIT: The ouija board stuff I kinda agree with you. But again, all he really said was that he trusts the womans intelligence and that she is generally a credible person. Its not like he is taking her "channelled messages" and using that info in his books. From what I can tell he doesnt even discuss with her that stuff.
 
Well all we have for our theory of mind is Freud and Jung, then everything since has been focusing on the experimental and ultimately pharmacological manipulation of our mental process rather than what the mind is and what we are experiencing. I think that this has two sides: first, we may be having experiences of insight that we're detaching to say that they're from someone or something else; second, the UFO phenomenon causes excitement, and when we get excited we start fabulating: it's what we do so well. So we should expect that people will start having conversations with Zogon the Ninth as part of a process. The aborigines called it the dreamtime, and it's not embarrassing to them; but we have lost any context of talking about it because there's no structure or understanding of what's going on - the academic community has disappeared up its own fundament in the form of 'post-modernism' which virtually refuses to observe anything in case it would be being imperialist, while essentially it's clear that the human mind en masse is struggling to cope with all these massive changes, including to those sensitive to it, the notion that we're finally not alone in the universe after spending all these centuries making stuff up..
 
PaulC said:
Well all we have for our theory of mind is Freud and Jung, then everything since has been focusing on the experimental and ultimately pharmacological manipulation of our mental process rather than what the mind is and what we are experiencing. I think that this has two sides: first, we may be having experiences of insight that we're detaching to say that they're from someone or something else; second, the UFO phenomenon causes excitement, and when we get excited we start fabulating: it's what we do so well. So we should expect that people will start having conversations with Zogon the Ninth as part of a process. The aborigines called it the dreamtime, and it's not embarrassing to them; but we have lost any context of talking about it because there's no structure or understanding of what's going on - the academic community has disappeared up its own fundament in the form of 'post-modernism' which virtually refuses to observe anything in case it would be being imperialist, while essentially it's clear that the human mind en masse is struggling to cope with all these massive changes, including to those sensitive to it, the notion that we're finally not alone in the universe after spending all these centuries making stuff up..
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I've read this post 6 times and I don't get it.
"we may be having experiences of insight that we're detaching to say that they're from someone or something else"
Are you meaning by this, that people can't tell the difference between an objective experience and a subjective "insight'? Or are people deliberately not making a distinction between the two?
" the UFO phenomenon causes excitement, and when we get excited we start (con)fabulating"
Are you saying people purposely make up stories because the UFO phenomenon itself, not an experience, causes excitement leading to "dreamtime" or "conversations with Zogon the Ninth"?
Also, are you saying that post-modernism, having called into question the privileged place of structure, cancels out academic investigation into the UFO phenomenon, because such investigations today would be 'imperialistic'? That doesn't make sense at all to me. There is and has been a lot more out there than Freud and Jung for philosophy of mind, consciousness, Being, etc. Even you are espousing a "human mind en masse"(sic), which, in the context you use it, suggest some 'world consciousness'.
Any way to clear some of this up for me?
 
A summary of what this saying: there is no frame of reference yet in our culture for the situation we're in (the slow release by the authorities of the fact of life throughout the universe and of civilizations beyond our own; if this isn't happening then why are there so many files being released? the CIA, NSA, USAF, FBI and even other governments around the world just feel like it?). Knee-jerk ad hominem arguments will not explain this. People filter their experiences differently, so someone may attribute an actual impulse from their unconscious minds to an influence from the outside. The UFO phenomenon is an experience: how can it not be? The 'human mind en masse' is shorthand for the entire complexity of what's being experienced. Without a frame of reference there can be no understanding. This is a question of the laws of logic, and nothing to do with the ad populum fallacy of privilege promulgated by post-modernism. Post-modernism is a contradiction in terms and a modern form of the ever-present threat of sophism, the use of specious reasoning. If there is no point in 'privileging' structure, then there is no point in 'privileging' words at all: the ad absurdum on this isn't even explored by most of academia. The statements you read are advocating an attempt to understand all the complexities of what is being experienced, no matter how apparently ridiculous they are, and formulate a framework of explanation. If we didn't have frameworks of explanation, then we wouldn't have the computer programs we're using to write this. What are the contemporary theories of mind which offer an explanation of this situation? The situation isn't even acknowledged, yet is empirically obvious from the mass-conditioning of the media and the release of information. Which philosopher or psychologist has established a coherent framework to place all of this in context? If most of them are post-modernists, then they avoid context, and if they are schooled from a merely medical standpoint then they are basing their analyses on which products to use on the patients, not on what mental processes may be occurring, and there could well be many processes which our refusal to look at structure simply misses. To answer the whole of this thread: I wouldn't slag Dolan off because he's mentioned something about channelers, since the issue is more complex than we might think at first pass, as enjoyable as it sometimes is to engage in pantomime.
 
PaulC said:
A summary of what this saying: there is no frame of reference yet in our culture for the situation we're in (the slow release by the authorities of the fact of life throughout the universe and of civilizations beyond our own; if this isn't happening then why are there so many files being released? the CIA, NSA, USAF, FBI and even other governments around the world just feel like it?). Knee-jerk ad hominem arguments will not explain this. People filter their experiences differently, so someone may attribute an actual impulse from their unconscious minds to an influence from the outside. The UFO phenomenon is an experience: how can it not be? The 'human mind en masse' is shorthand for the entire complexity of what's being experienced. Without a frame of reference there can be no understanding. This is a question of the laws of logic, and nothing to do with the ad populum fallacy of privilege promulgated by post-modernism. Post-modernism is a contradiction in terms and a modern form of the ever-present threat of sophism, the use of specious reasoning. If there is no point in 'privileging' structure, then there is no point in 'privileging' words at all: the ad absurdum on this isn't even explored by most of academia. The statements you read are advocating an attempt to understand all the complexities of what is being experienced, no matter how apparently ridiculous they are, and formulate a framework of explanation. If we didn't have frameworks of explanation, then we wouldn't have the computer programs we're using to write this. What are the contemporary theories of mind which offer an explanation of this situation? The situation isn't even acknowledged, yet is empirically obvious from the mass-conditioning of the media and the release of information. Which philosopher or psychologist has established a coherent framework to place all of this in context? If most of them are post-modernists, then they avoid context, and if they are schooled from a merely medical standpoint then they are basing their analyses on which products to use on the patients, not on what mental processes may be occurring, and there could well be many processes which our refusal to look at structure simply misses. To answer the whole of this thread: I wouldn't slag Dolan off because he's mentioned something about channelers, since the issue is more complex than we might think at first pass, as enjoyable as it sometimes is to engage in pantomime.
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Post-modernism or better, post-structuralism is not a contradiction in terms. It calls into question the privileged place of structuralism. As in Jackson Pollack's refusal to paint like Thomas Hart Benton, who at the time, had popular approval. Schools of painting in America indulged in his style of painting terming it "uniquely American". Pollack splashed his own understanding of the process of painting on canvass that was unique to him and against the popular style he said bored him. And definately against any school able to be raised with his style being the foundation. When Derrida de-constructed the works of Husserl,
who's phenomenological method was popular in Europe at the time, he raised questions of logical consistency in that method, by drawing attention to the presuppositions that Husserl's work allows without question. Those presuppositions, when put into question, were the ground which the entire structure of the method was based. If the ground is shaky, the structure falls down. Foucault inquired into the historical ground upon which many structures had been raised and institutions erected, i.e., sexuality, madness, knowledge, etc. I agree that there is always danger of sophism, but that does not come from questioning the ground upon which various structures are built. It comes from people playing with language, a pretty fragile means of communication. Logic is far from immune to being manipulated as well. The ad absurdum is not only explored, but a given obstacle in all areas of reasoning. I personally wouldn't give a hoot to anyone, philosopher or psychologist, who would strive to put a UFO experience in any context or terms for communicating it. That appears to be the experiencer's choice and problem. Robbing free beings of their individual and unique experiences, subjugating them to structured ways of communicating, and rounding up each free being under a suffocating cloud of short-handed collective consciousness, is a wall the understanding will never be able to climb over. People don't refuse to look at structures. Structures are put up around them all the time. They, like Derrida and Pollack, don't want their understanding imprisoned by them.
 
Then what you're talking about is a structure of privilege and heirarchy that Pollock is reacting against. Fair dinkum: I'm not arguing against artistic freedom. The whole problem with post-structuralism and post-modernism is that it fails to define its terms, and this is why it connects to sophism. I would also abhor any artificial constraints placed on what people are experiencing: that is exactly what Ad Hominem means, and it has no basis in any dialogue or any understanding. The understanding we derive has to be based on attention to what's before us, and if we follow the classical laws of logic that are irrefutable, we can arrive at an understanding. If you read any of Foucault's or Derrida's texts in French or English, and compare what is being said with even the most elementary study in logic, then it is impossible to uphold any of the texts' statements; but Derrida even admits that himself. The paradox is insurmountable. All I'm saying is: a) walk away from an unnecessary paradox, b) keep the attempt at rigour and the avoidance of heirarchy, and c) admit that you are using a structure, but d) try to keep it as free from the old evils as possible. The logicians who devised the classical system were trying in their own way, and I would argue that that is a worthwhile project. We're not committing some sin if we wish to understand something structurally any more than we are if we structure our sentences. Understanding is itself a structure, otherwise we wouldn't be able to make anything out of it. Wittgenstein's Tractatus is prescient on this. The question and the answer are part of the same continuum, but it is a continuum, and the only escape from that continuum is random gibberish. Maybe someone should start the random-gibberist school, but I don't think that's what you're saying: I think we're at cross-purposes of philosophy but with the same moral drift, and that of course exemplifies what I'm saying about different filters for our experiences.
 
PaulC said:
Wittgenstein's Tractatus is prescient on this.
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I don't think the 'Tractatus' anticipated the 'Philosophical Investigations'. We are indeed in conflict, about what we are saying. What you are saying gives the illusion of freedom, where-as I am for embracing freedom. I wouldn't walk away from paradoxes, seems to be the stuff of life. Striving to create and hide behind the fake security of some perfect logical construction, and in fact reducing my understanding to the parameters of logic is a program for a machine. Questions find no friend in answers, but rather, in wonder. Derrida doesn't just admit that the old, classicists' "laws" are not being upheld, as if confessing to a crime, his work dances on the grave of that thinking. As much as you would like life to stop so you can put it in logical context and logical terms, life doesn't stop for mere helpers, who remain confused by it's insecurities and are worried about the disrespectful sophists.
I don't understand why you said, "I would also abhor any artificial constraints placed on what people are experiencing: that is exactly what Ad Hominem means"? Disregarding the credibility of a statement by attacking the character of the person making the statement, is what I thought the fallacy referred to.
 
Deconstruction is a form of cultural and literary analysis based on the supposition that language is inherently incapable of meaning.

It has no direct relation to Romantic notions of wonder and inquiry, since any meaning gained from that wonder or inquiry would itself become meaningless under the suppositions of deconstruction.

My comments argue for the use of the scientific method in cases where people are claiming to have experiences of 'channeling.' The scientific method is a specific process, which has yielded the civilization we are now experiencing, good or bad. Imagination is part of the process, but is certainly not capable of validating scientific method.

Aside from logic and science, imagination is a key aspect of life: 'something evermore about to be..' as Wordsworth says. The cultural degradation of our time attempts to split science from creativity, to which I have a one-person argument: Leonardo da Vinci.

My general topic is scientific method based on logic, and the irrelevance of deconstruction/post-modernism/post-structuralism to that project.

1) Any movement which puts itself in line for discussion on logical process or terminology is up for that. Deconstruction deconstructs itself. It's inane by its own admission. Can you write a symphony for me using deconstruction? Can a spacecraft fly by means of deconstruction? Logical method and structure can perform these things, along with the imagination to enjoy them.

2) Deconstruction's basic theory of language is wrong: language doesn't always perform glissage, or else this computer program we're using wouldn't work, and all the planes above us would fall out of the sky. They are based on language which has a specific mathematical meaning and can leave no room for ambiguity of any kind. This does not destroy or hinder creativity at all. These things are only in opposition if we want them to be. The beautiful picture of the Earth from space that Biedny mentions was attained by the logical work of many technicians who helped with the lunar missions, and the inventors who experimented with optics and chemistry who helped to invent the camera used to take the picture. The logic and the creativity are part of the same cultural process.

3)You are confuting my comments about scientific method with my character, and since you have no knowledge of my identity, I know for a fact that you are utterly wrong in your remarks about me; also, if you're lookiing for an example of Ad Hominem, there it is: the imposition of constraints on a person's character. Stranger, what on Earth do you know about me?

4)Wonder is wonderful, but we were talking about method. You keep using the fallacy of accident and converse accident; but then that's just me being 'scared' of sophists!

5)The works of deconstruction speak of the 'death' of the author in books with their authors' names on the cover, and structure complex sentences and arguments to argue against structure. They are simple contradictions, and only survive as icons because of the worldwide degradation of academic debate, with its attendant cultural inanities.

6)Nothing in the arguments of deconstruction expresses freedom of inquiry or freedom of artistic expression: the entire edifice of deconstruction is based on the ultimate meaninglessness of all language, so how anyone reading that can go from notions of non-meaning to romantic notions of wonder and questioning is well-intentioned, but irrelevant to the nature of deconstruction.

7) Everything you have said has proved my case, since you yourself have used structure, you have used the fallacies I critiqued, and you have responded to the meaning of my words.

Hope that that's cleared it up for you.

All the best.
 
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