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Rich Dolan and his woo-woo

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PAULC,

"Deconstruction is a form of cultural and literary analysis based on the supposition that language is inherently incapable of meaning."
I disagree with this summation. Deconstruction is a method of locating presuppositions in a text, for example, and questioning the givens that are hidden and hold up the entire structure.
"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."
I don't understand this sentence.
"My comments argue for the use of the scientific method"
That's news to me. Logic is not science. Logic has been your claim in this dialogue.
"...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."
I agree and nicely stated.
"Can you write a symphony for me using deconstruction?...Logical method and structure can perform these things, along with the imagination to enjoy them."
One may hear, or rather interpret, the logic of a piece of music or symphony, but it is quite unknown all the variables involved in producing it. The imagination is most definitely involved in producing it, far from passively awaiting the enjoyment of the sounds produced by logic.
"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"
I've never read anything about deconstruction that promoted a "basic theory of language", only an investigation into assumptions about language. And I do not know what you mean by "glissage" (slippage?).
"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?"(sic)
"You" are your posts to me in this dialogue, as "I" am my posts to you in this dialogue. And once again, your remarks on the meaning of the 'ad hominem fallacy', I do not share.
"You keep using the fallacy of accident and converse accident; but then that's just me being 'scared' of sophists!"
I don't understand this sentence.
"The works of deconstruction speak of the 'death' of the author"
Though I haven't read 'The Verbal Icon', The "author" is rightly questioned. As is the artist. In the matter of who possesses the work?. Why are people claiming to be artists when they are painters or musicians? Isn't it the spectator of the music the one who calls it art or not? After the painter has finished her painting, isn't she now the spectator divorced from "ownership"? How can she intend to create art? Philosophical inquiry into this question of essence, possession, and meaning, is fair. As for the author and her disappearance, there are certainly fruits to be had in the understanding from such complex inquiries. To call such inquiry inane is to call any thinking but the thinking you term "logical" inane. I disagree with you.
And of course, I disagree with your sixth and seventh point.

Yes, your position is becoming quite clear to me...
 
That's about the most lucid message PaulC has posted. Sorry, Paul; your language is a bit lofty for most of us. This ain't no PhD seminar, if you catch my drift. You can't help truthpandemic. His entire life force stems from negativity and he has no idea what he is talking about. He's walking around with a black cloud over his head hoping others will join him. His point is not to make a point, but to show off his negativity and argue for the sake of it. He does not understand nor care what you are saying. He'd rather call people names. He's been warned not to do that. he has continued to do that. I wonder that he is still here.

I suggest you put him on ignore; many of us have. It's not worth engaging in debate with him unless you think your points will have value for the rest of us, as your last post certainly did. Thanks. Your posts, erudite as they are, take time and thought to compose and write. He's sucking YOUR time away. Would that you would put it to better use on other subjects and threads here so that we might all benefit.
 
Schuyler said:
That's about the most lucid message PaulC has posted. Sorry, Paul; your language is a bit lofty for most of us. This ain't no PhD seminar, if you catch my drift. You can't help truthpandemic. His entire life force stems from negativity and he has no idea what he is talking about. He's walking around with a black cloud over his head hoping others will join him. His point is not to make a point, but to show off his negativity and argue for the sake of it. He does not understand nor care what you are saying. He'd rather call people names. He's been warned not to do that. he has continued to do that. I wonder that he is still here.

I suggest you put him on ignore; many of us have. It's not worth engaging in debate with him unless you think your points will have value for the rest of us, as your last post certainly did. Thanks. Your posts, erudite as they are, take time and thought to compose and write. He's sucking YOUR time away. Would that you would put it to better use on other subjects and threads here so that we might all benefit.
Click to expand...

I am unaware of the cloud you seem to see. The last post I wrote was not addressed to you. There is much more clarity through this dialogue for me than the original post by PaulC, and as I write responses, his position and my own ideas become clearer to me. My apologies if no one thought this dialogue was of any worth, or fun to read. Dialogues like this are rare to me, as many wish not to engage as PaulC has elected to do. I can only speak for myself, whereas you seem to be speaking for all, which I would never do. If you have put me on ignore, why are you reading us? If you are speaking of negating me from this forum please inform me.
 
Dolan just did a whole two hours at Para- ah... er- another Podcast I enjoy- and I gotta say (I'm about halfway through) he sounds even more rational, reasonable, and likeable than ever. It's a fascinating discussion. And I'm REALLY excited for his next book.

I would LOVE to see him back on The Paracast.
 
truthpandemic said:
I am unaware of the cloud you seem to see. The last post I wrote was not addressed to you. There is much more clarity through this dialogue for me than the original post by PaulC, and as I write responses, his position and my own ideas become clearer to me. My apologies if no one thought this dialogue was of any worth, or fun to read. Dialogues like this are rare to me, as many wish not to engage as PaulC has elected to do. I can only speak for myself, whereas you seem to be speaking for all, which I would never do. If you have put me on ignore, why are you reading us? If you are speaking of negating me from this forum please inform me.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't mean to give you a hard time, but your posting style makes me hear everything you type in the voice of HAL.
:eek:
 
Will Penguin said:
Dolan just did a whole two hours at Para- ah... er- another Podcast I enjoy- and I gotta say (I'm about halfway through) he sounds even more rational, reasonable, and likeable than ever. It's a fascinating discussion. And I'm REALLY excited for his next book.

I would LOVE to see him back on The Paracast.
Click to expand...

You'll be happy to know that he's already agreed to come back on the show, it's just that I want to actually read his next book before we do the interview. Rare for a show of our type, but that's how we roll.

dB
 
Once you've taken the measure of a person and deduced his character, there is no need to keep on looking, just a need to avoid the pestilence of his presence. If the odious George Wickham stays in Newcastle, that would be fine with me.
 
David Biedny said:
You'll be happy to know that he's already agreed to come back on the show, it's just that I want to actually read his next book before we do the interview. Rare for a show of our type, but that's how we roll.

dB
Click to expand...

That does make me happy. I think it's legit to have an interview as sort of preview/teaser as well, but in any case- I'll be waiting with anticipation.

I'm about halfway through UFOATNSS Vol1 and intend to pick up the second one as soon as it hits Amazon. I was so excited when he mentioned on your show a while ago that there would be three volumes.

I gotta admit I just plain like Dolan. Anyway you slice it it he's just a stellar speaker/guest.

Are you gonna give him the "gatekeeper treatment?" :p
 
Schuyler said:
Once you've taken the measure of a person and deduced his character, there is no need to keep on looking, just a need to avoid the pestilence of his presence. If the odious George Wickham stays in Newcastle, that would be fine with me.
Click to expand...

Your ignore button doesn't work. You haven't avoided me, you keep stalking me.:eek:
 
Hello all, thanks for your comments, especially about the language. Okay, I thought I should make everything a bit more immediate. It hasn't sucked away too much time because I'm working on a book that is related to these ideas. Post-structuralism annoys me because it's Orwell's groupthink in the form of pseudo-philosophical jargon, and it's still swarming through even the better university faculties. It's bad news because it adds to the already huge obstacles facing any rational inquiry into the UFO phenomenon. I've written up a reply which winds up my response to truthpandemic. It's informative if you haven't heard of the deconstruction monster yet..


Well, truth-pandemic, your argument enacts my own argument for me anyway, so there's not much else for me to say on that. Just hope that some of this provokes useful questions. Personally, I wouldn't enter into an argument against someone about the philosophy of logic and science if I hadn't checked them out thoroughly, but that's just me.
I do think that we should be continually striving for intellectual, emotional and even mystical freedom, but the formal pursuit of understanding has to have structure to it. Logic and science are inseparable, cf Karl Popper.
(Apologies to others for hurting anyone's brains, by the way.)
My main point on the Dolan issue is that we might learn something from doing a scientific analysis on channelers, and also that ad hominem attacks are sometimes fun, but ultimately pointless.
Apparently though, I'm using a form of heirarchy by suggesting this. So if logic or science equals heirarchy, then throw away your computers, DVDs, and cellphones. That should even things out a bit.
As far as the morality of analysing people is concerned, well we've been analysing people for a long time, and apart from a few mess-ups in torture chambers in the middle ages, we're okay now. If we want to analyse channelers then this could happen with their consent, and no channelers would be harmed in the making of our motion picture..
As far as post-modernist dogma is concerned, I'll end my participation in this discussion by quoting some of the 'icons' of that school, and finally one of my own icons of ufology, whose initials are BB. David and Gene will have guessed already..

First of our po-mo 'heroes': Paul de Man, writing in wartime Paris:
'A solution to the Jewish problem that would lead to the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe would not have, for the literary life of the West, regrettable consequences. It would lose, in all, some personalities of mediocre worth..'
Freedom, eh..
Next, Michel Foucault, arriving back from a visit to the 'beautiful' Iran of the Ayatollah:
'They don't have the same regime of truth as ours.. In Iran it is largely modelled on a religion that has an exoteric form and an esoteric content. That is to say, everything that is said under the explicit form of the law also refers to another meaning.. It's often the case that, at the factual level, something is said that isn't true, but which refers to another, deeper meaning, which cannot be assimilated in terms of precision and observation..' Even more freedom..
Gilles Deleuze:
'In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather 'metastable,' endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed. In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes then resonate, enveloping the corresponding singular points in a single aleatory point and all the emissions, all dice throws, in a single cast..'
Guess that's one way of looking at crap games..
Monsieur Jacques Derrida:
'Turned towards the lost or impossible presence of absent origin, this structuralist thematic of broken immediacy is therefore the saddened, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rouseauistic side of the thinking of play whose other side would be the Nietzschean affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation..'
Clear as fog.
Next up, ahem, is Jacques Lacan, who gives us his equation for deconstruction:
S (signifier) = s (the statement), with S = (-1), produces: s =
s (signified)
(the square root of) -1

Then he continues:
'Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance (ecstasy), not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the square root of minus one of the coefficient produced above, of the jouissance that it restores by the coefficient of its statement to the function of the lack of the signifier (-1)'
So that's what square roots are for. No really, though, these guys were Professors..
Lastly, Madame Luce Irigaray:
'E equals m c squared is a sexed equation (because it) privileges the speed of light over other (less masculine) speeds that are vitally necessary to us.. (we should avoid) the privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all.. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids.. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids and of women have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders..'
Yuck.
For our finale of profound observations I quote the back of a piece of card which I found in an alleyway. At the bottom of this I saw a name scrawled which may have been Boyle Bustman, but whoever he is, he is clearly a genius like the others quoted above:

'The UFO phenomenon redirects its cogitation in the manner that doubles up what was first inserted into the equations, and you have to look at this from the perspective of intitiating the energy drive that was first established when you looked at the equations beforehand, because if you don't do this then the whole thing gets very scary with all the redirected particles heightening themselves into a state of confusion, but, and let's be clear here, after you make the second insertion of the warp-field you then have to intensify the modulators that were there in the beginning to prevent them from deintensifying the cogitation parameters.. Piece of cake..'

Like I said, pantomime is fun, but it doesn't take the UFO phenomenon any further forward.

Piece of cake..

Paul
 
Terminology, structure, logic, research. I'm all for it.

Maybe we should create a new field of investigation under the heading "spontaneous language."
 
At least with these things we would have some way of defining our situation. Not sure about the heading, but definitely concur with the concept.
 
Looks like the book is out, at least through Rich's site. Amazon is just fronting for Keyhole Publishing. Table of Contents alone looks very interesting.

Anyone actually have it yet?
 
OK, I've listened to the Dolan interview on the other Para-podcast. Because I genuinely enjoy hearing Rich speak, I have also listened to his ten minutes with Linda Moulton Howe on her Earthfiles podcast. I'm eagerly awaiting my copy of the second book.

Rich's public statements associated with the recent release of his book, well, lets just say they probably won't reassure those of us who worry about his objectivity.

I also have to say, and then I will be finished picking this scab, that in spite of the very painful water under the bridge between David and the other guys, there is still some serious intellectual common ground there. Hearing some very familiar ideas frankly made me quite sad for the loss of the friendship.

OK, back to Rich. Yes, he is quite happy to give credence to people he is personally friendly with, such as Bob Dean and Linda Moulton Howe. He also unapologetically quotes anonymous sources (though I understand why) and speculates freely. He is always careful to identify his speculation as such and I don't have a problem with that, really. He made a point to say that he did not feel it was his responsibility in the book to "bring the gavel down" on the many controversial cases that happened during that time period. He was also, surprisingly, very reticent about Billy Meier. He said he avoided the subject altogether in the book because he felt it "wasn't very important" and I got the strong feeling that he felt it was a no-win situation to examine it at all.

Umm, what else... he explained the Linda Knight book forward brouhaha, basically he trusts her and understands that some people have received "something" from Ouija boards and channeling, so he did a favor for a friend. He was genuinely upset at the way Alfred Webre publicized the situation.
He said that there are some people in the "field" that he now has a "physical aversion" to. He wouldn't name names but it was pretty clear he meant Greer and his ilk.
He said that while the MJ-12 documents were fakes, they nonetheless contained non-fake information in some cases. The dates in particular, he said, represented some knowledge of the actual whereabouts of the people named.
He is particularly impressed with the 1976 Tehran jet fighter case.
He finds it very interesting that Richard Doty has provided so much disinformation at the Air Force's behest.
He gave a shout-out to his underground-base pal Richard Sauder.
He did not address his wife's work or her more "credulous" approach.
He did talk a little about his political concerns and about his reaction to Dick Hall's and Paul Kimball's criticism of the first volume. No 9/11 stuff this time, quite a bit of Rockefeller and "secret space program" and "private industry" stuff.

On Linda's podcast, with a lot less time, he basically really played up his acceptance of the ETH, which I guess he's entitled to, but also his belief that the government knows a lot, has rev-eng'd alien tech, and may have had contact with aliens. He's grabbed on to that idea with a lot more commitment than we usually hear on The Paracast. And he says disclosure won't come because it'll destroy current industrial and social interests, not because we don't know anything and aren't really in control. Linda's briefly mentioned in her introduction (God, she's a true believer, isn't she?) that Rich self-published the book to "maintain control over the content."

So, this long post can be boiled down to... if you already had misgivings about Rich Dolan's work, you won't find much reassurance in his recent public statements. It will be interesting to see what the reaction to the book will be.
 
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