UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

More dishonesty. You edited the post after the fact.

Shame.

 

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As I put forward in another post this thread IF it rose to the level of fact there would be a flood of grant applications and those applying putting on their application their theory and how much it would cost to test said theory

Had one idea put to me about my strange object. The person looked at the photos a said was a alien artefact and it works somewhat like Dr Who's Sonic Screwdriver

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I think it is both an inference and a fact, in the sense that if you saw it was all wet outside you could infer that it rained last night. "It rained last night" is in this sense both a fact and an inference based on solid evidence. I don't subscribe to the simplistic dichotomy of fact vs interpretation. There is a gray area in between. The listed traits are both facts and inferences of fact not just interpretations.

 

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Your example is an example of the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. So unfortunately not a good example to give. The reason it is a logical fallacy is because "raining last night" is not the only reason it could be wet outside. I.e. you have made a fallacious inference that it is because of the specific reason you have concluded.
I.e. If P then Q
Q
Therefore P.
It might seem to you to be logical, but it is actually not valid. There may be other things that lead to Q.
Your thinking above, and in general on this particular subject, has completely omitted all other possible things that could lead to Q, because you want the answer to be P.

Which means you consider "fact" to include things that aren't actually "fact". You are, in essence, redefining the word to suit your assertion that things are "fact" when they are merely interpretation of facts, interpretations as yet undemonstrated/proven to themselves be fact.

This is not correct. The listed traits are interpretations. Interpretations are inferences from a specific point of view, that view being that they are alien/advanced craft/tech, which is simply not a valid conclusion from the facts that we have.
You are incorrectly mixing your terms and ideas, and as such your thinking of what is a fact is flawed.

 

Sarkus makes really great points. It doesn't mean we can't interpret or speculate as to what some of these ''traits'' may be that the tic tac object (for example) is exhibiting, but we need to be careful not to blur interpretations and facts.

Your rain example, MR - because we know for a fact that rain exists, then the ground being wet the next morning, even though we were asleep and didn't hear or see the rain actually falling, would cause us to conclude it had rained. There could be other explanations, but I've found when things are based on facts, Occam's Razor takes out the need to keep guessing.

 

It also depends on the circumstances. If your yard is wet then it probably rained last night. If you are amazed that your yard is wet and your neighbor's yards aren't wet then it probably didn't rain last night and someone probably just watered your yard.

It probably wasn't something highly unusual like it just raining in your yard.

When the only evidence is a tic tac image on a radar screen it's likely unlikely (to say the least) for the explanation to be physics defying "anti-gravity" technology.

 

But radar wasn't the only evidence of the tic tac object. Pilots confirm seeing the object with their own eyes as well as tracking it on FLIR camera. A total of 3 sensory modalities all backing each other up as to the existence and extraordinary behavior of the UAP.

 

To be fair to MR, I'm not sure that he's committing the fallacy quite as often as you suggest. His logical reasoning is, as with most of ours when examining data, abductive rather than deductive. This is where you look at the evidence and try to put the best explanation you can that fits. It's what Sherlock Holmes was famous for, for example.
So in the example he gave about rain and the streets being wet, what he is most likely doing is going: "well, it's wet outside, therefore the most likely explanation is that it rained last night". This, of course, is not a claim of fact, and leaves open the possibility of something else causing the wet streets. As soon as one tries to claim the conclusion as fact, one pushes into the realm of deductive reasoning where, if the premises are true and the reasoning valid, the conclusion must also be true - i.e. factual.

The issue I raised was really with what he was regarding as fact, not his actual abductive approach - which we all do. The key is that a conclusion from abductive reasoning is not in and of itself factual. It is just a conclusion that, in the reasoner's opinion, is the best fit. And this thread is, if nothing else, an argument about what we see as "best fit".

If MR insists that those things are factual then, as JamesR has elaborated above, the deductive reasoning to reach such conclusions are seemingly fallacious.

 

"Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,[1]abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th century. It starts with an observation or set of observations and then seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from the observations. This process, unlike deductive reasoning, yields a plausible conclusion but does not positively verify it. Abductive conclusions are thus qualified as having a remnant of uncertainty or doubt, which is expressed in retreat terms such as "best available" or "most likely". One can understand abductive reasoning as inference to the best explanation, although not all usages of the terms abduction and inference to the best explanation are exactly equivalent."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

 

I agree with Sarkus. (Sorry Sarkus.) I'm reminded of a quip attributed to the famous logician Morris Cohen. "Logic texts are divided into two parts. In the first part, on deduction, the logical fallacies are explained. In the second part, on induction, they are committed." That would apply equally well to abduction.

Regarding abduction, I just discovered this 2022 Open Access book from MIT Press. The Art of Abduction by Igor Douven. Each chapter is downloadable in pdf format for free, under a creative commons license. Douven is a big name in formal epistemology and is the author of the article on Abduction in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This particular book appears to be something of a defense of abduction against attacks from the Bayesians.

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5329/The-Art-of-Abduction

Of particular interest in the context of this thread is the Introduction, which explains what the relevance of abduction is.

 

I'll get over it. This time. Just don't let it happen too often!

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The never-before-thing is called for by the never-before-performance-characteristics of the UAPs as previously listed in this thread. The phenomena and its evidence is already extraordinary, requiring consideration of some relatively extraordinary causes. But as I've said before, nobody knows what UAPs are, so we must content ourselves with fitting speculations and continued accumulative research into their nature and behavior.

 

The problem with this is that it presumes the veracity of the interpretations of the observations. I.e. you are taking as fact that which has not been validated as fact, and which should rationally not thus be considered fact.

Not really. The interpretation of the evidence is what is giving it is extraordinariness. For example, if one such "extraordinary" bit of evidence turns out to be an artefact of technology filtering, it suddenly becomes "not extraordinary", yet the evidence is still the same, just our interpretation of it will have changed.

And the one you almost deliberately refuse to consider, in favour of one that is far more extraordinary, is that the interpretations are simply inaccurate.

No, we don't, hence the U. But that doesn't mean we start assuming a priori that the interpretations are accurate, as that eliminates from the outset all the far more likely explanations.

Speculations are for flights of fancy, for unsupported beliefs, and should only be the start of rational inquiry, not the conclusion.

 

I wonder though - if once you introduce (objective) evidence for something that was thought to be extraordinary, wouldn't it then be considered...ordinary?

 

Seems like it would. I personally am never sure what this demand for extraordinary evidence entails. What else is there other than what is already given---multiple eyewitness accounts, radar, sonar, photographs, FLIR video? Seems like just a big excuse by skeptics to always move the goalposts beyond what is offered.

 

Yea, I'm thinking ''extraordinary'' evidence would entail somehow capturing the actual aircraft itself to properly examine it, which would be extraordinary in itself. lol

 

The answer to this is obvious to anyone reading in good faith:

Evidence that does not already have a plausible mundane explanation. There is no evidence to-date that is conclusively extra-ordinary.

 

It doesn't matter. If there is no plausible mundane explanation, the skeptics will just say the mundane explanation is unknown. There is thus never any extraordinary evidence for them since it is de facto ruled out.