That's why I sometimes call our 'movement "skeptics"' debunkers as opposed to skeptics. They are movement "skeptics" because they are aligned with a rather aggressive social movement exemplified by the Skeptical Inquirer.
The very existence of Skeptical Inquirer is a response to ubiquity of what were (and largely remain) unexamined claims of the paranormal. Probably because you're so accustomed to it, you fail to recognise just how aggressively the pro-paranormal crowd try to push their beliefs onto the general public.
I knew my last post would attract you. You always appear defensively when you think "skeptics" are being criticised.
Yazata said:
And I place quotes around the word "skeptic" to refer to the fact that they are not skeptical about the things they themselves believe in, they are only skeptical about other people's beliefs that they happen to dislike.
James R said:
Which things could you be thinking about, I wonder?
UAPs/UFO's in the context of your own posts in this thread (and Mick's many sarcastic comments in the
Skeptical Inquirer). And your own phrase "claims of the paranormal". You used it yourself in the quote immediately above.
I'm still not sure what the word "paranormal" means in your mind or why it is so intolerable that somebody else might believe in whatever it is.
James R said:
]You seem to built up in your mind a largely fictional mental picture of what the average skeptic is and what he believes.
I've never met "the average skeptic", but I think that my remarks are quite accurate regarding the ones I encounter here and on the pages of
Skeptical Inquirer.
Skeptic magazine once featured a slightly more open mind than its rival, though I sense that's changed in the last ten years as it's grown less philosophical and more strident. Skeptics as I encounter them are people who make it their primary business to attack other people's beliefs.
James R said:
You keep trying to bring in notions of the broadest possible philosophical skepticism into these discussions of claims of the paranormal. There's really no need for that.
My point is twofold. First, the movement "skeptics" are misusing the word 'skeptic'. And second, I hope to point out their hypocrisy, in how they are all about debunking other people's beliefs, while rarely if ever applying the same critical scrutiny to what they themselves believe.
James R said:
Your hope is that if you can undermine all critical thinking by claiming that none of our thinking or conclusions is really reliable, you can therefore sneak in the paranormal under the radar.
I still don't know precisely what you mean by the word 'paranormal', or what you are quite explicitly accusing me of there. I've probably made a couple of hundred posts in this thread and I challenge anyone interested to find a post where I used the word 'paranormal' or argued for it, whatever it is. (Actually, I think I might have used the word a couple of times, but in the context of disagreeing with others who used the word.)
My own position (stated repeatedly) is more along the lines of opining that this "normal" reality that we all inhabit is less understood than most people imagine. My view is that the unknown is always present, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
James R said:
Since nothing can be known, anything is possible, you want to say.
Well, if much of the reality around us is poorly understood, it isn't unreasonable to think that reality might sometimes surprise us with things that we don't expect.
James R said:
But most of us don't actually operate on the assumption that we know nothing and that we can never really know anything. I don't think you do, either, when it comes down to it.
Right. We all, self-styled "skeptics" included, have a set of faith commitments. Scientists do it just like everyone else. They have faith in mathematics, in reason and in objective reality, beliefs that I doubt any of them can satisfactorily justify in non-circular fashion.
I certainly have my own faith commitments in that regard, a whole set of beliefs that I consider highly credible and as close to certain as a human being is likely to get. I expect that my faith commitments are very close to yours, actually. The difference is that I'm willing to look at them with a critical eye.
I take that willingness to be the essence of real skepticism. It's a reflective-awareness that our movement "skeptics" seem to me to lack. So they aren't really skeptics at all in my opinion, they are just another variety of true-believer who happen to firmly believe that they know "woo" when they see it and that it is to be battled wherever it appears. The similarities to some of the more disagreeable aspects of the Abrahamic religions should be obvious. (At least heretics are now flamed on the internet, not at the stake, a vast improvement.)
James R said:
If we make a few basic assumptions that have proven themselves time and again to produce reliable results - e.g. that the world is real and displays regularities that we can investigate - that's more than sufficient to allow us to recognise that evidence put forward for the paranormal so far is bunk.
You still haven't clarified what you mean by "paranormal" or why you include UAPs/UFOs in that category. You need to do that.
Yazata said:
If they go into it with the pre-existing belief that the whole UAP phenomenon is simply bullshit and that their task is to debunk it so as to make the public agree with their preordained conclusion, then the whole thing will fail intellectually if not rhetorically.
James R said:
But you know this is not what "they" do.
Nevertheless, you're willing to keep telling that Big Lie of yours. Why?
Context is important, James. I was responding to Wegs. She was talking about the new NASA UAP committee. I was just saying that if that committee approaches their task as the suppression of what they already firmly believe is "woo", then the whole exercise to understand the phenomenon is likely to be an intellectual failure. Surely you aren't going to argue with that?
One could say the same if the NASA UAP committee begins with the firm belief that UAPs are alien spacecraft or divine visitations, and that the committee's task is to convince the public of that.
It's a very similar mistake either way: to approach an unknown phenomenon with the assumption that one already knows what it is.
James R said:
Indeed. Meanwhile, Magical Realist is hitting "Like" on every one of your posts. Why doesn't that set off any alarm bells for you?
No. I'm quite intentionally posting in his defense. I consider MR a longtime friend. MR would be the first to agree that we don't agree on everything. But he's still a friend and I don't like seeing my friends bullied and used as punching bags. I come to their defense and try to make the bullying a little more difficult.
Besides, MR and I do fundamentally agree that reality is deeper and more mysterious than most people seem to think. So we resonate together at that point.
James R said:
Do you believe the "intelligence bigshots" have a better handle on UFO investigations than the rest of us? Why?
Yes I do. They have access to many observation reports that haven't been made public. And they have access to all of the intelligence assessments that have been made about those reports.
You must be aware that the UAP Preliminary Assessment is basically just an unclassified summary that accompanied a much longer classified report made to the Congressional committee that requested it. According to those that have seen it, that classified report contained many detailed studies of individual UAP reports. The reason why it's classified (apart from the government's hugely anal tendency to classify everything) is that some of these reports reveal technical details about the capabilities of radars and other detection media. (Some UAPs seem to have been detected by satellites.)
James R said:
Will you just accept whatever the next "official" report concludes?
I'll probably give the NASA UAP committee's report (and whatever reports the military and intelligence people produce) more credence than the opinions of our self-proclaimed "skeptics", for the reasons given above. But like I wrote earlier, I'm a fallibilist and I don't believe anything with absolute certainty. There's always the possibility of being wrong.
