| To respond to your question: > So let me ask you this, on what basis would you attempt to study or possibly falsify any UFO claim, or even find the truth behind it, if skepticism and science can't be trusted? You would be unable to conclude anything about a UFO claim if your own methodology is not falsifiable. To believe any one tool of reasoning is infinitely powerful, strikes me as zealous and closed-minded. By the way, your premise that "skepticism and science can't be trusted" is a straw man. I didn't say that. Science is an epistemological philosophy coupled with a method of empirical testing. Just because a good scientist comes up with a theory, doesn't make his theory science. If I observe something and I create a hypothesis, that hypothesis is not "science." It's an idea, a proposition. I have to exhaustively demonstrate its validity empirically, or (if I can't be exhaustive) express the limitations of its validity as demonstrated. Thus, if I draw a conclusion that is later disproven, I failed somewhere in my reasoning. I drew a conclusion that, while perhaps supported by my evidence, was later shown to be an overreach. If you support skepticism, you also have to be skeptical of science. A good scientist is a critical thinker, always trying to find holes in his own work and determine how he could disprove his own conclusions. Since science is empirical, there isn't "better science" and "worse science." There is only a complete demonstration of a phenomenon or method, an incomplete such demonstration, and a totally theoretical conception. "To the best of my knowledge" is a smart phrase to hear out of a scientist's mouth. It would be naive to assume that everything we believe to be correct, is actually correct. This has never been true in history, and it will not be true for the present set of scientific beliefs. Thus, we should be skeptical about our own findings and beliefs. Scientists should be philosopher-experimenters, not zealots. |
>By the way, your premise that "skepticism and science can't be trusted" is a straw man. I didn't say that.
Fair enough, but that does seem to a the general theme of this subthread.
>To believe any one tool of reasoning is infinitely powerful, strikes me as zealous and closed-minded.
Yes, but no one is actually making that claim about science. I'm certainly not, and I doubt most scientists do, either.
So, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the current models of physics appear true enough that photographic or video evidence of UFOs alone are not sufficient to discredit them. Those models may be inaccurate, as all models are, but there's no reason to believe they're entirely wrong.