Dozens in Texas town report seeing UFO
Officials: UFO sightings were military jets
Questions & issues to consider:
- Do you believe the townspeople's claim that they saw a UFO? Why or why not?
- If you don't believe them, what would it take for you to be convinced that they are right? What kind of evidence (justifications) would you require, and why?
- What role do you see the concepts of "epistemic certainty" and "psychological certainty" playing in this story?
- To what degree is your willingness (or unwillingness) to believe the townspeople a reflection of your prior knowledge and beliefs? To what degree is that appropriate and/or reasonable? Are your prior knowledge and beliefs a help or a hinderance to you in evaluating the knowledge claims presented in this story? Elaborate.
- Consider/evaluate the role that sense perception plays in this incident. Do you consider the sense perception of the townspeople a reliable justification? Why or why not?
10 comments:
I find the stories of the townspeople very hard to believe. Who doesn't? We are told our whole lives that UFOs are not real and neither is Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. All these things only exist in our movies and books. In a story they can be portrayed as real but stories are just another form of art. The fact that so many people trying to hoax these things have been caught certainly reinforces our belief that they are fake. People who claim to have seen UFOs have been so criticized by our society that the only way you can completely trust them is by seeing one yourself. Since when do we value others' sense perception over our own. If my sister microwaved some Top Ramen and put half of it in the fridge and I came down a few minutes later and reached into the fridge to grab it, I would certainly be surprised that it was hot! But after it cooled down, who would believe me? We all "know" that things in the refrigerator are cold, and it takes your own perception to successfully knock down that belief.
This UFO story is interesting. Technically UFO stands for unidentified flying object. So in this case, based on that information I would have to believe the people who saw the UFO because it was exactly that. Now, what it was and the claims they make behind the sighting I'm not so sure. I think the problem for others believing in the UFO sighting is which source you put the higher value, authority or sense perception of others. Logic, memory, and consensus gentium also factor into this one knowledge claim. Some may believe the government while others believe the townspeople. It is easier to believe that there was something seen when multiple people saw it rather than just one. I think that past experiences would help your belief in the claims. If you have had an experience similar to this you are more likely to believe it when it happens to someone else. Logic and reasoning plays into this a little bit as well. Why would the government, who we see as an authority, change their explanation of the occurences? UFO sightings have been going on for awhile and no one is ever really sure to believe it or not. Maybe the question isn't do we believe it's do we want to believe?
I believe their claim that they saw an UFO because a UFO is simply an unidentified flying object. They have no reason to lie or distort an incident in which they saw an unidentifiable object. The real question is what the unidentified object really is.
My prior experiences play a huge role in my belief the people do see UFOs. I have met many people who have claimed to see UFOs, and I have seen many similar UFO stories on the news. The sheer repitition of UFO claims lead me to believe that there must be a degree of truth to the people's claims. Also I know that militaries (especially in today's time) are eager to gain an edge in technology. I also know that the sciences have allowed us to build and construct things that almost seem out of a science fiction movie. From all of these prior beliefs and experiences and knowledge of mine, it doesnt seem at all out of the question that it could be military projects that are being signted. On the other hand, my prior knowledge and experiences hinder my ability to evaluate this situation because I am biased towards the side that UFOS are really being sighted.
Sense perception plays a huge role in the UFO situation. UFO sightings are great examples of how sense perception can be almost useless in the absense of other evidence. No matter how many UFO sightings there are, the government/military can deny the sightings and justify them as f-16 testing or scientific phenomena. On the other hand, it is completely possible that in this instance, there was no UFO and it was only a f-16 or weather phenomena. Either way, without other support, there is no way to tell if the UFOs are real or just optical illusions. Based on this, I would say that the people's sense perception brings up the UFO question, but it doesnt provide any answer to the question. The sense perception creates doubt, but sense perception alone, no matter how much of it there is, will not be enough to alleviate the doubt that sense perception first creates.
Technically, the "flying objects" they saw were at the time, "unidentified". Language has made it so that UFO now has to refer to space alien technology.
However, assuming that they did mean they thought they saw something reminiscent of flying saucers and the like, I do not believe it. They definitely saw something, unless there was some town conspiracy to have dozens report on the same thing.
That the UFO was not of this world is a lot to claim. The military has plenty of technology not yet open to the public, and their reluctance to claim that the F-16's were around there does show that the military is hiding something. Whether that is Earth tech or alien tech, I'm more likely to lean towards the former. Probably because nearly every other alien UFO sighting I have heard of has either turned out to be new military technology or probably some crazy farmer who wants attention. (And if the town conspiracy theory holds true, the town might just be looking for some tourism, especially the business owners who reported it. Though that the military would admit to F-16s, I don't know... maybe the people see lots of military aerial training and decided to pick the next time it happened)
I do believe that intelligent extraterrestrials exist. However, I do not believe that they would necessarily come here, or that they could. Assuming something of our laws of physics holds true, then nothing can go faster than the speed of light. And unless the aliens can live for an incredibly long time, the chance that there is another inhabitable planet any closer than a couple hundred light years away, at least, is rather small.
Seeing as how all the townspeople were able to see were bright lights moving around at nighttime, I'm not sure I could ever trust such a sighting. Plenty of things emit light and can fly. Unless they were able to report seeing something in detail (i.e. not just a light and the object itself at least) substantially different from anything ever seen before, I would not at all believe them.
I think that the sightings of the UFO were never true. The people that were interviewed and seen in the videos were not so good at really justifying such claims. A good justification should, I think, include, not only personal sense perceptions, but a solid, detailed reasoning to what they believe. The usual "reasonings" that the "witnessess" usually gave was something like: "it didn't look like an airplane," and "there were lights." It is something they couldn't figure out and so, I believed,they had turned to the idea of the UFO just because it the easiest verification to an unknown experience. By also learning that there has been previous talks about UFO sightings and that the town has had previous ideas about UFO existence; then I believe the people who "saw" the UFO was unable to identify the aircrafts and defaulted to identifying the lights as a UFO. I do admit, though, that the sightings are similar to the story about the boy who called wolf. It's trivial in that, there has been so many claims of sightings, no one knows for sure if the claims are false or true anymore.
-Josephine Yang
Unfortunately, when dealing with a situation such as this one, one can never know what is true or un-true simply because of the lack of certainty. To be certain about either one of these claims of knowledge (Either believing there were or wasn't any UFO's sighted) is by all means impossible. There are many reasons for this, many of which have been covered during our class discussions. First of all, one must never rely solely on the senses in order to make a knowledge claim. The senses can and will decieve and it is almost always impossible to determine when you are being decieved because so many people interpret their observations as truth. Personally I believe that it is very possible that the sightings these people had were in fact UFO sightings, but I hold that same amount of belief when thinking that these people's sightings were not UFO sightings. I believe one should always be skeptical about their own personal beliefs, and should always consider the posibility that their opinion is incorrect.
I believe that the people in town reported what they saw. Wether it was true or not is not up to them. they're just reporting what they saw. And it wasn't fifteen minutes ago that we thought we were alone. Many people have repoted to have seen UFO's for the longest time. Yet now with camcorders its easier to believe because we to can see what they experienced. Also the video posted does justify what looked like UFO's with military aircrafts, it isn't always that way. Not all videos are justified, so what of them? There is no possible way to KNOW that we are alone or we are not alone without evidence or proof of it. Unfortunatly shining lights in the saky in a video camera isn't enough to proove it, but it is enough to attract our attention and ask questions. Mabey thats the objective. To get us thinking and putting the pieces together to solve a mystery. So at this point we're not safe to say that we know that humans are alone or that humans are not alone due to the lack of evidence.
I do believe that what the townspeople saw really is a UFO because a UFO is an unidentified flying object, and to this point no one has been able to furnish a reasonable argument to prove what that flying object was. I do not believe that the object they saw in the sky belonged to or is in any way related to aliens or anything of that sort because I have never believed in that. My own prior beliefs play a large role in my willingness to believe them because I use logic to interpret my prior belief and new evidence presented to me and I come with the conclusion that I do not believe they were aliens. I believe that process to be every appropriate because that is what we all do naturally, however there are a few flaws in that process. These flaws hinder the evaluation of the knowledge claims because we focus too much on what we believe is or is not there and we fail to open our minds to the new evidence, although it may seem absurd there may be more truth to the new evidence we overlook then we thought.
I personally believe that the townspeople saw a U.F.O, simply because U.F.O, stands for unidentified flying object, and since they were unsure of the flying object they saw, that means they saw a U.F.O. I'm very willing to believe that the townspeople saw something, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there was something in the sky, just that they think they saw it. The sense perception is less reliable when it comes from another person, because there is no way to prove that it was real or random firing of synapses in the brain, after all you can put a person in the desert and they may eventually see a starbucks being run by little green men, but that doesn't mean that it is realm just that a person had a different sense experience. Sense perception for an individual can be fairly reliable, but from another person it is as reliable as consensus gentium, which is basically what it becomes at that point.
i actually do want to believe the people. not because i understand all of their evidence (or lack there of) but because they seem to believe it 100%. you aren't going to tell them something different, so why shouldn't we actually believe them. I think that's where truth and beliefs really stem from. we wouldn't believe anything if no one had conviction or wasn't totally set in their ways. I really don't have any prior beliefs or ideas on the subject, so i'm totally open to whatever these people have to say. this kind of thing might scare some people because it would mean it could change everything that they have ever known. as for the people, it is true, their senses could have failed them and they could have really just been looking at a plane, but that is one of our biggest way of learning. it may be faulty, but its what connects us to everything else around us.
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