>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft
One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.
This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.
For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones!
Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements.
> One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.
By this line of thinking we can never put “100% confidence” into anything at all.
But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”, therefore this is just a cheap argument to say we must assign every claim a non-zero chance of being true.
> This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.
You’re mincing claims, jumping from obscure physics to “Epistemology 101” and trying to lump it all together as “totally uncontroversial”, but it’s really just an attempt at moving the goal posts with fancy language and big words.
It doesn’t change the fact that the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as the way the date of the encounter doesn’t even match other records of the event or even appear to be in the same season at which the event occurred, or that none of the other people present appear to have come away with similar observations.
Talking about physics and GR and QCD and Epistemology 101 doesn’t change anything. It’s just superfluous jargon.
>But our understanding of physics will never be “complete”
That's not the issue. It's not even consistent.
You (and all others) conflated my argument with the tired old trope that all knowledge 'might' be wrong. Yes I agree: yawn.
However in this case we actually have positive knowledge that our current physics must be incorrect. This is a far far stronger epistemic claim, of course.
Funny how for something so uncontroversial, it can be so controversial to remind people of it!
>fancy language and big words
Sorry for using big words.
>the original claim clearly has some factual inconsistencies, such as...
Finally meat and potatoes. Anyone have a handy source for this debunking content?
The first day of epistemology 101 (it wasn't actually a 100 series course) the initial exercise was to spot the flaws in Descarté's arguments. So yes, we can't even know (know used in the epistemological sense) that we ourselves exist, so everything else is just gradations of levels of justification and belief. Some explanations have more justification than others.
We can't put 100% confidence in the claim that Santa Claus doesn't exist either, yet we say he doesn't because it'd be extraordinary for him to exist and we have no evidence to suggest he does.
That is not an "end of knowledge" style pronouncement, merely shorthand to avoid having to tack an "as far as we know" onto every single statement we make. Because we can known next to nothing with certainty. I don't know I'm speaking to a person and not an automaton for example, nor do I know I'm not a brain in a vat. It'd be very tedious if I had to caveat everything I said, however.
You're just making a long winded argument from ignorance, and strawmanning what Carter said. He said his knowledge influenced his belief. That is different from saying he knew it wasn't possible.
Who made any end of history or knowledge pronouncements? Where did you read any claims that express 100% confidence? Your argument about what native people saw most strongly supports the idea that we should assume UFOs are natural or human-created, and not fantastical beings from another planet. You’ve brought support for what Carter said, not debate. It wasn’t a “claim”, BTW, it was a third-hand account of an opinion that appears to allow for uncertainty.
One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.
This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.
For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones!
Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc