The ontological status of UFOs

Before proceeding further in describing social intelligence processes about UFOs, the reader may be concerned about whether the author feels these objects to be real or imaginary, and to what class of concepts, if not objects, the discussion will be limited. The label 'Unidentified Flying Objects' was originally substituted for 'flying saucers' as an attempt to be more agnostic about the phenomena in question s1See H. Strentz, A Survey of Press Coverage of Unidentified Flying Objects (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Journalism, Northwestern University, 1970), 3.. Even the former term, however, poses difficulties. Menzel suggests that the term is a misnomer because it implies that the sightings 'are of material reality', a view to which Menzel does not adhere s2D. Menzel, 'Flying Saucers', McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), 363-64.. Objection could also be made to the word 'flying', since this assumes something about the propulsion of the phenomenon: and in any case some of the most interesting manifestations are seen on the ground. How to delimit this seemingly amorphous class of objects or events?

Both the taxonomic and epistemological problems can be solved if we are willing to suspend judgment on the reality of UFOs and deal with the subject in terms of psychological and social events n1This method of treatment was suggested to me by my former mentor, Duncan McRae.. Rather than a 'person who has sighted a UFO', we have a 'person who has had a UFO experience'. This person may then make a 'report' of his experience, although we know that in some cases there have been reports which were not based on experiences (hoaxes). Similarly, there have been experiences which did not eventuate in public reports. Again, we are interested in how experiences are transformed into reports which are transformed in turn into the 'data' on which the scientist at least partly bases his decision about the reality of UFOs.

The reader may feel nonetheless that study of the social events associated with a supposed anomaly may generate indications as to whether the anomaly exists or not. In the next section we will see that there are indications that some witnesses have perceived genuinely anomalous objects, at least in terms of ordinary rules used in our culture for assessing the validity of experiences. However, we must recognize that the rules by which some objects are considered real or not is also a potential object of study s3For an interesting examination of reality negotiation in science, see H.M. Collins, 'The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the Replication of Experiments in Physics', Sociology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May 1975), 205-24., and that other cultures might well recognize other rules. Rather than become entangled in the controversy over whether UFOs pass our cultural tests for reality or not n2 For opposing views on the existence of UFOs, see C. Sagan and T. Page (eds), UFOs: A Scientific Debate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972)., let us focus our attention instead on the processes by which we get the data which allow us to make such a decision.