In a recent essay published in The Debrief, philosopher Dr. Bernardo Kastrup (known for his outspoken defense of philosophical idealism which he calls "analytic idealism", and his criticisms of philosophical materialism) proposes to argue, rationally, for a seemingly surprising thesis regarding what some UAP could be: advanced nonhuman but terrestrial technology. Dr. Kastrup does this by arguing that the best and most credible evidence for UAP is plausibly explained by the so-called "Silurian Hypothesis", which references a hypothetical advanced, intelligent nonhuman yet terrestrial species.

While this thesis is obviously controversial (many would balk at the very idea), and has indeed been suggested before in the UAP/UFO literature, Dr. Kastrup argues in his essay that, given the credibility of many of the more recent UAP witnesses and their testimony, which in some cases can be corroborated by other physical observations (say, on radar), it "seems more productive, at this point, to bite the bullet of what the data suggests—at least hypothetically—and then check whether we can make sense of it in a manner that renders the data less vexing." And that's what Dr. Kastrup's essay proposes to do: to make the data "less vexing" and to try to make some rational sense of it—if we are willing to accept the data as veridical. (This assumption—that at least some of the data on UAP is veridical—is an important assumption to make clear, since many would argue that we can't yet reason our way forward to something like the Silurian Hypothesis because the data on UAP simply are not yet isolated under the stricter conditions required by the observational and experimental sciences, which is a point Kastrup is willing to concede.)

What is unique about Dr. Kastrup's approach here is not only that he attempts to stay close to what (credible) data we do have on UAP, but that he examines this controversial hypothesis in the context of recent scientific and philosophical discussions about its antecedent plausibility. The result is an example of what a rational analysis of the question regarding the nature and/or origins of UAP could be like, which neither promotes nor debunks but which tries to reason honestly (but fallibly) towards a possible resolution to at least some aspects of the UAP enigma.

Dr. Kastrup's essay is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debates about how to think about the data on UAP, even if we table the question (as we do here, for the sake of argument) of how good that data has been, and what still needs to be obtained going forward with the new and burgeoning science of UAP.

We are sure that Dr. Kastrup's talk will spark a lively follow-up Q&A!