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ABSTRACT: Recent years have seen increasing public attention regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Hypotheses for such phenomena tend to fall into two classes: a conventional terrestrial explanation (e.g., human-made drones), or an extraterrestrial explanation (i.e., advanced civilizations from elsewhere in the cosmos). However, there is also a third minority class of hypothesis: an unconventional terrestrial explanation, outside the prevailing consensus view of life and the universe. This is the "ultraterrestrial" hypothesis, which includes - but is not limited to - the "interdimensional" hypothesis, namely the highly speculative notion that UAP may reflect activities of beings from other dimensions that coexist alongside our own. Such hypotheses may rightly be regarded with scepticism by most scientists. However, this article suggests they nevertheless should not be ruled out, and deserve serious consideration in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness.
Keywords: philosophy, science, extraterrestrial, ultraterrestrial, non-human intelligence
An Empirical Mystery
This article begins with an empirical mystery. For decades, and indeed centuries, people worldwide have reported seeing phenomena in the sky that appeared "anomalous" in some way. Essentially, these did not seem to conform with the "expected behaviour" of celestial objects or processes people were familiar with, whether naturally occurring (e.g., planets) or human-made (e.g., airplanes), and appeared to defy - to the observer at least - conventional scientific knowledge. These have attracted the label "unidentified flying object" (UFO) and more recently "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP), with the latter expanding even further in scope over the past few years to denote unidentified anomalous phenomena (reflecting a realization that some UAP appear to have "transmedium" capabilities, including traveling underwater, and are not only aerial). However, just what constitutes "conventional" scientific opinion begs the questions central to this article: what makes knowledge conventional, how accurate is it, and what kinds of findings might encourage its revision. These questions shall be explored below, but for now, let us grant that - at least until recently - the conventional scientific consensus held that humans are alone in the universe, the Earth a solitary outpost of sentience, indeed of life in general. With this view, there are only two recognized classes of celestial phenomena: naturally occurring material bodies (e.g., planets) or processes (e.g., atmospheric occasions); or human inventions (e.g., airplanes) and productions...