mountainman

No. Apart from the obscuration via terminilogical arguments, the confusion actually resides in the formulation of the statement or statements that may be used as being representative of the formal hypothesis that is directly representing the EVIDENCE items being presented in the investigation of the history of christian origins --- for example "Paul" and the "Historical Jesus".

For example can the hypothesis that "I think it more likely that Paul really existed than that he did not exist" be either proved or disproved? If it cannot be proved or disproved what use is it? It's very vague. It may be made more precise. It appears to be a parsimonius way of avoiding the more stringent and simpler working hypothesis that "Paul was a genuine and authentic historical figure".

Toto remarked that some percentage of "investigators" were quite forthright in making such a simple explicit hypothesis about either Paul or Jesus, which of course may be modified by how much these figures can ever be reconstructed. I think it may be argued that those people who do NOT use the simple and explicit hypothesis above, such as Doug, are really using this simpler hypothesis, not explicity, but implicitly.

Positive and Negative Hypotheses & Positive and Negative Evidence

I have posted various presentations of the notion of "Positive and Negative Historicity" which have been understood to varying degrees and misunderstood to varying degrees. This is directly related to the issues associated with "Positive and Negative Evidence", because as we have seen, we are dealing with our hypothetical statements about the evidence in place of the evidence. This evidence can be classified as either positive or negative. For some background reading on negative evidence have a read through Negative Evidence - Richard Levin, Studies in Philology, Vol. 92, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995) (pp. 383-410) Page Count: 28

mountainman

By definition they are reliant upon the assumed truth value of those postulates.
This OP is about the fundamental postulates.

For the context and use of the term "disconfirmable" see the above post mentioning negative evidence.


Possible fundamental Hypotheses about the genuine and authentic historical nature of "Paul"



SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (1): "Paul was a genuine and authentic historical figure"

The postulate "Paul was a genuine and authentic historical figure" is a postulate which is assumed as far as I can determine by those people who are essentially ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS ONLY arguing that Paul was a genuine and authentic historical figure. This postulate might be true, but it might be false. It is therefore quite disconfirmable.



SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (2): "Paul was NOT a genuine and authentic historical figure"

OTOH the postulate "Paul was NOT a genuine and authentic historical figure" is a postulate which is assumed as far as I can determine by those people who are essentially ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS ONLY arguing that Paul was NOT a genuine and authentic historical figure. This postulate might be true, but it might be false. It is therefore quite disconfirmable.



SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (3): "Paul more likely really existed than that he did not exist." (Doug's stated provisional hypothesis)

I can understand what Doug is stating and why he is stating it, but I am not confident that this statement is disconfirmable, I also suspect that while this statement does not explicitly rely upon the sample hypothesis (1), it does so implicitly.



SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (4): "Paul was actually the genuine and historical Pontius Pilate after retirement". (Received from an email)

The postulate "Paul was actually the genuine and historical Pontius Pilate after retirement" is a postulate which is assumed as far as I can determine by those people who are essentially ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS ONLY arguing that Paul and the genuine and authentic historical figure of Pontius Pilate were one and the same person. This postulate might be true, but it might be false. It is therefore quite disconfirmable.



SAMPLE HYPOTHESIS (5): ?????????????????????

Please feel free to share for discussion other possible hypotheses that might be considered as competing hypotheses in this matter.


OVER

J-D

I did not say above that something was both true and false at the same time. Possibly you misunderstood what I did say. It is hard to tell. I am not sure which is the 'something' you have in mind.

J-D

If such a case existed, the item would be a piece of evidence in the context of the investigation of those investigators to whom it tells something but would not be a piece of evidence in the context of the investigation of those investigators to whom it tells nothing.

mountainman

What about a provisionally held (hypothetical) truth?


Toto, why do not think that the existence of Paul is a suitable subject for a postulate (hypothesis)? Have you not already admitted that some scholars openly acknowledge as provisionallly true the hypothesis that "Paul was a genuine and authentic historical character"? What are they engaged in? Malpractice?

mountainman

I was discussing X and not X. You introduced X and Y at post #197

J-D

If you refer back to my earlier exchanges with Doug, you will see that we established that the question under discussion was this: 'Why are those documents known as 'the Pauline epistles' attributed to the authorship of somebody named Paul?'

I don't know whether that's a question you're interested in discussing. None of the statements you list above as sample hypotheses are (as they stand) fully relevant to that particular question. Perhaps you have some other question in mind and can state it clearly.

Again, if you refer back to my earlier exchanges with Doug, you will see that I listed the different possible explanations that occurred to me for attributions of authorship. If you can think of any that didn't occur to me, I'd be interested to see them.

Finally, if you refer back again, you will see that Doug summarised his reasons for preferring one of the possible answers to this question over the others. Doug did not say that the one preferred answer had been proved true or that the others had been proved false, but argued that the preferred answer was much more likely to be the case than any of the others mentioned. Reasons for the estimate were given and that opens the way for anybody who has grounds for disagreement to point out flaws in the reasoning or to refer to other reasons in support of a different estimate. You said yourself that comparative evaluation of 'postulates' is a necessary process. A comparative evaluation is exactly what was produced in this case. I regard that as a reasonable and useful sort of outcome for a historical investigation.

mountainman

It is being assumed that the investigation is not being defined by any one investigator but by the sum total of findings by all investigators. Therefore although an item of evidence MAY NOT represent a piece of evidence in the context of the investigation of those investigators to whom it tells nothing, so long as in the context of the investigation, the item of evidence says something to at least one of the other investigators, it is not mute with respect to the the sum total of findings by all investigators.

J-D

It may be appropriate, in the appropriate circumstances, to accept provisionally as true one or another specific statement about 'Paul', and Toto never said otherwise. What Toto said is it's not a suitable subject for postulation, and I agree. Provisionally accepting a statement as true is not necessarily the same thing as postulating it.

J-D

I still don't get your point. At no point did I say that X is both true and false at the same time.