Freethought & Rationalism Archive

TedM · 07-18-2011, 04:48 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

Common sense is the bias of one's cultural milieu. Hit and miss, just like intuition. It is no substitute for knowing what you are talking about, evidence and argument based on it. Scholars usually attempt to circumvent their biases, not embrace them.

Couldn't one say then that evidence is the bias of one's cultural milieu, because common sense is used to judge the quality of the evidence?

Knowing what you are talking about is what judges evidence.

Everything is filtered. All is bias. All is subjective. Knowing is subjective.

spin · 07-18-2011, 05:17 PM

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

Knowing what you are talking about is what judges evidence.

Everything is filtered. All is bias. All is subjective. Knowing is subjective.

Perhaps one should give up and be content with one's beliefs...

or else find ways of working against the bias. If you read work by Edward de Bono, you might know just how much of an impediment common sense is. He made a lot of effort finding ways to circumvent it in order to improve one's thinking. The reason why universities have teaching scholars is to provide means of bypassing the limitations of common sense.

Knowledge may be subjective but knowing what you are talking about is derived from the ethos of what you are trying to deal with, which in itself works against the errors of common sense. There is no way to totally avoid the filters you refer to, but you must fight to overcome them at every stage of your enquiries. Common sense won't help you in the uncommon issues we are dealing with. Common sense helps you in common situations. Hence the name.

gurugeorge · 07-18-2011, 05:32 PM

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

Common sense is the bias of one's cultural milieu. Hit and miss, just like intuition. It is no substitute for knowing what you are talking about, evidence and argument based on it. Scholars usually attempt to circumvent their biases, not embrace them.

Couldn't one say then that evidence is the bias of one's cultural milieu, because common sense is used to judge the quality of the evidence?

Knowing what you are talking about is what judges evidence.

Everything is filtered. All is bias. All is subjective. Knowing is subjective.

The last two aren't necessarily logically connected with the first two. At the limit, even a stopped clock is right once (or twice

) a day.

IOW, the fact that propositions are generated subjectively doesn't magically prevent them from being objectively true. They may yet be true, i.e. they may be candidates for truth.

mountainman · 07-18-2011, 06:07 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by TedM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Common sense is the bias of one's cultural milieu. Hit and miss, just like intuition. It is no substitute for knowing what you are talking about, evidence and argument based on it. Scholars usually attempt to circumvent their biases, not embrace them.

Couldn't one say then that evidence is the bias of one's cultural milieu, because common sense is used to judge the quality of the evidence?

Knowing what you are talking about is what judges evidence.

And also knowing what judgement of evidence you are ignoring.
Here is my version of fhe Nicaean Creed.

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Originally Posted by AM

ON PAGANS, JEWS, and CHRISTIANS

--- Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987

Chapter 1:

Biblical Studies and Classical Studies
Simple Reflections upon Historical Method
p.3

Principles of Historical research need not be different
from criteria of common sense. And common sense teaches
us that outsiders must not tell insiders what they should
do. I shall therefore not discuss directly what biblical
scholars are doing. They are the insiders.

What I can perhaps do usefully is to emphasise as briefly
as possible three closely interrelated points of my
experience as a classicial scholar who is on speaking terms
with biblical scholars.

1) our common experience in historical research;

2) the serious problems we all have to face because of the
current devaluation of the notion of evidence and of the
corresponding overappreciation of rhetoric and idealogy
as instruments for the analysis of the literary sources;
3) what seems to me the most fruitful field of collaboration
between classical and biblical scholars.

Let me admit from the start that I am rather impervious to
any claim that sacred history poses problems which are not
those of profane history.

p.7

One is almost embarrassed to have to say
that any statement a historian makes must
be supported by evidence which, according
to ordinary criteria of human judgement,
is adequate to prove the reality of the
statement itself. This has three
consequences:

1) Historians must be prepared to admit
in any given case that they are unable
to reach safe conclusions because the
evidence is insufficient; like judges,
historians must be ready to say 'not proven'.

2) The methods used to ascertain the value
of the evidence must continually be scrutinised
and perfected, because they are essential to
historical research.

3) The historians themselves must be judged
according to their ability to establish facts.

The form of exposition they choosen for their presentation
of the facts is a secondary consideration. I have of course
nothing to object in principle to the present multiplication
in methods of rhetorical analysis of historical texts.

You may have as much rhetorical analysis as you consider
necessary, provided it leads to the establishment of the
truth - or to the admission that truth is regretfully
out of reach in a given case.

But it must be clear once for all that Judges and Acts,
Heroditus and Tacitus are historical texts to be examined
with the purpose of recovering the truth of the past.

Hence the interesting conclusion that the notion of forgery
has a different meaning in historiography than it has in
other branches of literature or of art. A creative writer
or artist perpetuates a forgery every time he intends
to mislead his public about the date and authorship
of his own work.

But only a historian can be guilty of forging evidence
or of knowingly used forged evidence in order to
support his own historical discourse. One is never
simple-minded enough about the condemnation of
forgeries. Pious frauds are frauds, for which one
must show no piety - and no pity.

aa5874 · 07-18-2011, 06:24 PM

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Originally Posted by davidstarlingm

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Originally Posted by Toto

Thomas Verenna: Why the Criterion of Embarrassment is "inadequate" cites Mark Goodacre for the proposition that the criterion of embarrassment is incompatible with the criterion of multiple attestation.

Then why didn't any of the evangelists omit things that we know were embarrassing, like casting women as the initial witnesses of the resurrection, etc?

When we start our critical investigation by assuming that the authors edited arbitrarily without any commitment to accuracy, we've already skewed our approach.

Why do you assume that the Jesus stories are historical accounts?

The "criterion of embarrassment" is a logical fallacy because it suggests that FICTION stories will not have embarrassing scenes or that one should look for embarrassing details in an historically unknown writing to determine what is History.

mountainman · 07-18-2011, 06:45 PM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

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Originally Posted by davidstarlingm

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Originally Posted by Toto

Thomas Verenna: Why the Criterion of Embarrassment is "inadequate" cites Mark Goodacre for the proposition that the criterion of embarrassment is incompatible with the criterion of multiple attestation.

Then why didn't any of the evangelists omit things that we know were embarrassing, like casting women as the initial witnesses of the resurrection, etc?

When we start our critical investigation by assuming that the authors edited arbitrarily without any commitment to accuracy, we've already skewed our approach.

Why do you assume that the Jesus stories are historical accounts?

The reason that people assume that the Jesus stories are historical accounts is because the Christian education system introduces this assumption - either consciously or unconsciously - as a given Platonic truth. People have not been educated to the possibility that the Jesus stories are fictional fabrications - in fact they have been persuaded not to consider this logical option by the power of the hegemon of "Christian authority" in matters great and small. One only needs to go back a few centuries to see the church executing people for failing to conform to their ideologies.

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The "criterion of embarrassment" is a logical fallacy because it suggests that FICTION stories will not have embarrassing scenes or that one should look for embarrassing details in an historically unknown writing to determine what is History.

Also see Carrier's treatment of the "criterion of embarrassment" using Bayes Theorem. It is window dressing for the converted.

Toto · 07-18-2011, 07:03 PM

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Originally Posted by Juststeve

In trials we generally exclude statements made out of court by witnesses not under oath. Such statements are called hearsay. An exceptions is made when the out of court statement is contrary to the interest of the person making the statement. The idea is that one is not apt to tell a lie that is contrary to their interests and therefore the statement against interest has added credibility.

But this exception to the hearsay rule only allows the evidence to be considered by the court. The jury (or judge) is still the judge of credibility. And in many jurisdictions, only statements against financial interest or penal interest are admitted under this exception. A statement that is merely embarrassing for some social reason does not qualify.

And, as has been pointed out, while this criterion may sound logical, it is virtually impossible to use in practice. Modern scholars have no idea what was actually embarrassing in the first century, or whether the embarrassing statement was covering up something even more embarrassing.

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The criteria of embarrassment is based on the same idea. Neither are foolproof, but if [I]ts good enough for jury trial its good enough for hypothetical discussion between reasonable folk and mythers.

Steve

You mean a discussion between two mythicist camps? Why would they bother with this fairly useless criterion that even historicists like Mark Goodacre find pointless?

mountainman · 07-18-2011, 07:17 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by Juststeve

The criteria of embarrassment is based on the same idea. Neither are foolproof, but if [I]ts good enough for jury trial its good enough for hypothetical discussion between reasonable folk and mythers.

Steve

You mean a discussion between two mythicist camps?

The earflier statement begs the question that the mythical argument is unreasonable while the HJ argument is the only reasonable position. Good catch Toto. It's beginning to be rather an insidious overtone.

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Why would they bother with this fairly useless criterion that even historicists like Mark Goodacre find pointless?

blkgayatheist · 07-18-2011, 07:39 PM

Is the criterion of embarrassment related to "shame culture"? I remember being lectured by someone here who said I wouldn't accept the Silence of Paul argument for MJ if I understood "shame culture" which meant that Paul was embarrassed about not having had personal interaction with earthly Jesus like the disciples and that's why he virtually ignores the biography of Gospel Jesus

ApostateAbe · 07-18-2011, 07:51 PM

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Originally Posted by blkgayatheist

Is the criterion of embarrassment related to "shame culture"? I remember being lectured by someone here who said I wouldn't accept the Silence of Paul argument for MJ if I understood "shame culture" which meant that Paul was embarrassed about not having had personal interaction with earthly Jesus like the disciples and that's why he virtually ignores the biography of Gospel Jesus

Yeah, the basic idea is that writers are expected to write according to their own interests, and the criterion of embarrassment is just a particular formulation founded on that pattern. A more generalized criterion is the criterion of dissimilarity, which helps us to make both positive and negative conclusions of the history given the texts. If a claim is similar to the author's interests, then it is more likely (not certain) to be non-historical. If a claim is dissimilar to the author's interests, then it is more likely (not certain) to be historical. The point is to find the best historical explanations and interpretations given the texts and a few rough ideas of the author's interests, among other things. Silences also need explanations the same as positive evidences, and often we can find ready explanations for silences by looking at the interests of the author. Silence can be a reflection of embarrassment, such as how the gospel of John omitted the baptism of Jesus but included everything else associated with the baptism.

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07-18-2011, 07:39 PM	#19
blkgayatheist Regular Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 488	Is the criterion of embarrassment related to "shame culture"? I remember being lectured by someone here who said I wouldn't accept the Silence of Paul argument for MJ if I understood "shame culture" which meant that Paul was embarrassed about not having had personal interaction with earthly Jesus like the disciples and that's why he virtually ignores the biography of Gospel Jesus

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