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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Historicity
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peter damian
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# 18584
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Posted
Bill Vallicella replies here to my post here on reference to ‘Biblical characters’. Bill makes the interesting (and IMO incoherent) distinction between reference to Biblical characters and ‘reference to really existent persons’, or ‘beings in external reality’. When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
This is connected with the idea of the ‘historicity’ of a character or event. What do we mean by ‘historicity’? Do we mean whether the character really existed or the event really took place? Or do we mean whether there is a reference available in external or independent textual sources?
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http://trinities.org/blog
Posts: 73 | From: london | Registered: Apr 2016
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Why do you ask?
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Love wins
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
I suspect you'll tell me I don't get it, but I think this is the wrong question to ask.
If God were not objectively real, then it would be relevant whether different people who refer to God are talking about the same imaginary being.
However, if God is objectively real - as I believe - the question that matters is 'what is the real, objective, God like?' If different people appear to be describing God differently, that's completely explicable on the basis that some may know more about him than others. If we are comparing two people's understanding of God, one perception may be more like the real God than the other, or they may both be equally way off-beam.
As for the question quote:
When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
that's really one of whether you think the New Testament is describing events that actually happened. That is not the same as whether you think you are supposed to believe in literal inerrancy. Saying one is not persuaded of the latter doesn't let a person off coming to terms with the former.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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mr cheesy
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# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Bill Vallicella replies here to my post here on reference to ‘Biblical characters’. Bill makes the interesting (and IMO incoherent) distinction between reference to Biblical characters and ‘reference to really existent persons’, or ‘beings in external reality’. When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
As far as I can see, you've introduced something into the discussion above that was not included in the original blog discussion; Jesus and Pilate.
In fact, Bill Vallicella is specifically talking about mythical characters from distant antiquity - Moses and God - not New Testament characters.
Fairly obviously, Jesus and Pilate could have existed and interacted whilst Moses was a mythical character. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
A deeper question, it seems to me is about Truth and the nature of truth. Can a myth be true even if it is a made up narrative - or includes elements of made up narrative?
And does that really matter anyway? Surely our perceptions of characters from myth and history change so significantly that we might as well be talking a totally different language to those who thought about them before.
There probably was a character called Socrates. But how much of the Republic was just made up by Plato? We have no idea. And which Socrates are we talking about anyway - the great ironic philosophical genius, the private-eye style satirist, the man who liked to go to the baths to get his rocks off with the boys?
quote:
This is connected with the idea of the ‘historicity’ of a character or event. What do we mean by ‘historicity’? Do we mean whether the character really existed or the event really took place? Or do we mean whether there is a reference available in external or independent textual sources?
I think it comes down to truth. Some want to insist that the scriptures must be accepted to be 100% true in all respects - historically, archaeologically, philosophically - because for any of it to be myth would be an attack upon their sacred cow.
Other views are available. Some believe it is not a historical document, but it still helpful in other respects, and that the sacredness is not related to the extent to which all the events happened as described.
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arse
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
This stuff is unknowable except through faith, at least from our perspective. There was a Roman guy called Pilate who was an official in Palestine, we think. But is he the guy we meet in the gospels? Does he say and do stuff in the gospels to make points about Jesus and God that the ridgy-didge Roman guy actually didn't say or do? I reckon it's gotta be a distinct possibility, and I reckon so from inside the circle of Christian faith.
We must remember that the gospels are not reportage or accounts of facts but aids to conversion.
I'm trying to set up a modern parallel example, but its tricky. I might come back to it later. Time is running through my fingers.
I love this stuff.
[ 13. May 2016, 07:52: Message edited by: simontoad ]
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Human
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
Peter Damian:
I find your post a bit difficult to follow, but the question it raises is one which I find very important, so I will try to reply.
quote:
When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
This really touches on how we understand the type of literature that the gospels are, and even whether we are able at the remove to know that. So in most fiction books, the characters are made-up characters, but it is not uncommon for the author to introduce characters into their novels who obviously refers to real existing people, and this is commonplace in historical novels.
Most people would understand the synoptics, at least, to be accounts of real existent persons, although it goes without saying that once they are incorporated into a narrative, they are also literary characters. So most christians would believe that Jesus and Pilate are both
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Bill makes the interesting (and IMO incoherent) distinction between reference to Biblical characters and ‘reference to really existent persons’, or ‘beings in external reality’. When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
There are certainly contexts in which we can make the distinction. We can talk about Hilary Mantel's Cromwell or Shakespeare's Prince Hal in distinction from the actually existent persons in historical reality. Even so, it would be meaningful for some purposes (but not for others) to say that Prince Hal is a really existing person but that Falstaff is pretty much fictional.
Whether Vallicella's post is one of those contexts is a different matter. It seems to me rather obvious that the Biblical character Allah or God is precisely what Muslims do not believe in, since they believe in God or Allah as depicted in the Qu'ran. The question is whether the Qu'ran is a false (from a Christian point of view) depiction of the same God as in the Bible.
His point might apply better to Jehovah's Witnesses, or even more so, Mormons. They do believe in the God depicted in the Bible according to their interpretation, but it's not clear whether they believe in the same God as other more mainstream Christians. (Jehovah's Witnesses because they specifically claim that mainstream Christians believe in a different God, and Mormons because aiui their God is so metaphysically distinct.)
Either way I think it's unhelpful and imprecise to use 'idol' for a wrong conception of God that might not exist, as opposed to something like a statue or money that does exist but is treated falsely as a god.
quote:
This is connected with the idea of the ‘historicity’ of a character or event. What do we mean by ‘historicity’? Do we mean whether the character really existed or the event really took place? Or do we mean whether there is a reference available in external or independent textual sources?
It would depend on context. Normally it would refer to whether the character really existed.
[ 13. May 2016, 07:58: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
Peter Damian:
Interesting question.
quote:
When Jesus meets Pilate, is it that Jesus is a ‘Biblical character’ but Pilate is a ‘really existing person’?
This touches on what type of literature the gospels are. In novels, the characters are made-up characters, but it is quite common for the author to introduce characters into their novels which are obviously really existing persons. We can miss this when the novel is before our time and the really existing person is not that famous.
Most christians understand the synoptics to be accounts of really existing persons, although once they are incorporated into a narrative, they are also literary characters, making Jesus and Pilate both.
quote:
What do we mean by ‘historicity’? Do we mean whether the character really existed or the event really took place? Or do we mean whether there is a reference available in external or independent textual sources?
I think most of us want to take "historicity" as referring to something that actually happened, but there is the problem of the non availability of time-machines, which makes us dependent on historical records or artefacts. So that seems to lead us to the second definition. But what is an "independent textual source"? And what can we know about the intention of the author? I don't know anybody who believes that Swift was intending to present Gulliver as a really existing person, but some people would take a different view of the Arthurian Legends, and most people woud assume that Bede's history was all about really existing persons.
Then we want a reliable textual source, but we are back in the bind that we have no means to know without our time machine.
And we know that even well respected textual sources can turn out to be total bullshit. I'm recently reading Josephine Tey's slightly oddball novel which turns out to be about the controversy surrounding Richard III - worth reading and good fun. She dismantles quite a few revered histories, e.g. the Scottish Covenanters, and of course the Princes in the Tower. (Not a trained historian, though).
So I would say that something is to be understood as historically true, if it is attested by texts that we have good reason to believe are intending to assert really existing person/events and are sufficiently reliable that we are prepared to give them credence.
Beyond that, lies Faith.
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
With the usual health warnings, here is the Wiki article and links to others.
I thought this was a good observation.
quote:
Questions regarding historicity concern not just the issue of "what really happened," but also the issue of how modern observers can come to know "what really happened." This second issue is closely tied to historical research practices and methodologies for analyzing the reliability of primary sources and other evidence.
There seems little wrong in an a priori position that what the modern observer finds in the historical records is likely to a be a mixture of what happened and story, legend or myth about what happened. As a result we have partial pictures of people who really existed.
I think the New Testament provides us with pictures of the Christ of faith. These pictures are based on real events involving real people, two of whom are known to us by the names Jesus and Pilate. What the modern observer, or participant in the life of the church today, makes of this witness (which is in itself part of the witness provided by various traditions - or Traditions) is very variable. As can be seen all over the place, including this discussion forum.
This quotation from the Wiki article points out this this variability is to be expected.
quote:
Because various methodologies thematize historicity differently, it's not possible to reduce historicity to a single structure to be represented. Some methodologies (for example historicism), can make historicity subject to constructions of history based on submerged value commitments.
Nice phrase "submerged value commitments".
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peter damian
Shipmate
# 18584
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Posted
Dafyd: “We can talk about Hilary Mantel's Cromwell or Shakespeare's Prince Hal in distinction from the actually existent persons in historical reality.”
On this view, the person that Hilary Mantel called ‘Cromwell’ in her book Wolf Hall is not numerically the same person as the one called ‘Oliver Cromwell’ in this Wikipedia article, who lived from 1599 to 1658. On that same view, the characters called ‘Napoleon’, ‘Alexander’, ‘Kutuzov’ etc in War and Peace are not one and the same people as those referred to by historians. That’s a challenging idea. I would say that historical fiction is a mixture of claims about characters who really existed, some of which claims are true, others of which are clearly false, and claims about individuals who never existed at all. Some of the false claims about the historical characters involve them meeting the fictional characters.
Simontoad: “We must remember that the gospels are not reportage or accounts of facts but aids to conversion.”
But presumably these ‘aids to conversion’ only work if the reportage is believed to be true. So, I report that Jesus walked on water to convince you that Jesus had supernatural powers, with the aim of converting you. This depends on you believing that my report is true. Or is it that I preface this by saying ‘It didn’t really happen, I am just trying to convert you by telling you this false story’. Hmm.
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http://trinities.org/blog
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Galloping Granny
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# 13814
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Posted
Are we talking about fact versus truth?
After looking at biblical narratives and reading Crossan's
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Simontoad: “We must remember that the gospels are not reportage or accounts of facts but aids to conversion.”
But presumably these ‘aids to conversion’ only work if the reportage is believed to be true. So, I report that Jesus walked on water to convince you that Jesus had supernatural powers, with the aim of converting you. This depends on you believing that my report is true. Or is it that I preface this by saying ‘It didn’t really happen, I am just trying to convert you by telling you this false story’. Hmm.
First, conversion belongs to the Lord. Nobody ought to be "trying to convert" anyone.
But more fundamentally, you appear to be asserting that only things which are 100% factually accurate are good for teaching.
Do you believe it is factually accurate that the world was plunged into darkness at the crucifixion (Mark 15:33) or that the dead rose from their graves (Matthew 27:52)?
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arse
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
On this view, the person that Hilary Mantel called ‘Cromwell’ in her book Wolf Hall is not numerically the same person as the one called ‘Oliver Cromwell’ in this Wikipedia article, who lived from 1599 to 1658.
Well, that's certainly true, because Hilary Mantel has been providing a fascinating historical portrait of Thomas Cromwell. Mantel's portrait builds on generally accepted information about Thomas Cromwell's life - as can be seen from the Wiki article - and seeks to present a possible (or probable) view both of his character and his place in the history of these turbulent times.
Strictly speaking, what Mantel gives us is not history. I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks she has done a remarkable job in providing a plausible illumination of what actually happened. She is a convincing story-teller.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Mantel's portrait builds on generally accepted information about Thomas Cromwell's life - as can be seen from the Wiki article - and seeks to present a possible (or probable) view both of his character and his place in the history of these turbulent times.
Strictly speaking, what Mantel gives us is not history. I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks she has done a remarkable job in providing a plausible illumination of what actually happened. She is a convincing story-teller.
I don't understand the question of "whether this is the same person". What does that even mean in the context of a writer using some factual basis for a character in a book?
A woman near here was transported to Tasmania after the Swing Riots of 1830. If I was to gather the scarce information that exists about her and write something to fill in the gaps, am I writing about her or not?
edit: in my view, probably not. There is highly likely to be a lot that I'm writing which is totally different to her actual character because that detail about her life doesn't exist.
[ 13. May 2016, 09:13: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
I hit the wrong button when I’d barely started. Trying again.
Are we talking about fact and truth?
My thoughts on any biblical narrative, OT or NT.
The story of Jonah is a great yarn (that big sulk at the end always gets me) but does anyone here think he was a real character? It does convey the truth, unpalatable as it may have seem to some, that the God that the Jews regarded as their own personal God was equally concerned for the Ninevites. That’s my reading – one comment I heard was that God wanted Jonah to convert them. Well, that’s how she saw it.
So Pilate’s words are not factual, and maybe the confrontation wasn’t anything like what we read (maybe there never was a personal confrontation), but it does make sense within the context of the narrative.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
The story of Jonah is a great yarn (that big sulk at the end always gets me) but does anyone here think he was a real character?
I don't think it matters, to be honest. Parables are true in a much deeper sense than whether or not the characters existed in the way they are depicted.
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arse
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
mr cheesy
I'm very much with you. Hilary Mantel is a professional author, not a professional historian. But she writes stories about people who lived.
There is a kind of parallel between exegesis and eisegesis. Eisegesis is generally regarded as poor exegesis since its creative (or fanciful) syntheses are thought not to be based on critical examination of the texts in context. Story-telling about historical characters is generally regarded as poor history because it often goes further than critical examination of historical records would allow.
Yet both eisegesis and story-telling can illuminate the meaning and the possibilities inherent in historical events in ways that the more analytical (one might argue more soundly-based) approaches may not. I think this is certainly true about Wolf Hall.
I guess the issue is this one. Are they to be trusted to illuminate what actually happened, despite their lack of discipline? Some folks will always say no. For me, I find the answer is "sometimes"!
[ 13. May 2016, 09:46: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
For edification and amusement I present xkcd's Stories of the Past and Future, which helpfully charts out various works by date of publication and how far in the future/past they were set from their date of publication. The Gospels fall into the area labeled "Former Period Pieces", which is defined as:
quote:
Stories set in the past, but created long enough ago that they were published closer to their setting than to today.
Modern audiences may not recognize which parts were supposed to sound old.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
PeterDamian.
Sorry about double post. It happens.
quote:
On this view, the person that Hilary Mantel called ‘Cromwell’ in her book Wolf Hall is not numerically the same person as the one called ‘Oliver Cromwell’ in this Wikipedia article, who lived from 1599 to 1658.
Leaving aside the confusion about Cromwells, I don't see the point here, and for me it has a whif of arcane philosophy about it.
I assume you think that by adding the word "numerically" you are saying more than "they are not the same person". But I can't see what? Can you explain.
But I see no basis for your assertion. If you asked HM, I'm sure she would tell you that she is talking about the "real" Thomas Cromwell, and would probably admit that she has a slant on him which is not universally accepted. Like Josephine Tey's slant on Richard III.
But why does that make it not the same person? You will end up believing that for each "real" person in the "external" world, there are miriads of other persons which are that person's reflection in the minds of all those that know them. Maybe this is a philsophical position. Sounds daft to me (but prejudice for the english school of "common-sense" philosophy admitted).
When I talk of my Sister in Law, I have different views about her character and motivations from my wife, her daughters, and no doubt Uncle Tom Cobley et al. So are there several hundred of them.
A bit confusing for me.
![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Dafyd: “We can talk about Hilary Mantel's Cromwell or Shakespeare's Prince Hal in distinction from the actually existent persons in historical reality.”
On this view, the person that Hilary Mantel called ‘Cromwell’ in her book Wolf Hall is not numerically the same person as the one called ‘Oliver Cromwell’ in this Wikipedia article, who lived from 1599 to 1658. On that same view, the characters called ‘Napoleon’, ‘Alexander’, ‘Kutuzov’ etc in War and Peace are not one and the same people as those referred to by historians. That’s a challenging idea. I would say that historical fiction is a mixture of claims about characters who really existed, some of which claims are true, others of which are clearly false, and claims about individuals who never existed at all. Some of the false claims about the historical characters involve them meeting the fictional characters.
I don't believe that historical fiction is making claims, true or false. Certainly my reaction to the statement that Mantel is filling out her sources by making stuff up is different from the reaction I'd have to a historian filling out her sources. Likewise, my reaction to the discovery that Mantel has altered details in pursuit of a more interesting story.
Let's switch to Richard III, as that has a greater weight of critical commentary.
Consider a statement such as: Richard is amoral but most of the other characters' professions of virtue are also hypocritical; the difference is that Richard acknowledges this to himself. It's hard to read that as being about the historical Richard III.
There are connections between Richard as presented in the play and the historical individual in that it's not wrongheaded to consider the play as propaganda in favour of the Tudors; but at the same time there are lots of important things to say about the play utterly ignoring any relations to historical personages.
If someone is writing about the depiction of Napoleon in nineteenth-century fiction, the accuracy of the depictions is only one aspect of what I'd expect them to consider (and even then only in so far as it illuminates what the writers are doing with Napoleon).
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
I would say that historical fiction is a mixture of claims about characters who really existed, some of which claims are true, others of which are clearly false, and claims about individuals who never existed at all. Some of the false claims about the historical characters
Funny, this would be an extremely accurate description of most of what we call History.
The difference between the two is honesty of intention.
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Hallellou, hallellou
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
But I see no basis for your assertion. If you asked HM, I'm sure she would tell you that she is talking about the "real" Thomas Cromwell, and would probably admit that she has a slant on him which is not universally accepted. Like Josephine Tey's slant on Richard III.
PeterDamian is paraphrasing what he thinks are the consequences of my views, which he disagrees with (unless I've completely misunderstood him). You're really addressing your criticisms to me rather than to him.
My main argument is that if I'm talking about Wolf Hall, I can make statements about Cromwell or Henry or Anne Boleyn as they appear in the novel that do not necessarily refer back to the real world. That makes it difficult to say that in talking about Mantel's depiction of Cromwell I am talking about the historical Cromwell.
Likewise, Mantel writes that Cromwell on the morning that his wife and children died had a vision of his wife saying goodbye to him which he mistook for the living woman saying goodbye for the day. There is (as far as I know) no reason to think anything like that actually happened. Yet it would be wrongheaded to criticise Mantel for making assertions without evidence.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
I think the OP is trying to grapple with the multiplicity of characters on the page. The Richard III in Shakespeare is not the same person as the Richard in the novel by Josephine Tey, who is slightly but clearly different from the character in the novels by Sharon Kay Penman. And all those Richards are not the same as the skeleton found under the car park recently, who is not quite the same as the actual man who sat on the throne. And if tomorrow somebody writes a rap song about King Dickon, that'll be different too.
There is nothing to be done about this. We are infinite people, containing universes, and if you poke us more comes out. (The quantum physicists argue that all reality is like this.) God is infinite and I guess He can handle it.
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anteater
Ship's pest-controller
# 11435
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Posted
Dafyd, Brenda,
This is getting subtle. I can see where you are right, but the way you express it doesn't come naturally to me. So I suppose I would like to know about whether it is any more than a question of how we like to speak.
So I tend to reserve the word "person" for a real person, and would naturally rewrite Branda's opening statement as: "The [portrayal of] Richard III in Shakespeare is not the same (person) as the [portrayal of] Richard in the novel by Josephine Tey . . ". Which of course is true.
Is there any purpose in stating that by portraying the real Richard III according to a writer's partial knowledge and prejudices, the writer has created a new person? I just don't think it makes common sense to say there are multiple Richards, or Cromwell's, as opposed to varying and often contradictory portrayals of him.
I agree with Dafyd, that you can discuss a character in a play without reference to the real person, and presumably, actors who are working out how to portray Richard III are looking to the play to see the character that is being portrayed, and in that case would give primacy to the text of the play, even if they thought it was historical bollocks.
And the reason why this matters to me is that I am trying to get into the mindset of those, like my Vicar, who talk naturally about Christ as portrayed in the Gospels, such that if you didn't know, you'd assume he believed it all happened just like it is told. Except I know he doesn't believe any such thing. He would accept that a lot is non-objective, but will still cheerfully talk about Jesus walking on the water.
Something within my literalistic mind doesn't get this, but I'd like at least to fully understand, even if I later follow a different approach.
[ 13. May 2016, 19:11: Message edited by: anteater ]
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Schnuffle schnuffle.
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
You don't even need the veil of fiction. Consider you, yourself. Your spouse knows you, but not all of you -- not, for instance, the bits of you that your best friend when you were four knew. Your employer knows another slightly different subset of you, and your parents yet another. Nobody has the complete picture. You know quite a lot of you, but even you yourself probably do not have it all, not if Sigmund Freud was right. Your subconscious motivations and biases can be teased out but only by careful research and/or analysis. We may hope that all the various overlapping bits of ourselves are known (and orchestrated) by God, and that in Heaven we will, at long last, come into focus and know ourselves, and be known, as what we ought to be.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Is there any purpose in stating that by portraying the real Richard III according to a writer's partial knowledge and prejudices, the writer has created a new person? I just don't think it makes common sense to say there are multiple Richards, or Cromwell's, as opposed to varying and often contradictory portrayals of him.
I believe from what the OP has said in other threads that he's coming from a background in analytic philosophy. I'm afraid that analytic philosophers have a tendency to be interested in things that are slightly skew to what people who haven't read a lot of analytic philosophy are interested in.
Shakespeare's Richard III isn't a person. He's a fictional person (fictional persons and real persons are not different types of person).
Since you can say true things about Shakespeare's Richard III that aren't true of the historical Richard III, we can't say that they're the same. Does that mean that there is a person or thing that is Shakespeare's Richard III? I don't think that's a question with a yes/no answer - it depends on why you're asking.
If you're thinking about different fictional works in which Richard III appears as a character you can equally well speak of all the portrayals as different things with no reference to the original (as perhaps with depictions of the Greek gods, for example) or as slanted portrayals of the same character. It all depends on what your interest is.
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And the reason why this matters to me is that I am trying to get into the mindset of those, like my Vicar, who talk naturally about Christ as portrayed in the Gospels, such that if you didn't know, you'd assume he believed it all happened just like it is told. Except I know he doesn't believe any such thing. He would accept that a lot is non-objective, but will still cheerfully talk about Jesus walking on the water.
I am relatively historicist about Jesus; I don't think every detail of the gospels matters, and there are clearly some bits which can't all be accurate (you need some arbitrary criteria to make out that they all accurately report Pilate's inscription on the cross for example), but I think it must be broad strokes the kind of thing that actually happened.
I suppose, trying to understand a position I don't agree with: A lot of people find valuable insights into the meaning of life from avowedly fictional works: Shakespeare or Tolstoy or George Eliot. So they'd argue, why not from the Gospels even if the Gospels aren't historically true. We can say Hamlet says true things about the meaning of life even if none of it actually happened.
I personally am not convinced.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
Where I come from, we talk about how fiction is both true and not true. Certainly fiction is fictional -- not fact. But it is not not-true either. It is truth, but in a different way.
Here is someone thinking about it.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Jesus and Pilate. The two likely exist. What exactly might have transpired between them? We'd have to know who it was who reported Pilate's questioning of him so that it could be put into the gospels. The source is unlikely to have been Pilate, a Roman soldier or other Roman. Which then leaves some Jewish council person who would seem unlikely to have reported things quite like it is written. Thus, I'd tend to declare the quizzing of Jesus by Pilate as pious but not factual. It has truthiness but isn't true.
Likewise, it is very unlikely that the interaction and temptation of Jesus and Satan after Jesus' baptism occurred as written. If so, who reported it to the gospel writers? It is more obviously fictitious, but designed to indicate something the original story inventors thought was important.
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Is there any purpose in stating that by portraying the real Richard III according to a writer's partial knowledge and prejudices, the writer has created a new person? I just don't think it makes common sense to say there are multiple Richards, or Cromwell's, as opposed to varying and often contradictory portrayals of him.
Surely there has to be a point where the portrayal of a real person is so divergent from reality that the portrayal has to be considered a different person? For example, it seems likely that Bram Stoker did little more than borrow Vlad Țepeș' nickname when creating Count Dracula. I'm not sure considering Stoker's Dracula (or Lugosi's) to be the same "person" as Vlad the Impaler is in any way clarifying.
Another example is James Bond, deliberately named after an American ornithologist. The British superspy is "based" on the ornithologist insofar as Ian Flemming deliberately borrowed the name (with permission) but other than that there doesn't seem to be much overlap. Does that overlap mean that they're the same person?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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peter damian
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# 18584
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Posted
Apologies for the confusion between the Cromwells, which I should have known as I saw the series and read Wolf Hall. Yes, Thomas Cromwell. How embarrassing.
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anteater I assume you think that by adding the word "numerically" you are saying more than "they are not the same person". But I can't see what? Can you explain.
It’s a philosophical thing just to clear up any confusion between qualitative identity or difference, and numerical identity or difference. We say ‘Thomas is not himself’, meaning he is behaving differently, not feeling well, and so on. We don’t mean ‘Thomas is not Thomas’, in the sense that he and himself are two different yet oddly identical people. That’s all.
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If you asked HM, I'm sure she would tell you that she is talking about the "real" Thomas Cromwell, and would probably admit that she has a slant on him which is not universally accepted. Like Josephine Tey's slant on Richard III.
Agree.
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Dafyd My main argument is that if I'm talking about Wolf Hall, I can make statements about Cromwell or Henry or Anne Boleyn as they appear in the novel that do not necessarily refer back to the real world.
Do you mean simply making statements about Anne Boleyn that are false, or is there something deeper signified by the ‘as they appear’ qualifier? As though there is this different Anne-Boleyn intentional entity, drifting inbetween the real world and fictionality, numerically different from the really real Anne Boleyn. Normally when people use the ‘as’ locution, they are signalling something like this.
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Likewise, Mantel writes that Cromwell on the morning that his wife and children died had a vision of his wife saying goodbye to him which he mistook for the living woman saying goodbye for the day.
Do you mean it was the vision of his wife that said goodbye? I.e. that the subject of the verb ‘said goodbye’ was the vision of his wife? Or did he falsely imagine or envision that his wife said goodbye?
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Brenda Clough I think the OP is trying to grapple with the multiplicity of characters on the page. The Richard III in Shakespeare is not the same person as the Richard in the novel by Josephine Tey, who is slightly but clearly different from the character in the novels by Sharon Kay Penman.
Here again the difficulty of what ‘the same’ and ‘different’ mean. Qualitative difference is when one and the same person (numerically) is portrayed as being qualitatively different. I think you mean this.
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And all those Richards are not the same as the skeleton found under the car park recently, who is not quite the same as the actual man who sat on the throne.
I would say that a skeleton is not numerically or qualitatively the same as the living man. Surely the skeleton is of a man who was once living?
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Anteater So I tend to reserve the word "person" for a real person, and would naturally rewrite Branda's opening statement as: "The [portrayal of] Richard III in Shakespeare is not the same (person) as the [portrayal of] Richard in the novel by Josephine Tey . . ". Which of course is true.
Not sure about this. The portrayal of a person is not a person, any more than a picture of a person is a person. There can be two pictures of Richard III. These are numerically different (because they are two), but they are of one and the same person.
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Dafyd Shakespeare's Richard III isn't a person. He's a fictional person (fictional persons and real persons are not different types of person).
I disagree. Shakespeare's Richard III is certainly a person, but Shakespeare says many things about him that are probably not true. But then you say that fictional persons and real persons are not different types of person, which I agree with.
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Croeos Surely there has to be a point where the portrayal of a real person is so divergent from reality that the portrayal has to be considered a different person? For example, it seems likely that Bram Stoker did little more than borrow Vlad Țepeș' nickname when creating Count Dracula. I'm not sure considering Stoker's Dracula (or Lugosi's) to be the same "person" as Vlad the Impaler is in any way clarifying.
That’s a difficult question. Another difficult question is whether Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is the same person as Jane Austen’s father, who she based the character on.
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mr cheesy
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# 3330
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Posted
I'm sorry, I must be thick because I'm not following the significance of something being "numerically" the same person in fiction and in real life.
If Shakespeare made up a load of stuff about King Richard, what does it matter if it has any relationship to the historical truth? How does it make any difference knowing that there was indeed a King Richard? Does that mean it is a "more real" character than Shylock if the latter was not a historical character?
I really don't understand what this hair is that is being sliced. It seems to be suggested above that the only useful character is the one based on a real character (even if the only relationship to the real person is the name). That's nonsense, surely.
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arse
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Peter Damian
I'm not sure that historical representations, (reconstructions, accounts, views, analyses) of past people, or events (whether by historians or imaginative authors) are subject to simple true-false distinctions. Our understandings of the past are fluid, subject to change by the uncovering of fresh information, or prior inaccuracies or misinterpretations. Although the past is not fluid, the best understanding of it is fluid. It changes through time, even though the events themselves obviously do not.
When we looks at particular reported, or recorded, events to check whether or not they happened, the most general truth which applies is that we may be able to recover truth as facticity (e.g. Ann Boleyn was beheaded with a sword) but we are in much greater difficulty in recovering truth as meaning; the background story, the roles of the key players, the reasons why they acted as they did.
I think this forms part of the fascination of historical inquiry. We are rarely satisfied with truth as facticity. We are driven on by curiosity, a desire to understand why.
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peter damian
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# 18584
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm sorry, I must be thick because I'm not following the significance of something being "numerically" the same person in fiction and in real life.
If Shakespeare made up a load of stuff about King Richard, what does it matter if it has any relationship to the historical truth? How does it make any difference knowing that there was indeed a King Richard? Does that mean it is a "more real" character than Shylock if the latter was not a historical character?
I really don't understand what this hair is that is being sliced. It seems to be suggested above that the only useful character is the one based on a real character (even if the only relationship to the real person is the name). That's nonsense, surely.
Is it the conceptual distinction between numerical and qualitative identity that you find problematic. It’s very important in philosoph. This SEP article has something about it. In short, the same person can change, or be portrayed as having different characteristics or qualities. That is qualitative difference. The characteristics are different, not the person. Or we can ask whether George Orwell was the same as Eric Blair. In this case not, because they were numerically one, one and the same person, identical in number etc.
Or is it that the distinction makes perfect sense, but you don’t see the applicability? Well it’s fantasticall important in the theology of the trinity, for example. Also for the ‘God’/ ‘Allah’ problem. Is it that Muslims think that Allah is one and the same deity as the Christian God, i.e. that they are one and the same? In that case, one or the other side is heretical. Or is it that the conception embedded in the name ‘Allah’ is so utterly different from that embedded in ‘God’, as understood by Christians, that they are referring to, or aiming to refer to, different beings? In this case, there is no heresy. Neither side is claiming that there is more than one God. However, since they regard the referents as different, there must be idolatry. The Christian thinks that there is only one God. S/he also thinks that God is the only God. Since s/he also thinks that if there were such a being as Allah, Allah would be numerically different from God, which is impossible, since God is the only God. Therefore there is no such being as Allah, ergo etc.
Does that make sense now?
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peter damian
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# 18584
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Posted
quote:
Barnabas62 I'm not sure that historical representations, (reconstructions, accounts, views, analyses) of past people, or events (whether by historians or imaginative authors) are subject to simple true-false distinctions. Our understandings of the past are fluid, subject to change by the uncovering of fresh information, or prior inaccuracies or misinterpretations.
So you are saying that the principle of excluded middle does not apply to historical statements? The principle says that any statement or its denial must be true. I.e. either ‘snow is white’ is true, or ‘snow is not white’ is true, no third possibility.
Or are you saying, as your second statement suggests, that our beliefs about truth and falsity can change? That is certainly the case. Before Pythagoras, the Greeks believed that the Morning Star and the Evening Star were two heavenly bodies (another question of numerical identity, of course). Then they discovered they were one and the same (i.e. Venus). I would argue that before the discovery, it was still true that they were one and the same, but people had a false belief about Venus. Then they acquired knowledge. So it was the belief, rather than the fact, that changed.
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mr cheesy
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# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Is it the conceptual distinction between numerical and qualitative identity that you find problematic. It’s very important in philosoph. This SEP article has something about it. In short, the same person can change, or be portrayed as having different characteristics or qualities. That is qualitative difference. The characteristics are different, not the person. Or we can ask whether George Orwell was the same as Eric Blair. In this case not, because they were numerically one, one and the same person, identical in number etc.
No, my problem is that is bullshit. It makes no difference if the person is an invented name or has the same name as a person who really exists. If they're fiction, they're both made up - neither has any relationship to the true person.
And history is all subjective anyway. That's the thing that others have been saying above: every historian perceives the facts in a different way (and facts may indeed change) so the reality is that there is always more than one vision of any individual available.
This whole fascination with trying to parse whether an individual is the same person in a range of reports is utterly bankrupt. As others have also said, many characters in fiction are based on other people, so trying to decide whether any person in a fictional account is quote unquote numerically the same as the historical person is waste of effort.
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Or is it that the distinction makes perfect sense, but you don’t see the applicability? Well it’s fantasticall important in the theology of the trinity, for example. Also for the ‘God’/ ‘Allah’ problem. Is it that Muslims think that Allah is one and the same deity as the Christian God, i.e. that they are one and the same? In that case, one or the other side is heretical. Or is it that the conception embedded in the name ‘Allah’ is so utterly different from that embedded in ‘God’, as understood by Christians, that they are referring to, or aiming to refer to, different beings? In this case, there is no heresy. Neither side is claiming that there is more than one God. However, since they regard the referents as different, there must be idolatry. The Christian thinks that there is only one God. S/he also thinks that God is the only God. Since s/he also thinks that if there were such a being as Allah, Allah would be numerically different from God, which is impossible, since God is the only God. Therefore there is no such being as Allah, ergo etc.
Does that make sense now?
No it doesn't. I don't do this kind of stupid philosophy. The reality is that people perceive things in different ways, so it is utterly consistent for there to be a deity and at the same time for different groups to have different perceptions and understandings of what he is like.
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arse
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peter damian
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# 18584
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Posted
quote:
Brenda Where I come from, we talk about how fiction is both true and not true. Certainly fiction is fictional -- not fact. But it is not not-true either. It is truth, but in a different way.
I don’t understand ‘truth in a different way’. Truth is saying of what is the case, that it is the case. If I say that snow is white, and if snow is white, then I speak truly. If I deny that which is not so, I also speak the truth. E.g. If I say that snow is not black, and it is not black, I am speaking the truth.
‘Fiction’ just means ‘invented’, or made up (fingere). I would distinguish (1) saying something you believe to be true, but which is false, which is not lying, (2) saying something you believe to be false, and which is false, but without the intention to deceive, which is fiction in the literary sense. Tolkien says that a hobbit once lived in a hole. False, but there is no intention to deceive, since everyone knows and accepts it is a work of fiction. And (3) saying something you believe to be false, and which is false, and with the intention to deceive. This is ‘lying’.
We can also have true statements about fictional characters. E.g. it is true that Holmes lived in Baker Street. Philosophers find these statements troubling. I would say they really mean ‘In the Holmes stories, Holmes lived in Baker St’, but there are problems with that view too.
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moonlitdoor
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# 11707
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Posted
Dafyd, could you clarify what from your point of view determines whether a person or fictional person is being referred to ?
Presumably if I say something to my friend about Thomas Cromwell which I know to be untrue in order to make my friend dislike him, that is a reference to the person Thomas Cromwell. If I decide to make people dislike Cromwell by writing a story about him, where do I cross the boundary into creating a fictional person ?
Is it for example because I write a play rather than a newspaper article ?
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
quote:
Dafyd My main argument is that if I'm talking about Wolf Hall, I can make statements about Cromwell or Henry or Anne Boleyn as they appear in the novel that do not necessarily refer back to the real world.
Do you mean simply making statements about Anne Boleyn that are false, or is there something deeper signified by the ‘as they appear’ qualifier? As though there is this different Anne-Boleyn intentional entity, drifting inbetween the real world and fictionality, numerically different from the really real Anne Boleyn. Normally when people use the ‘as’ locution, they are signalling something like this.
The answer is probably closer to, yes, there is a different intentional entity. Though I'm not sure that's a question that is worth asking directly, as opposed to reducing it to various subquestions For example, 'are there true statements about Mantel's depiction of Anne that are not true about the historical Anne?'; 'should we be concerned that Mantel in the novel asserts things about Anne that might be false?' (The answer to that one is itself a good deal more complex than a plain yes/no).
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quote:
Likewise, Mantel writes that Cromwell on the morning that his wife and children died had a vision of his wife saying goodbye to him which he mistook for the living woman saying goodbye for the day.
Do you mean it was the vision of his wife that said goodbye? I.e. that the subject of the verb ‘said goodbye’ was the vision of his wife? Or did he falsely imagine or envision that his wife said goodbye?
As I remember Mantel leaves the matter deliberately ambiguous.
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Dafyd Shakespeare's Richard III isn't a person. He's a fictional person (fictional persons and real persons are not different types of person).
I disagree. Shakespeare's Richard III is certainly a person, but Shakespeare says many things about him that are probably not true. But then you say that fictional persons and real persons are not different types of person, which I agree with.
Existent and non-existent are not predicates. In the same way, fictional and real are not predicates. The set of people includes real people but not fictional people.
This doesn't mean that fictional people aren't some other type of entity. Rubber ducks and decoy ducks are not types of duck. Now decoy ducks definitely exist: they're wooden or plastic objects painted to look like ducks. They're not a type of duck; they're a type of inanimate object.
I don't know any good answers to the question of quite what type of thing ontologically fictional people are. Answers such as intentional objects or imitations don't I think clear anything much up. I'm unsure about whether the concept of numerical identity even applies in quite the same way.
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Another difficult question is whether Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is the same person as Jane Austen’s father, who she based the character on.
Jane Austen's father had adult male children. I think any claim that '"Mr Bennet had adult male children" is true' is just too big a bullet to bite. So any theory having that consequence must be wrong.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
Dafyd, could you clarify what from your point of view determines whether a person or fictional person is being referred to ?
Presumably if I say something to my friend about Thomas Cromwell which I know to be untrue in order to make my friend dislike him, that is a reference to the person Thomas Cromwell. If I decide to make people dislike Cromwell by writing a story about him, where do I cross the boundary into creating a fictional person ?
I'm going to say social convention.
What the social convention is is not explicitly stated anywhere, and is therefore fuzzy. And indeed I think the answer is different depending upon the context in which the question is being asked.
In short, I don't think there is a clear general answer to your question. The best we can do is to say why we might want to give different answers on different occasions.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
quote:
Brenda Where I come from, we talk about how fiction is both true and not true. Certainly fiction is fictional -- not fact. But it is not not-true either. It is truth, but in a different way.
I don’t understand ‘truth in a different way’. Truth is saying of what is the case, that it is the case. If I say that snow is white, and if snow is white, then I speak truly. If I deny that which is not so, I also speak the truth. E.g. If I say that snow is not black, and it is not black, I am speaking the truth.
‘Fiction’ just means ‘invented’, or made up (fingere). I would distinguish (1) saying something you believe to be true, but which is false, which is not lying, (2) saying something you believe to be false, and which is false, but without the intention to deceive, which is fiction in the literary sense. Tolkien says that a hobbit once lived in a hole. False, but there is no intention to deceive, since everyone knows and accepts it is a work of fiction. And (3) saying something you believe to be false, and which is false, and with the intention to deceive. This is ‘lying’.
We can also have true statements about fictional characters. E.g. it is true that Holmes lived in Baker Street. Philosophers find these statements troubling. I would say they really mean ‘In the Holmes stories, Holmes lived in Baker St’, but there are problems with that view too.
But consider how you, the reader, react to the fiction. People say all the time that they love Harry Potter, or Frodo, or Elizabeth Bennett, because 'they are so real.' In what sense are they real? They have emotional versimilitude; we believe in their travails as we read them.
There's a website somewhere, where you can sign up to receive The Sorrows of Young Werther in your email. As you recall, the book is epistolatory, and so when you sign up it is as if Werther is writing his sappy letters to you. Not only is this quite popular (it is a painless way to read the novel) but people really get sucked into it. The website has gotten emails from concerned readers: "Werther, man up! She's just not that into you -- get over it!" "Werther, have you considered Xanax? Ask your doctor, OK? These thoughts of suicide are not normal. I worry about you."
How real is young Werther, to these readers? Real enough to worry about.
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mr cheesy
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# 3330
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Posted
Yeah, but more than just identifying with narrative characters, this attempt to ground "truth" in the space physically occupied solely by the things a "real person" actually did is entirely bogus.
Of course you can learn lessons from Aristotle. It matters not a jot if it turned out all to have been written by someone called Jack who decided to use a pen name and who invented a whole lot of things about himself. Of course one can learn moral and life lessons from Shakespeare, from Orwell, from Cervantes. What has the reality of walking pigs, of Scottish Kings or of an old guy who dresses up in a rusty coat of arms got to do with their moral value?
That's the root of this inane point. Somehow we're supposed to accept the maxim that unless the gospel accounts of Jesus are all 100% true - for any possible measure of truth - then they're telling lies about him.
No. Bullshit. Welcome to the world of narrative, where things don't actually have to be true in all possible ways of understanding truth for them to be useful, true, right, uplifting and godly.
[ 14. May 2016, 14:13: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Jesus and Pilate. The two likely exist. What exactly might have transpired between them? We'd have to know who it was who reported Pilate's questioning of him so that it could be put into the gospels. The source is unlikely to have been Pilate, a Roman soldier or other Roman. Which then leaves some Jewish council person who would seem unlikely to have reported things quite like it is written. Thus, I'd tend to declare the quizzing of Jesus by Pilate as pious but not factual. It has truthiness but isn't true.
I'm always a little puzzled by this point of view, although in a way it is the most obvious one.
The gospel accounts are written as if they were recorded by someone who was there. As you point out, there are numerous instances where this is unlikely to have been the case.
Other eras would get around this by believing that the actual dialogue was revealed by God to the gospel writer.
[ 14. May 2016, 14:21: Message edited by: Freddy ]
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Jesus and Pilate. The two likely exist. What exactly might have transpired between them? We'd have to know who it was who reported Pilate's questioning of him so that it could be put into the gospels. The source is unlikely to have been Pilate, a Roman soldier or other Roman. Which then leaves some Jewish council person who would seem unlikely to have reported things quite like it is written. Thus, I'd tend to declare the quizzing of Jesus by Pilate as pious but not factual. It has truthiness but isn't true.
I'm always a little puzzled by this point of view, although in a way it is the most obvious one.
The gospel accounts are written as if they were recorded by someone who was there. As you point out, there are numerous instances where this is unlikely to have been the case.
Other eras would get around this by believing that the actual dialogue was revealed by God to the gospel writer.
I notice no prophet discounts one of the obvious potential sources - Jesus Himself.
Naturally, it is only an obvious source if you believe He was raised from the dead and spent a hefty part of forty days with His apostles, but this is what the Church has tended to believe these 2000 years or so.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Or are you saying, as your second statement suggests, that our beliefs about truth and falsity can change? That is certainly the case. Before Pythagoras, the Greeks believed that the Morning Star and the Evening Star were two heavenly bodies (another question of numerical identity, of course). Then they discovered they were one and the same (i.e. Venus). I would argue that before the discovery, it was still true that they were one and the same, but people had a false belief about Venus. Then they acquired knowledge. So it was the belief, rather than the fact, that changed.
That's close to what I am saying. I think you have not covered the dynamic of historical inquiry. It is possible for one false belief to be replaced by another more plausible belief, treated as true for a while, but subsequently invalidated by further investigation.
Rather like scientific inquiry, historical inquiry can and often does include a progressive falsification of explanations of observations of the evidence.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Sorry for the long post; I am late coming to the thread and wanted to read it thoroughly (mirabile dictu).
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And which Socrates are we talking about anyway - the great ironic philosophical genius, the private-eye style satirist, the man who liked to go to the baths to get his rocks off with the boys?
To quote a wise person on this thread, those things are not mutually exclusive.
quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:
We must remember that the gospels are not reportage or accounts of facts but aids to conversion.
Well, that's what Luke (or the author of the introduction to the gospel which historically has been known as Luke's, if one must) says of his motives. The other evangelists make no such claim. I have read that they were writing so that the memories of the events of the life of Christ would not be lost when the last of the eyewitnesses died. (Which by the way does not require that they were actually written by the people whose names they are associated with, only that they are preserving the accounts given by people who were there, and not made up whole cloth by people who weren't.)
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
So I tend to reserve the word "person" for a real person,
This is interesting as the original meeting of the Etruscan word is "mask" and it specifically referred to a non-real person, a representation of a person on the stage.
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And history is all subjective anyway. That's the thing that others have been saying above: every historian perceives the facts in a different way (and facts may indeed change) so the reality is that there is always more than one vision of any individual available.
So are two historians who believe conflicting things about, say Oliver Cromwell, talking about the same person, or different persons? If the same person, then why aren't fiction writers also talking about the same person? If different persons, then why would they argue about, or change their minds about based on new evidence, which is right? "You're right about YOUR Cromwell, and I'm right about MY Cromwell" would suffice, and that would be that.
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
We can also have true statements about fictional characters. E.g. it is true that Holmes lived in Baker Street. Philosophers find these statements troubling. I would say they really mean ‘In the Holmes stories, Holmes lived in Baker St’, but there are problems with that view too.
I remember learning about this back when I was studying analytic philosophy back in grad school. The concept was called "true to a story" and I don't remember it being terribly problematic then (we're talking mid 1980s).
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Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I notice no prophet discounts one of the obvious potential sources - Jesus Himself.
Naturally, it is only an obvious source if you believe He was raised from the dead and spent a hefty part of forty days with His apostles, but this is what the Church has tended to believe these 2000 years or so.
Which is what the Orthodox Church believes, also. (As you might expect.)
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Originally posted by peter damian:
Or are you saying, as your second statement suggests, that our beliefs about truth and falsity can change? That is certainly the case. Before Pythagoras, the Greeks believed that the Morning Star and the Evening Star were two heavenly bodies (another question of numerical identity, of course). Then they discovered they were one and the same (i.e. Venus).
But this didn't change their beliefs about truth and falsity, rather their beliefs about Venus. Their epistemology needn't have changed at all.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It makes no difference if the person is an invented name or has the same name as a person who really exists. If they're fiction, they're both made up - neither has any relationship to the true person.
It cannot be that simple. If it were, satirical fiction would be impossible. Spitting Image is fictional, yet clearly the sketches have some relationship to the real politicians. Napoleon in Animal Farm has some relationship to Stalin.
quote:
And history is all subjective anyway.
If you'd said 'history is all to a greater or lesser extent subjective' you might have a point.
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I don't do this kind of stupid philosophy.
You say, at the start of a paragraph in which you do exactly this kind of philosophy, only not well.
[ 14. May 2016, 20:05: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The reality is that people perceive things in different ways, so it is utterly consistent for there to be a deity and at the same time for different groups to have different perceptions and understandings of what he is like.
Kind of like the blind men and the elephant?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by peter damian:
Or are you saying, as your second statement suggests, that our beliefs about truth and falsity can change? That is certainly the case. Before Pythagoras, the Greeks believed that the Morning Star and the Evening Star were two heavenly bodies (another question of numerical identity, of course). Then they discovered they were one and the same (i.e. Venus).
But this didn't change their beliefs about truth and falsity, rather their beliefs about Venus. Their epistemology needn't have changed at all.
Yes, that's a helpful distinction. I think, in the exchanges with me at least, that peter damian was talking about the truth or falseness of specific historical accounts. At any rate, that is how I read him. But your general epistemological point is well worth making in the context of this discussion.
[ 15. May 2016, 09:03: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Chesterbelloc: He was raised from the dead and spent a hefty part of forty days with His apostles
The Gospels give me the impression that there were a couple of appearances, not that He hung out with them a lot. Wasn't there a whole week between those two times with Thomas?
Also, if He spent this time teaching them things, they apparently didn't feel it was worth mentioning those things in the Gospels.
Or perhaps they had a couple more barbecues at the beach? (I would like that.)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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moonlitdoor
Shipmate
# 11707
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by Dafyd
I'm going to say social convention. ( determines whether a person or fictional person is being referred to )
How does this convention relate to the point you made about being able to say things about Mantel's Cromwell that don't relate to the real Cromwell ?
If we consider paintings of the virgin Mary, I think we consider them by convention to refer to the real virgin Mary. But it is also true that I can say things about the depictions that don't relate to the real person, like what colour eyes they have, since we don't know what colour her eyes were.
As Dafyd said, it would seem wrong to criticise Mantel for adding unsubstantiated events to her story. It would equally seem wrong to criticise a painter for choosing an eye colour without evidence. A painting not made from life could hardly be done otherwise.
[ 15. May 2016, 12:38: Message edited by: moonlitdoor ]
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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai
Posts: 2210 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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