Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

andrew I take your point, but no specific role for human beings is required to establish the validity of a proof. The four-color theorem's proof is interesting for its combination of foundational importance and the lack of human supervision when proving it, but general-purpose automated theorem pro...

andrew It seems to me that the OP puzzle is a harder version of your issue #2: the expression of literal certainty about a contingent proposition, rather than "assent," or as some scholars of uncertainty call something closely related, "acceptance." The issue is; when are we jus...

Secret Alias ; professed certainty The most thoroughly worked example I've seen is Bart Ehrman in interviews in support of his book on the historical Jesus a few years ago. You can pull up a bushel of them in a simple Google search. I think what emerges from his explanation (first expressing certai...

spin Missed it, but ... So, I didn't sidestep the issue, contrary to your false claim in the previous post. Your one example seems to be what one might call "a rule of thumb". Could be. Americans (and others? I don't know) call some heurstics "rules of thumb." I reckon few Ameri...

spin You haven't elucidated your use of the term here Sure I did; perhaps you missed it. Dateline: Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:04 am (site time) What do you mean by "heuristic", exactly? Do you mean "method" or something that could be expressed more simply and plainly? It is the standard...

Neil , I see no evidence that you value disagreeing with somebody's ideas without also offering your unflattering estimates of their personalities, habits, thoughts and plans. It's not just something between the two of us, either. I make no claims about the quality of my English. I do, however, say...

Neil Uncertain Paul, I am sometimes very slow to reply to your comments because I find them very difficult to understand and need to read them several times, very slowly, bit by bit, to try to grasp isolated points you are making. I feel your pain. Uncertain reasoning is a very difficult subject. I...

Paul E. Thank you very much for the kind words. it is always the goal to reach the best conclusion you can given what you have :thumbup: Neil Yes, evidence is something observed. How can it be anything else? If evidence must be observed, then the evidence before us must be the received description ...

Peter Since the definition of 'primary source' doesn't include anything about being the minimum standard necessary to be usable as evidence, it's only logical that things other than primary sources (including some of those 'secondary sources' that we keep hearing about) could possibly be usable as ...

Neil That is not what I have suggested happens in my OP. Whether or not you suggested it (we agree that you didn't), it is a fair description of what Bickerman did, according to your account. You established the situation with the question But what happens when the historian has no primary sources?...