The Lechmere/Cross sources

[Pierre]

Hello Pierre,

But hasn't it been argued that postmodernism is ultimately self defeating? Thus, if truth is subjective, and reality cannot be known or described objectively, then postmodernism itself must be a social construction.

Hi John,

You are trying to use scientific concepts as social weapons. They do not work as such.
But I will answer what you are trying to ask me:

1. You write a condition "IF" and then you use the concepts "truth" and "subjective".

Firstly, you can not make a condition for a phrase without explanations for scientifically problematic words. So my answer is that the phrase is not specifyed and therefore I ask you to specify it, to operationalize it. This demans that you first:
Give a definition for "truth".
Give a definition for "subjective".

As you know, when you talk to me, I do not understand pure logic, since I am not a philosopher. I am an empirically inclined historian and sociologist. So if you want your ideas to get through to me, you have to use some historical and social science thinking.

So preferably, when you operationalize "truth" you should use an historical or sociological approach. Do not, for instance, give me Kant. I am beond Kant. And do not throw Hayden White in my face, please. I appreciate his works but also the works of Ranke.

Also I really appreciate Bourdieu but not his methods in some parts since the levels of measurements he is using (correspondence analysis) have rather low validity. At least, that is my standpoint. As you see, researchers whom you would call "fundamentalists" or "relativists" all have their problems. Even the best do.

2. Next problem:

Since you try to use concept "social construction" - which operationalisation of this concept do you favor and why?

I like the operationalisations of Berger & Luckman and Bourdieu. They are detailed and empirical.

And please do not try and fool people here, who have no knowledge about the concepts we are talking about, that the "-isms" are some well defined and scientifically unproblematical concepts.

Kind regards, Pierre

[Templarkommando]

[QUOTE=Pierre;377123]

Hi Templarcommando,

Yes, I did miss your post. Thanks for posting again.



Well, you see, I do not use logic and I have never studied logic. I am an historian and sociologist. So I do not use pure logic and the logical systems.

Pierre,

What I mean by logic is simply the means that humans have for understanding things - it's the way that you separate flawed reasoning from reliable reasoning. No one has to be a student of logic to use it - most people use it every day. I personally imagine it to be something like building a house. A house has walls and a roof. It also has other things like foundations and doors, but for the sake of this analogy, we're not going to worry about those. The walls of the house support the roof and if one of the walls is faulty, then it is quite likely that the roof can't stay up - I certainly wouldn't want to live in a house with crumbling walls, and I can't imagine that you would want to either. In logic, the walls of our imaginary house are called premises. A premise is simply a statement (which can be either true or false) which would give us reason to believe a particular point. Referring to my earlier post, the statement "most swans are white" would be an example of a premise, but the statement that "Martha Tabram was stabbed 39 times" would also be an example of a premise. Premises are generally things that we can observe or experience or that have been observed in the past. While premises *can* be false, when you are making a point you want them to be true or else we suffer from the problem of having crumbling walls, which brings me to our roof. Our roof in this analogy is the point that all of our premises/walls support. It is a position that maybe we cannot observe to be true, but we can safely believe to be true on the basis of our premises. This position is called a conclusion. Now we're ready to do some logic:

Premise A: All fish have gills and fins.

Premise B: A marlin has gills and fins.

Conclusion: The marlin is a fish.

A lot of logic tends to take the form of If A then B, or If A and B then C, but it can also look like if Not A then B, or If A and Not B then C.

No, I said that newspapers are often of low reliability. And if I say that the Daily Telegraph´s report was not reliable, I would not say that because I believe I can deduct such an idea from all newspapers to one newspaper by pure logic. I would say it because our empirical studies of newspapers often show us that articles are not reliable.

Thanks again,
Templarkommando

Thanks for your comments.

Kind regards, Pierre

Let me try to analyze this with logic. Your conclusion here seems to be that the Daily Telegraph's report was unreliable. The premise that you use to reach this conclusion is that empirical studies that you know of show that the articles are not reliable. Does that better understand the argument that you're trying to make?

Here's my problem. I don't know what studies that you are referring to, and having read through a few studies on various subjects, I doubt that I would have the patience to trudge through several hundred pages of information in search of your premise. I think the simplest way for us to proceed from here is for you tell me where I could find the study were I inclined to peruse it, and what is it that the study says that leads you to your conclusion?

Many thanks,
Templarkommando

[David Orsam]

Sorry, I didn´t see it, since I have no time for reading posts. David is taking ALL my time. So now I will ignore him again.

And when I do this, I will go in now and then to see if he is spreading rumors about me. And then I will contact Admin, since I have no other choice left.

I have to say that the suggestion that I might be "spreading rumors" about Pierre, or anyone, is absolutely outrageous and should never have been posted on this forum.

In fact, the entire response is incomprehensible. This is a thread about sources in which Pierre made a post containing multiple references to sources with "tendencies". I have been trying to get to the bottom of whether this is an expression used by academic historians when analyzing documentary sources. Why my inquiries have prompted the above response is utterly baffling.

[John G]

Hi John,

You are trying to use scientific concepts as social weapons. They do not work as such.
But I will answer what you are trying to ask me:

1. You write a condition "IF" and then you use the concepts "truth" and "subjective".

Firstly, you can not make a condition for a phrase without explanations for scientifically problematic words. So my answer is that the phrase is not specifyed and therefore I ask you to specify it, to operationalize it. This demans that you first:
Give a definition for "truth".
Give a definition for "subjective".

As you know, when you talk to me, I do not understand pure logic, since I am not a philosopher. I am an empirically inclined historian and sociologist. So if you want your ideas to get through to me, you have to use some historical and social science thinking.

So preferably, when you operationalize "truth" you should use an historical or sociological approach. Do not, for instance, give me Kant. I am beond Kant. And do not throw Hayden White in my face, please. I appreciate his works but also the works of Ranke.

Also I really appreciate Bourdieu but not his methods in some parts since the levels of measurements he is using (correspondence analysis) have rather low validity. At least, that is my standpoint. As you see, researchers whom you would call "fundamentalists" or "relativists" all have their problems. Even the best do.

2. Next problem:

Since you try to use concept "social construction" - which operationalisation of this concept do you favor and why?

I like the operationalisations of Berger & Luckman and Bourdieu. They are detailed and empirical.

And please do not try and fool people here, who have no knowledge about the concepts we are talking about, that the "-isms" are some well defined and scientifically unproblematical concepts.

Kind regards, Pierre

Hello Pierre,

I'm afraid this is a totally incomprehensible reply which makes no sense at all. And why you say you are "beyond Kant" I do not know. Perhaps you believe you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived. Forgive me if I do not share that opinion.

By the way, can you name any mainstream historian who takes the postmodernist view of history remotely seriously? And Professor Patrick O'Brien, Professor emeritus of the University of London, had this to say about postmodernism:

"Postmodernists have singularly, even comically, failed in there attempts to deconstruct the epistemological foundations of the national sciences"

He added, "As I read them, postmodern critics of history turn out to be recirculating little more than an ancient but extreme form of scepticism, coupled with an irrational refusal to distinguish more from less reliable forms of history." See:http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/W...ry/obrien.html

Personally, I find their approach pretty much laughable.

[David Orsam]

You can not use the common sense conceptualization for an academic concept. Tendency is a concept within source criticism and is a concept used together with text analysis. Here you have some literature if you really are interested:

Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing.
Anthony Brundage. (Harlan Davidson, 2002)

The archaeology of knowledge.
Michel Foucault. (Routledge, 2002)

On "What Is History?": From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White.
Keith Jenkins. (Routledge, 1995)

Methods of critical discourse studies.
Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak. (SAGE, 2016).

I didn't want Pierre to think I was ignoring his list, what with him having taken the time to provide me with four examples of books on historical method and theory, so I've carried out some investigating. All the books he lists are searchable online so I word-searched them all for "tendency"/"tendencies"

Not a single one of them refer to the tendency of a source or witness or of any other form of evidence.

Taking them individually:

Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing by Anthony Brundage

The index to this book reveals a number of entries for the word "bias" but none for "tendency/tendencies". From word searching, the closest we get to anything like Pierre's usage is when the author refers to: "a method of guarding against the unconscious tendency of looking for – and seeing only that evidence that bolsters your preconceptions". This is advice for researchers to guard against their own tendency to be biased in favour of their own theories which is rather different to what Pierre has been preaching and something which he might want to bear in mind himself when dismissing evidence which is inconsistent with his own theory.

The archaeology of knowledge by Michel Foucault

This book is translated from French.

I really don't know why Pierre has included Foucault on the list because I asked for historians yet Foucault's qualifications are in philosophy, psychology and psychopathology. Nevertheless, I performed the relevant word searches. There is a single hit for the word "tendencies" in the introduction where Foucault refers to "the underlying tendencies that gather force" but this is not in the context of document analysis and I think he means a different type of "tendencies" here to the one Pierre keeps mentioning.

On "What Is History?": From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White by Keith Jenkins.

At one point, in the introduction, Jenkins says, "in order to gain a further understanding of the impact of postmodern tendencies on traditional histories/historians across the spectrum and to locate it within Carr, Elton Rorty and White, I think it might be useful to give a brief account of some of the controversies." He also quotes E. Fox-Genovese as saying that "at any given moment systems of relations operate in relation to a dominant tendency, what Marx calls a mode of production that endows them with a structure”. But this is just in the introductory pages and there is nothing about tendencies of sources. We may note that a similar work by Keith Jenkins from 1991 entitled 'Re-thinking History' is available online as a PDF and a search reveals an entire section, covering four pages, entitled "On Bias". Just as one would expect. A search for "tendency" and "tendencies" produces no hits in this book.

Methods of critical discourse studies by Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak.

Finally, Pierre referred me to 'Methods of Critical discourse studies' of which Ruth Wodak (professor of Discourse Studies) and Michael Meyer (professor of Business Administration) are editors. This is another strange choice because the book contains 9 articles written or co-written by the following: 1. a professor of Language in social Life, 2. a professor for German Language, 3. a research assistant in Human Resource Management, 4. a lecturer of Linguistics and English Language, 5. a teacher of Applied Linguistics, 6. a professor of Discourse Studies, 7. a professor of Media and Communication, 8. an assistant professor of Sociolinguistics, 9. a professor of Organization Studies, and 10. a professor of Language and Communication. Not a single historian among them! There are a few references to tendencies in extremely dull passages such as "Blair's text is representative of the dominant tendency of the times towards depoliticization but this tendency coexists with politicizing responses….." and "tendencies associated with political capitalism" but nothing relating to source criticism. I have no idea why Pierre included this book in his list of suggested reading at all.

Conclusion

These books were offered up in response to me asking Pierre to show me books by "academic historians" which refer to "the tendency of the source" or the "tendency of the witness". I was expecting proper history books but the fact that he hasn't even been able to provide any such book that I requested, even in respect of books on historical method suggests to me that far from bringing the approach of an academic historian to the board, as he has told us repeatedly that he is doing, he is bringing a unique, quirky, approach to source analysis, and one, which, for reasons I have already posted, is not, in my opinion, appropriate for analyzing evidence in criminal cases.

[wigngown]

David,

For what it's worth & personally, I don't recognise the accusations made against you. Like you, I'm baffled.

Best regards.

[John G]

I have to say that the suggestion that I might be "spreading rumors" about Pierre, or anyone, is absolutely outrageous and should never have been posted on this forum.

In fact, the entire response is incomprehensible. This is a thread about sources in which Pierre made a post containing multiple references to sources with "tendencies". I have been trying to get to the bottom of whether this is an expression used by academic historians when analyzing documentary sources. Why my inquiries have prompted the above response is utterly baffling.

Hello David,

I agree with Wigngown. Moreover, Pierre's accusations made against you, that you might be spreading rumours against him, are shocking and totally lacking in foundation. He should unreservedly apologize and withdraw his post.

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Templarkommando;377223][QUOTE=Pierre;377123]

Pierre,

What I mean by logic is simply the means that humans have for understanding things - it's the way that you separate flawed reasoning from reliable reasoning.

Hi Templarcommando,

I see, and sure, if one would like to use the kind of logic that people use every day, that is not a scientific logic at all. But I can not use this type of thinking when I research the ripper case. It will not be useful.

No one has to be a student of logic to use it - most people use it every day. I personally imagine it to be something like building a house. A house has walls and a roof. It also has other things like foundations and doors, but for the sake of this analogy, we're not going to worry about those. The walls of the house support the roof and if one of the walls is faulty, then it is quite likely that the roof can't stay up - I certainly wouldn't want to live in a house with crumbling walls, and I can't imagine that you would want to either. In logic, the walls of our imaginary house are called premises. A premise is simply a statement (which can be either true or false) which would give us reason to believe a particular point.

Well, the past it not simple and it is not true or false, so I can´t use this type of thinking. The past has left us some sources and we are the historians. So we need historical thinking.

Referring to my earlier post, the statement "most swans are white" would be an example of a premise, but the statement that "Martha Tabram was stabbed 39 times" would also be an example of a premise. Premises are generally things that we can observe or experience or that have been observed in the past.

We don´t use premises in history, instead, we establish facts from data. The facts can be more or less well established and the establishment of facts requires us to use source criticism.

While premises *can* be false, when you are making a point you want them to be true or else we suffer from the problem of having crumbling walls, which brings me to our roof. Our roof in this analogy is the point that all of our premises/walls support. It is a position that maybe we cannot observe to be true, but we can safely believe to be true on the basis of our premises. This position is called a conclusion. Now we're ready to do some logic:

Premise A: All fish have gills and fins.

Premise B: A marlin has gills and fins.

Conclusion: The marlin is a fish.

A lot of logic tends to take the form of If A then B, or If A and B then C, but it can also look like if Not A then B, or If A and Not B then C.

What fun! Let me try this!

Premise A: All serial killers kill more than one victim.

Premise B: Jack the Ripper killed more than one victim.

Conclusion: Jack the Ripper was a serial killer.

But this is just a theoretical model. It is not connected to empirical sources. So how does it help us with the case?

Let me try to analyze this with logic. Your conclusion here seems to be that the Daily Telegraph's report was unreliable. The premise that you use to reach this conclusion is that empirical studies that you know of show that the articles are not reliable. Does that better understand the argument that you're trying to make? Here's my problem. I don't know what studies that you are referring to, and having read through a few studies on various subjects, I doubt that I would have the patience to trudge through several hundred pages of information in search of your premise. I think the simplest way for us to proceed from here is for you tell me where I could find the study were I inclined to peruse it, and what is it that the study says that leads you to your conclusion?

No, I have not analysed this newspaper in particular so I do not know how reliable it is. And newspapers is not my speciality. But if you read, for instance, our discussion here in the forum about the descriptions of the statements of Morris Lewis you will see one example of the problem with newspapers. You may find these useful:

http://guides.osu.edu/newspapers/evaluating

http://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/guides/periodicals

Many thanks,
Templarkommando

Kind regards, Pierre

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Kattrup;377140]

Yes, they were in Danish, and the phrase "tendency of the sources" was meant as a translation of the phrase used in the courses - "kildernes tendens".

I do agree that the translation is flawed, since "tendency" in English has different connotations, more statistical I'd say.

Hi,

The idea of the "translation being flawed" is David´s. But it is not "flawed". Here is a simple definition for tendency:

"When something is tendentious, it shows a bias towards a particular point of view, especially one that people disagree about."

http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/tendentious

David did not understand this, and this is why:

It shares a root with the word, tendency, which means leaning towards acting a certain way.

The root is the same but the meaning is not the same in academic history as in common sense language.

I just mentioned the term as a possible explanation for part of the...communication gap?

Good description. The communication gap is due to David not understanding academic history or social sciences.

in this thread, i.e. Pierre might during the debate have used an approximate and similar-sounding term to what he studied at uni.
I don't know, since I also don't know that he actually studied history in Denmark - his degree could be from elsewhere. "Bias" would cover the intent of the courses in source criticism much better, I think.

Bias is a set of types of bias. A tendency is the visibility of bias, of any type(s) of bias. It also sums up different types of bias in a source as well as motives for bias. Bias and motives can otherwise be invisible. Without historical analysis, that is.

And no, I'm not presently aware of anyone using the term in actual works on history. It's mainly a theoretical term. I'm eyeing my bookshelves, if I come up with anyone I'll let you know.

It is a methodological tool. Like and tool within the social sciences where we also use the concept of bias, validity and reliability.

Thank you Kattrup, for joining this discussion and improving it.

Kind regards, Pierre

[Elamarna]

[QUOTE=Pierre;377256][QUOTE=Templarkommando;377223]

No, I have not analysed this newspaper in particular so I do not know how reliable it is. And newspapers is not my speciality. But if you read, for instance, our discussion here in the forum about the descriptions of the statements of Morris Lewis you will see one example of the problem with newspapers. You may find these useful:

http://guides.osu.edu/newspapers/evaluating

http://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/guides/periodicals

Interesting links Pierre,

I assume you have looked at them.

The first link tells us, along with lots of other information and views, that when viewing opinions and judging the reliability of writers, we need to:

1. See how knowledgeable the writer is on the area they are commenting on / writing about.

In this case the area of debate is the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, by your own words you are not an expert on this area.


2. Look at the background of the writer, their academic qualifications, with details, publications and peer reviews.

Of course, apart from telling us you have Masters degrees in History and Sociology, (no details of from where and course name as shown in the video online) you have made it very clear that you have no intention of providing any of the other information.

I respectfully therefore ask, using the information from the site you quoted, how do you think we should view your reliability?


steve

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=Elamarna;377260][QUOTE=Pierre;377256][QUOTE=Templarkommando;377223]

Interesting links Pierre,

I assume you have looked at them.

The first link tells us, along with lots of other information and views, that when viewing opinions and judging the reliability of writers, we need to:

1. See how knowledgeable the writer is on the area they are commenting on / writing about.

In this case the area of debate is the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, by your own words you are not an expert on this area.

As I have told you, yes. I am not a ripperologist.

2. Look at the background of the writer, their academic qualifications, with details, publications and peer reviews.

Of course, apart from telling us you have Masters degrees in History and Sociology, (no details of from where and course name as shown in the video online) you have made it very clear that you have no intention of providing any of the other information.

I respectfully therefore ask, using the information from the site you quoted, how do you think we should view your reliability?

Sorry, Steve, but I am not a text.

Kind regards, Pierre

[Pierre]

[QUOTE=John G;377247]Hello Pierre,

I'm afraid this is a totally incomprehensible reply which makes no sense at all. And why you say you are "beyond Kant" I do not know. Perhaps you believe you are the greatest philosopher who ever lived. Forgive me if I do not share that opinion.

I say that Sociology has made achievements beyond Kant. I am a sociologist. So I must be beyond Kant.

By the way, can you name any mainstream historian who takes the postmodernist view of history remotely seriously? And Professor Patrick O'Brien, Professor emeritus of the University of London, had this to say about postmodernism:

"Postmodernists have singularly, even comically, failed in there attempts to deconstruct the epistemological foundations of the national sciences"

You did not even get the point: I am not a "postmodernist".

He added, "As I read them, postmodern critics of history turn out to be recirculating little more than an ancient but extreme form of scepticism, coupled with an irrational refusal to distinguish more from less reliable forms of history." See:http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/W...ry/obrien.html

I wrote about this scepticism too in another post here in the forum.

Personally, I find their approach pretty much laughable.

And yet you fail to understand it. And you do not explain yourself. I asked you to:

1. Give a definition for "truth".

2. Give a definition for "subjective".

And how do you define "social construction"?

Regards, Pierre

[Elamarna]

As I have told you, yes. I am not a ripperologist.



Sorry, Steve, but I am not a text.

Kind regards, Pierre

Pierre

You are a regular on a forum about the Whitechapel murders, post more than anyone else on that forum yet you continue to claim you are not a Ripperologist!

Baffling reply really, particularly as that was not the question asked was it?

You post here, you provide information and views in the form of text.

Therefore surely those posts need to be judged for reliability, especially given that you are telling the forum that, they are, and have been looking at the issues in the wrong way.

And of course you do not answer the question.

[Pierre]

Pierre

You are a regular on a forum about the Whitechapel murders, post more than anyone else on that forum yet you continue to claim you are not a Ripperologist!

Baffling reply really, particularly as that was not the question asked was it?

You post here, you provide information and views in the form of text.

Therefore surely those posts need to be judged for reliability, especially given that you are telling the forum that, they are, and have been looking at the issues in the wrong way.

And of course you do not answer the question.

The question should be: Should I, Steve, and everyone else on this forum, believe Pierre?

Believe what?

I do not even believe myself.

So what is the problem?

There are a lot of people here writing directly from there imagination, perhaps with the support of a few sources. Are they a problem, are they being asked "Should we believe you?". So why do you ask me this question.

I know why you ask the question. But you will have to wait and see.

I am honest but that doesn´t help. My honesty does not mean that I am right.

Regards, Pierre

[David Orsam]

David,

For what it's worth & personally, I don't recognise the accusations made against you. Like you, I'm baffled.

Thank you wigngown; my bafflement remains.