Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your post. After Lubomir's note, I was
thinking of saying that I, too, would give this
thread a rest. You've asked a fair question,
though, and this deserves a response. What
follows seems straightforward to me, so plain
that some readers will think me foolish for even
stating this. For anyone tired of this, my
apologies.

In your last post, you wrote:

--snip--

in logical terms: "if A = X and B entails X
(having been stated separately) it follows that A
entails X."

--snip--

The problem is that this was not your original
syllogism. In your original syllogism, you said,

If A entails X and B entails X, then A = B.

where

A is (fiction)

B is (history)

X is (created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of)

My argument is that both fiction and history -- A
and B -- have other, different, entailments.

Following this post, I include the etymology and
definitions of "fiction" and "history" from
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and the
Oxford English Dictionary. There are
commonalities and common points in etymology and
meaning -- just as you argue. But some of these
are now obsolete or archaic, and the general
meaning of each word is conditioned by key
factors. I see these key factors as the
entailments of each term. There may be more
entailments, but these are necessary and
sufficient for the argument that follows. They
are necessary for historiography and writing
history, but they may not be sufficient for
historiographic practice and writing history.

These are the symbols for the entailments summarized in these definitions.

T is (truth claim)

E is (evidentiary foundation)

IT is (irrelevance of truth)

IE is (irrelevance of evidence)

DR is (acknowledged disregard for reality as
comprehensive condition of the work)

RR is (acknowledged goal of representing reality
as comprehensive condition of the work)

A entails X + IT + IE + DR

B entails X + T + E + RR

therefore

A =/= B

A is not equal to B

The purposes, processes, and content of writing
fiction differ to those of writing history. Two
common entailments to not create an equality
between fiction and history because the other
entailments differ.

Before wrapping this up, I'll address two issues.

In your last post, you wrote:

--snip--

in logical terms: "if A = X and B entails X
(having been stated separately) it follows that A
entails X."

--snip--

This is also incorrect.

The correct syllogism would be:

If A = X and B entails X, then B entails A.

The equivalent syllogism would be

If X = A and B entails X then B entails A.

But this is only true if A = X, that is, if they are the same.

This is not your original syllogism. Your original claim was

A entails X and B entails X, therefore A = B.

There is a second problem. The original syllogism
did not state that entailment X (created,
composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to
make sense of) is the ONLY entailment of either.

If you parse your original sentence in a specific
way, then you are saying that A = B >>with<< the
"claim that it is based on what happened." If you
want to sort out all those added entailments
carefully, you have to acknowledge that this
involves more than a single WITH.

Those other entailments of purpose, process, and
content are the stuff of history.

Now I do not and never did claim that an
historian records as a video camera might record.
If one were able to do so, which is not the case,
it would not be history. History requires
creation, composition, sorting, and arrangement
along with all those other entailments I describe
and more besides.

But evidence has something to do with it. Victor
mentioned the Holocaust. What do we see when we
look at those dead bodies piled up like raked
leaves in the films of liberated camps? What do
we see when we look at those walking skeletons in
their threadbare, striped uniforms? Did something
"happen" here? When we argue that something
"happened" here, it is merely a "claim." When an
historian states that this was a death camp, that
crimes took place here, is this nothing more than
a fiction "with the claim that it is based on
what happened".

I mentioned the invasion of Iraq the issue of
civilian deaths. Again, something "happened"
here. At least the World Health Organization
thinks so, and so do the editors and reviewers at
Nature. Is this merely a "claim"? In my view a
"claim" in which history and fiction got confused
took place when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
claimed that the Iraqis "helped Al Quaida destroy
the World Trade Center." When everyone realized
that Hussein and bin Laden weren't on speaking
terms, they changed the story to "weapons of mass
destruction." As head of the United Nations
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission, Hans Blix sought evidence for this
claim and found none.

The reason I bring these examples up again is
that it seems to me you have avoided addressing
examples that make it difficult to hold the
position that history is fiction. Few of us on
this list have been personally affected by these
incidents in a direct way that we can directly
attribute to either the Holocaust or the invasion
of Iraq. Surely there are some who have been, but
these must be few of the 1400 or so subscribers.
By direct, I mean, there we were, we witnessed
it, what we witnessed or what happened required
us to respond in some way comparable to an
affordance. So what are we to make of these
examples? Those films? The global dismay and
turbulence arising from the invasion? Perhaps
it's only just a story -- I mean something
happened, sure, but we never really met those
people who vanished in either event, so how do we
know that either event actually took place? All
most of us know about the invasion or the
Holocaust comes from accounts that other people
have assembled. These accounts are imperfect,
often inconsistent, and generally based on
evidence that in many cases is not first hand. Is
this "fiction"?

History involves evidence and facts imperfectly
understood and always interpreted through a
personal framework. The assertion of history is
that history involves things that happened, no
matter how imperfectly we understand or report
those happenings. History involves a specific
kind of claim: a truth claim. I'd argue that
there is a difference between this imperfect and
never fully reliable truth and fiction. It is a
truth that we never fully know and a truth that
we understand differently with every new
interpretation, and it is nevertheless different
to fiction.

This is far from design research. I answered because you asked.

Yours,

Ken

--

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

>you say, quoting me:
>>Your concluding "if" takes the form of an incorrect syllogism: "if fiction
>is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of,
>as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is based on what
>happened."<
>
>in logical terms: "if A = X and B entails X (having been stated separately)
>it follows that A entails X." if you consider this to be an incorrect
>syllogism then i have no understanding of your logic.
>
>could your opposition to what we have been discussing be explained in terms
>of incompatible logics?

[in response to:]

Ken Friedman wrote:

>Your concluding "if" takes the form of an incorrect syllogism: "if fiction
>is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of,
>as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is based on what
>happened."
>
>It is true that fiction is "created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for
>others to make sense of." It is false that everything "created, composed,
>sorted out and rearranged for others to make sense of" is fiction. That's
>like saying, "if grass is green and my cousin's car is green, my cousin's
>car is grass." Or, as John Z.
>Langrish (2000) used this kind of false syllogism in the title of a
>memorable article in which he noted that even though a fork is made of steel
>and a battleship made of steel, a fork is not a battleship.
>Sharing a common property does not make fiction and history the same thing.

[in response to:]

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

>if fiction is created, composed, sorted out and rearranged for others to
>make sense of, as i suggested, history is fiction with the claim that it is
>based on what happened. their representational truth is not accessible.


Linguistic appendices:

Fiction defined by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

Etymology: Middle English ficcioun, from Middle
French fiction, from Latin fiction-, fictio act
of fashioning, fiction, from fingere to shape,
fashion, feign -- more at DOUGH -- 1 a :
something invented by the imagination or feigned;
specifically : an invented story b : fictitious
literature (as novels or short stories) c : a
work of fiction; especially : NOVEL 2 a : an
assumption of a possibility as a fact
irrespective of the question of its truth <a
legal fiction> b : a useful illusion or pretense
3 : the action of feigning or of creating with
the imagination

History defined by Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

Etymology: Latin historia, from Greek, inquiry,
history, from histOr, istOr knowing, learned;
akin to Greek eidenai to know -- more at WIT 1 :
TALE, STORY 2 a : a chronological record of
significant events (as affecting a nation or
institution) often including an explanation of
their causes b : a treatise presenting
systematically related natural phenomena c : an
account of a patient's medical background d : an
established record <a prisoner with a history of
violence> 3 : a branch of knowledge that records
and explains past events <medieval history> 4 a :
events that form the subject matter of a history
b : events of the past c : one that is finished
or done for <the winning streak was history>
<you're history> d : previous treatment,
handling, or experience (as of a metal)


Fiction defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:

Etymology: a. Fr. fiction (= Pr. fiction, ficxio,
Sp. ficcion), ad. L. ficti{omac}n-em, n. of
action f. fing{ebreve}re to fashion or form: see
FEIGN.]

1. a. The action of fashioning or imitating. Obs.
b. Arbitrary invention. c. concr. That which is
fashioned or framed; a device, a fabric. 2.
Feigning, counterfeiting; deceit, dissimulation,
pretence. Obs. 3. a. The action of 'feigning' or
inventing imaginary incidents, existences, states
of things, etc., whether for the purpose of
deception or otherwise. (The reproachful sense [=
'fabrication'] is merely contextual.) b. That
which, or something that, is imaginatively
invented; feigned existence, event, or state of
things; invention as opposed to fact. c. A
statement or narrative proceeding from mere
invention; such statements collectively. 4. a.
The species of literature which is concerned with
the narration of imaginary events and the
portraiture of imaginary characters; fictitious
composition. Now usually, prose novels and
stories collectively; the composition of works of
this class. b. A work of fiction; a novel or
tale. Now chiefly in depreciatory use; cf. 3b. 5.
A supposition known to be at variance with fact,
but conventionally accepted for some reason of
practical convenience, conformity with
traditional usage, decorum, or the like. a. in
Law. Chiefly applied to those feigned statements
of fact which the practice of the courts
authorized to be alleged by a plaintiff in order
to bring his case within the scope of the law or
the jurisdiction of the court, and which the
defendant was not allowed to disprove. Fictions
of this kind are now almost obsolete in England,
the objects which they were designed to serve
having been for the most part attained by the
amendment of the law. b. gen. (chiefly transf.)
6. Comb., as fiction-character, -mint, -monger,
-writer, -writing. Hence {sm}fiction v. trans.
and intr. To feign; to fictionize; to admit of
being fictionized. rare. {sm}fictioned ppl. a.

History defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:

Etymology: [ad. L. historia narrative of past
events, account, tale, story, a. Gr. a learning
or knowing by inquiry, an account of one's
inquiries, narrative, history, f. - knowing,
learned, wise man, judge, f. - to know. (The form
histoire was from F.) Cf. STORY, an aphetic form
of history.]

1. A relation of incidents (in early use, either
true or imaginary; later only of those
professedly true); a narrative, tale, story. Obs.
(exc. as applied to a story or tale so long and
full of detail, as to resemble a history in sense
2.) 2. spec. A written narrative constituting a
continuous methodical record, in order of time,
of important or public events, esp. those
connected with a particular country, people,
individual, etc. Chronicles, annals, are simpler
or more rudimentary forms of history, in which
the events of each year, or other limited period,
are recorded before passing on to those of the
next year or period, the year or period being the
primary division; whereas in a history, strictly
so called, each movement, action, or chain of
events is dealt with as a whole, and pursued to
its natural termination, or to a convenient
halting-point, without regard to these divisions
of time. -- drum-and-trumpet history, a
contemptuous term for a history that gives undue
prominence to battles and wars. 3. (Without a or
pl.) That branch of knowledge which deals with
past events, as recorded in writings or otherwise
ascertained; the formal record of the past, esp.
of human affairs or actions; the study of the
formation and growth of communities and nations.
In this sense often divided, for practical
convenience, into Ancient and Modern, or Ancient,
Mediæval, and Modern History. These have no very
definite chronological limits; but Ancient
History is usually reckoned as ending with the
fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476.
Mediæval, when separated from Modern History, is
usually brought down to the period of the Oceanic
discoveries in the 15th c. 'Ancient History' is
also humorously used in the sense of 'matters
which are out of date, or which no longer form
part of practical politics', and colloq. of
comparatively recent events which are regarded as
nevertheless far back in a person's experience.
The Muse of History, Clio, one of the Nine Muses,
represented as the patroness of History; also
often put for a personification of History. 4.
transf. {dag}a. A series of events (of which the
story is or may be told). Obs. b. The whole train
of events connected with a particular country,
society, person, thing, etc., and forming the
subject of his or its history (in sense 2);
course of existence or life, career. Also in
pregnant sense, An eventful career; a course of
existence worthy of record. (See also
LIFE-HISTORY.) c. (Without a or pl.) The
aggregate of past events in general; the course
of events or human affairs. to make history: to
influence or guide the course of history; also,
to do something spectacular or worthy of
remembrance (see history-maker, -making, sense
9). 5. A systematic account (without reference to
time) of a set of natural phenomena, as those
connected with a country, some division of nature
or group of natural objects, a species of animals
or plants, etc. Now rare, exc. in NATURAL
HISTORY. [In this sense following the similar use
of -- by Aristotle and other Greek writers, and
of historia by Pliny.] 6. {dag}a. A story
represented dramatically, a drama. Obs. b.
spec. A drama representing historical events, a
historical play. 7. A pictorial representation of
an event or series of incidents; in 18th c. a
historical picture. ¶8. Eccl. = L. historia,
liturgically applied (a) to a series of
lessons from Scripture, named from the first
words of the Respond to the first lesson; (b)
to the general order of a particular Office.
Misunderstood and erroneously explained in Rock
Ch. of Fathers IV. xii. 124: see Proctor &
Wordsworth Sarum Breviary, Index to Fasc. 1, 11.
9. attrib. and Comb., as history-master, -mill,
-monger, paper, -play, -professor, -wise, writer;
{dag}history faith, 'historical' faith (see
HISTORICAL 2); history-maker, (a) a writer of a
history; (b) one who 'makes history', i.e.
performs important actions which shape the course
of history; so history-making a. and vbl. n.;
history-painter, one who paints 'histories'
(sense 7); so history-painting, history-piece.