[WikiEN-l] Primary sources

[Ray Saintonge]

Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/17/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>And point C seems like the hard one to determine. If it is not hard, it
>>is at least contentious. For example, let's say there is a statement in
>>a primary source that says:
>>    Joe said he saw the ghost.
>>
>>The article then uses that as a source and changes it to state:
>>    Joe believes in ghosts.
>>
>>It might be true, but it seems like an interpretation based on the
>>possibility that Joe might have actually lied despite his belief in
>>ghosts or not.
>>    
>>
>
>This kind of interpretation is perfectly acceptable imho. If there's
>no particular reason to think that Joe lied (ie, he didn't say so the
>next day), then using words like "believes" or "thinks" is not
>contentious. Occasionally a little unclear, particularly if the
>person's current beliefs are unclear, but that's more a question of
>style than an application of NOR. Similar kind of deal if you say
>"Joe, angry about the lack of consultation, believed he had been
>misled", when your source says something like "Joe said yesterday,
>"Those bastards told me they weren't going to do anything without
>asking me, but they screwed me over".
>
>My example isn't very well worded, but I'm trying to show that you can
>deduce "angry" from the colourful language, and "believed" as a
>convention for "said that he thought".
>
"Believes" is always contentions because it presumes to know what is 
going on in someone else's mind.  That use of "believed" as some kind of 
convention only holds as long as we all accept that conventional usage, 
and ignore other usages of the word.

Ec