Wily D wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008 2:56 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Wily D wrote:
Well *explicit discussion* is not needed to determine consensus where a universal or near universal practice exists. Every article where an image is available to represent someone it ends up getting used, even if there's no particular reason to believe it's accurate. Pick any Old Testament figure, really ancient Greek philosopher, whatever, and there's a portrait if we can get our grubby little mitts on one.
That everyone seems to feel they're useful indicates to me they're useful, even if it's tough to explain exactly why.
There is a fundamental fallacy in this argument. Just as consensus in a discussion represents only the consensus of the participants, so too a universal practice represents only those who actually follow that practice.
I'm sure that many of our editors are addicted to having pretty pictures to decorate an article at all costs. It seems to break up the monotony of straight text. Where do you get the idea that "everyone" finds them useful beyond mere decoration. When we show a bust of Socrates is it verifiable that Socrates.looked like this? Perhaps all these pictures should be properly referenced.
The images in the Muhammad article that are under dispute are actually fairly well referenced, with three of the four giving authors, two of the four naming the source work and all four giving approximate dates
- beyond that, the common mantra of "verifiability, not truth" can
then be chanted adequately loudly.
As for whether the argument is a fallacy, it's not. I do not mean to imply that such images are useful in the edification of *every* editor, just that out editing process has universally held that such images are of significant educational value such that their usage is universe. Reject rationalism and embrace empiricism, eh?
The point that would need to be verified is not who created the picture or that these pictures exist, but that they truly represent what the subject looked like, and not merely fanciful caricatures.
"Universally" means "by everyone.".Whether there is "significant educational value" depends on what you are trying to teach. Your particular empirical observations do not imply universality even if all your observations reflect the same view. If only one person, whose views you have not observed, sees things differently your views cease to be universal. What is the educational value of a picture when you cannot establish that the picture is not a true one of what it purports to be?
Ec