In the mid-twentieth century the Social Science Research Council issued a special report on the status of the concept of causation
as used in historical studies. They concluded that "cause [is an]
ambiguous term of varied and complex meaning-- a convenient figure of
speech describing motives, influences, forces, and other antecedent
interrelations not fully understood." (Dray: p.63). Of course, the
problem of causality in metaphysics is one which has failed to generate
an agreement on just how to best understand the term in philosophical
and scientific contexts. Without some basic understanding of the
concept, the very notion of phenomena being related to each other in a
law-like universe is seriously jeopardized. But such a topic is vast,
and, in practice, experimental scientists more or less agree on
protocols for establishing strong arguments for causation (e.g.
replication of controlled studies). This post concerns what happens
when historians try to look at historical and social events as
interrelated in some rational manner that makes historical explanations
of wars, social movements, election results or anything else something
other than arbitrary. There is far less agreement in practice when it
comes to criteria for establishing causes and effects of complex
historical events than there is in experimental science. So the
starting point is to ask whether or not there is a difference between
what is needed for a scientific concept of causality and a historical
and sociological one. There may be overlap, but just how much and in
which areas is a vexing question that was first seriously raised in the
19th century during German debates in which economists and historians
like Max Weber and Karl Menger among others debated the extent to which
(if at all) social science needed to break from Natural Science to
answer its conceptually distinct questions. Interestingly, in the 20th
century, in the English speaking world, very similar debates raged in
the mid 20th century this time between logical positivists/logical
empiricists and assorted advocates for the autonomy of history including
Michael Oakshott https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... , R.G. Collingwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
and various hermeneutical philosophers who stressed that unlike Natural
Science, History emphasizes actions and events that are a) unique b) non-repeatable and c) meaningful (which necessitates interpretation).
Positivistic philosophers of science like Carl Hempel https://plato.stanford.edu/...
countered these claims in much the way that Karl Menger had done
representing the Austrian School of Economics in the Methodenstreit.
Both come down to prioritizing alleged "laws" and "empirical
regularities" over individual/unique events as such. Sure, no 2 events
are identical, Hempel said, but only inasmuch as they instantiate a
general pattern of cause and effect are they rationally intelligible to
inquirers. If one is working in mechanics, as Newton did for example, it
matters little that 2 particular stones have different composition,
shape, weight, location etc. What matters is that differences
notwithstanding, both stones behave in a way that is predicted by
Newton's 3 Laws of Motion. The particularities which may be unique and
non-repeatable are not for that reason arbitrary or non-rational, but
intelligible members of an allegedly well-governed cosmic order.
The
issues raised here are complex and involved. But it's worth focusing on
the 3 aspects of historical studies mentioned above, as all of them
have led to disputes about the extent to which history can be
"scientific" and what would be required in order for historians to
advance causal claims at all.
1) Uniqueness:
One response to Hempel and others who stress the role of "laws" is to
point out that while general laws sometimes govern unique events (e.g.
laws of motion govern unique projectiles), this is not always the case.
Some events (e.g. intentional acts of persons in history) require a
kind of understanding that pertains to unique properties (e.g. motives)
which have more importance in understanding acts than alleged abstract
and general principles. In order to understand at least some historical
events, one must understand something about the perspective of
historical actors, the ways in which they see the world, their animating
beliefs, taken-for -granted assumptions at the cultural level and
perhaps quirks of personality. These are not worries for the geologist
or astrophysicist, only for the social scientist, psychologist and
historian. If this is so, a quantitative and precise understanding of
historical causes may be a will o'the wisp. But nevertheless, we can
have a rational if largely conjectural historical enterprise. For
example, to understand important decisions made during WW2, we (on this
view) have to try to understand what, for example, a meglomaniacal man
like Hitler would think, desire and/or do under particular circumstances
where we don't have documents to fill in such gaps. So, biographical
knowledge, imperfect as it may be, is indispensable here. That Hitler's
mental world was irrational does not mean that reconstructions of his
possible motives are likewise irrational. If a hatred of Jews is
irrational, it is nevertheless rational to expect such hatred to be
expressed in decisions and actions. Unlike the "laws of motion" which so
shaped positivistic conceptions of cause and effect-- these are
qualitative traits (racism, meglomania, etc.) which are combined in the
person of Hitler in ways that not only are unique, but whose uniqueness
is directly relevant to understanding historical outcomes. The
uniqueness or peculiarities of asteroids are not analogously relevant
to understanding their predictable motions, since all alike conform to
the same equations that can be used to predict any such motions
generally. Uniqueness, then, appears to play a different and much more
important role in history than in, for example, physics, despite the
objections of positivistic philosophers like Hempel.
2)Non-repeatibility:
In natural science we hear a lot about "replication" of experimental
results, without which confirmation is hardly possible. But it follows
from (1) that there can be no subjecting unique historical actions and
events to controlled experiments to see if they "come out the same way
again." Responses to this truism are divided into at least 2 camps.
Scientistic approaches conclude that this only means that Historical
Studies must remain incomplete and inconclusive. The problem is one of
"complexity" it is often said. There are simply too many variables
combined in too many ways to track, much less reenact experimentally. It
could be done, in principle, but not by beings with the cognitive and
physical limitations of human beings. On this reading, we get statements
like that of the behaviorist, Edward Thorndike , who claimed that if we
could know all the "vectors" acting on a leaf blowing down the street
we could predict its every movement; and in the same way if we had full
knowledge of all "vectors" operating on and within a given human being
we would know his or her every movement from start to end. This view is
"strict determinism," as it was articulated by mathematician,
Pierre-Simon Laplace https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
It cannot be proved or disproved because it universalizes
deterministic assumptions. Just because some behavior is deterministic
does not mean all of it is. The second response is that there is at
least some human agency/freedom within the social realm, and this is why
historical events can't be repeated exactly. This too cannot be proved
but is a speculative position that posits agency without fully
explaining how it emerges and operates in nature which otherwise seems
to be either deterministic or random based on current scientific
knowledge. How would a third category of a)non-random
b)non-deterministic and c) meaningful behavior arise in nature
as we understand it? Both assumptions makes the application of
causation to historical events somewhat puzzling because on either
account we simply don't have enough relevant information on which to
base causal attributions. We don't have enough information, that is, to
endorse strict determinism, on the one hand, or a non-deterministic
theory of human agency on the other.
3) Meaning/Selectivity/Interpretation:
There is much more to be said on these topics, but I will end with one
more issue which causes further confusion for those who would give a
coherent account of historical causation. When we say that X causes Y in
historical cases, we at least mean that without X there would not have been a Y. But we are not necessarily saying that X is a sufficient condition for Y. If we take causation to mean all
the conditions necessary to result in Y, then where should we draw the
line between so-called "background conditions" and "relevant causes?"
William Dray gives the example of listing causes of the Unification of
Germany in 1870. Modern historians of Germany might agree that one
condition of the Unification was that Bismarck was in good health at the
time, but it is unlikely that any of them would list this as a "cause"
of Unification. This example may seem silly, but the principle extends
to more controversial cases of inclusion/exclusion of conditions as
"relevant" to a causal account. Many things had to happen for the
outbreak of WW1, but what one author might consider to be a "background
factor" could feature prominently in another historian's causal account.
This, again, reveals the importance of interpretation in history, and
the attribution of meaning to historical actions. What one person
interprets to be a relatively unimportant background condition necessary
for Y to occur, but not a salient cause can be construed as a more
directly relevant causal factor in the judgment of another historian.
Selectivity of conditions and causes is not utterly random, of course.
Bismarck did have to be healthy for Unification to occur. But just how
to rank such a necessary condition in terms of causal significance
appears to be something about which no clear rules exist. It depends
crucially on the meaning given to the event by the historian in the event of interpretation.
Possible Questions/Issues:
1)Is history an
incomplete science along the lines of physics, or is it a form of
inquiry that is different from physical science qualitatively?
2)
Is the ambiguity of terms used to build causal theories of events in
history a "fatal flaw" or par for the course in history? That is, if
history is half-art/half-science, would we expect the kind of precision
associated with experimental science?
3) Does interpretation in
history lead to hopelessly subjective accounts, or can there be rational
guidelines and standards despite the interpretive aspect of history?
4)
Do you think historical events are inevitable links in a deterministic
chain or is there at least some room for freedom in the realm of human
actions?
Note: These are only suggestions, all comments are welcome.
________________________________________________________________________________
Sources/Related Readings:
- William Dray: Philosophy of History (2nd ed.) Prentice Hall: 1993
-Blackwell Companion to The History of Philosophy: ed. Aviezeer Tucker: Wiley-Blackwell: 2011
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