Can Normic Laws Save Hempel’s Model of Historical Explanation? a Critique of Schurz’ Approach

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Gunnar Schumann
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Actual Usage ◽  
Action Explanation ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
Normic Laws

AbstractI critically discuss Gerhard Schurz’ improved version of Hempel’s covering law model as the model appropriate for human action explanation in the historical sciences. Schurz takes so-called “normic laws” as the best means to save Hempel’s covering law model from the objection that there are no strict laws in historiography. I criticize Schurz approach in two respects: 1) Schurz falsely takes Dray’s account of historical explanations to be a normic law account. 2) Human action explanation in terms of goals and means-ends-beliefs are not based on normic laws at all, for the explanandum (the action) in an explanation follows from the volitional and doxastic premises (the explanans) alone. To show this, I argue that there is a conceptual connection between volition and action, rooted in our actual usage of volitional concepts. Ultimately, a difference in principle between the methods of explanation in science and historiography has to be acknowledged.

Event and Portent: the Fall of Old Oyo, a Problem in Historical Explanation

Africa ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Main Issue ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphExplanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.

The covering law model of historical explanation

Inquiry ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 368-387
Author(s):  
Stanley Paluch
Keyword(s):  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Covering Law

Troubles with Mechanisms: Problems of the 'Mechanistic Turn' in Historical Sociology and Social History

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenonas Norkus
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social History ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Covering Law

AbstractThis paper discusses the prospect of the "new social history" guided by the recent work of Charles Tilly on the methodology of social and historical explanation. Tilly advocates explanation by mechanisms as the alternative to the covering law explanation. Tilly's proposals are considered to be the attempt to reshape the practices of social and historical explanation following the example set by the explanatory practices of molecular biology, neurobiology, and other recent "success stories" in the life sciences. Recent work in the philosophy of science on these practices by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, Carl Craver and others is used as the foil to disclose the difficulties of Tilly's project. Most important among them is the dilemma of specification: if diagrams (standard forms of the representation of mechanisms) are intended as representations of robust causal processes, they cannot be specific enough to provide complete mechanism schemata, and are bound to remain mechanism sketches. If mechanism sketches are elaborated in detail by tracing particular causal processes, they provide representations of fragile causal processes, which cannot be considered as mechanisms comparable to those in advanced life and other special sciences. Tilly's work on the explanation of mechanisms can be considered as symptomatic for the recent trend to visualize the forms of historical representation. As far as diagrams seem to be able to communicate stories in a direct way (without narrative discourse), this trend is a challenge for the theory of historical representation. The new theories of scientific explanation focusing on the explanatory practices of the life sciences can provide examples and be the source of inspiration for the work on the theory of historical and social explanation, going beyond the confines of the received framework of the covering law model of explanation.

Counterfactual Arguments in Historical Analysis: From the Debate on the Partition of Africa and the Effect of Colonial Rule

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 169-186
Author(s):  
Jarle Simensen
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Causal Analysis ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Actual Usage

During the last decade the question of counterfactual arguments has attracted a good deal of attention both in philosophy and history. A recent example, which concentrates on the logics of counterfactual analysis in history, is T.O. Climo and P.G.A. Howells' “Possible worlds in historical explanation.” Further progress in this field probably depends both on a development of the purely logical issues involved and an analysis of the actual usage of counterfactuals in the language of practicing historians. My own approach belongs primarily to the latter category. I shall consider examples of counterfactual arguments in two hotly debated fields, first the partition of the African continent and, second, the effects of colonial rule. This approach will provide examples of the function of counterfactuals both in causal analysis and in historical evaluations. My primary aim is to establish a categorization of different usages, but the opportunity will also be taken to discuss in a general manner criteria for the legitimate use of counterfactual argument in history. In this connection I should emphasize my lack of knowledge in formal logic, except that provided by my two Norwegian collegues, Ottar Dahl, and Jon Elster, on whom I rely heavily for the more theoretical parts of this paper.Historical analysis is preoccupied with causes, and in causal analysis there is a particular urge to identify socalled “sufficient” and “necessary” causes. In propositions about such causes some counterfactual assumptions are logically implicit. The clearest example of a necessary cause or precondition for European expansion in Africa is that of technology. To take an early and typical example, Holland Rose maintained that it was an “essential condition” of colonization that “mechanical appliances should be available for the overcoming of natural obstacles.” The implicit counterfactual is that without technology, never colonization. Counterfactuals of this kind scarcely attract attention precisely because of their obvious legitimacy.

The End of Histories? Review Essay of Alexander Rosenberg’s How History Gets Things Wrong: the Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Mariana Imaz-Sheinbaum ◽  
Paul A. Roth
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
Action Explanation

Abstract Alex Rosenberg’s latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg’s book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now “preempting” explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg’s argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one.

Cognitive Representation of Dual-Task Demands: Towards a Gestalt View of Human Action

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Huestegge ◽  
Aleksandra Pieczykolan ◽  
Iring Koch
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Cognitive Representation

Covert Attentional Orienting to Implied Human Action in Adults With Autism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus N. Morrisey ◽  
M. D. Rutherford ◽  
Catherine L. Reed ◽  
Daniel N. McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Attentional Orienting ◽  
Adults With Autism
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