Abstract
Logical structures of causal explanations in history; general epistemological structures of historical causal explanations; the typology of real conditions and its significance for the methodology of causal explanations in history; historical critique and the falsification of historical explanations; and Interpretation, application, and historical reality: summary and transition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
See Nagel 1961, 558ff.
- 4.
The preferred term “natural language” will be used in this chapter and later instead of “ordinary language.” The language not only of poetry but also of philosophical and other discourses, especially the discourse of historiography, belongs to natural languages (plural!), but it is not the idiom of the ordinary language of everyday interactions and communications.
- 5.
The classic is Scriven 1959.
- 6.
Toulmin 1958. follows in his logic the leading ideas of Strawsons conception of logic.
- 7.
See Tragesser 1977, 25, 90ff.
- 8.
Lewis 1973, esp. 118ff.
- 9.
One of the minimal requirements is that the modus ponens remain valid for conditionals. See Lewis 1973, 9, 26f.
- 10.
For instance: Caesar was the dictator of Rome and Stalin was the general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
- 11.
It is, of course, possible to give a formal logical definition of <&> and &> in the framework of a predicate logic with relations. Let A and B be predicates for two events, let T be the predicate “limited period of time,” and let F be the predicate “following in time,” and I the predicate “happens in,” then:
$$ <\&>=\mathrm{d}\mathrm{f}:\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{x}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{y}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{v}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{Ax}\;\&\;\mathrm{B}\mathrm{y}\;\&\;\mathrm{T}\mathrm{v}\;\&\;\mathrm{I}\mathrm{x}\mathrm{v}\;\&\;\mathrm{I}\mathrm{y}\mathrm{v}\right) $$$$ \&>=\mathrm{d}\mathrm{f}:\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{x}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{y}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{v}\right)\;\left(\mathrm{E}\mathrm{w}\right)\;\left(\left(\left(\mathrm{Ax}\;\&\;\mathrm{B}\mathrm{y}\;\&\;\mathrm{T}\mathrm{v}\;\&\;\mathrm{T}\mathrm{w}\right)\;\&\;\mathrm{I}\mathrm{x}\mathrm{v}\;\&\;\mathrm{I}\mathrm{y}\mathrm{w}\right)\;\&\;\mathrm{F}\mathrm{w}\mathrm{w}\right) $$It is easier to construct such definitions in the framework of time logic but such logics presuppose the accessibility relations between possible worlds on the meta-level. Nothing is really gained for the problem of translating expressions of relations in natural languages into an equally universal formalized language.
- 12.
\( Aa\to Ba::- Ba\to - Aa\;\left(\mathrm{T}\mathrm{R}\right). \)
- 13.
\( A\leftarrow B\ ::\ B\to A. \)
- 14.
The logical function of “historical circumstances” in a genuine historical explanation is an analogue of the “initial conditions” in the methodology of experiments in the natural sciences.
- 15.
- 16.
What remains possible with respect to valid forms of deduction is, of course, very little; cf. Lewis 1973, 26f.
- 17.
Everyday experience justifies many strict but restricted generalized conditionals for finite sets of facts, e.g.,: all horses owned by farmer Smith are black. (x) ((Hx & Oxs) → Bx). The relation Oxs implies and indicates the restriction.
- 18.
Systems of types of real conditions must be distinguished from systems of categories of the social sciences, e.g., the system of Weber’s categories. Cf. Grünewald 2009, 97ff on Weber’s theory of categories of understanding sociology.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
The natural environment was the same and agricultural grain production existed long before windmills were invented in the Middle Ages.
- 22.
- 23.
Droysen 1977, 188f.
- 24.
This happens only in cultures in which the individual as such is of interest and individuality is a generally recognized value.
- 25.
Ricoeur 1970.
- 26.
The references to Maitland and Pollard are taken from Nagel 1961, 552ff.
- 27.
- 28.
Following Sect. 3.4 above one has to add – contrary to Gadamer – “or rejection.”
- 29.
Examples are the interpretation and application of the law, but also the interpretation of a play and applying the interpretation in bringing into the stage without using the text as a pre-text for deliberate and sometimes rather unconvincing ideas of the stage director, etc.
- 30.
Cf. Gadamer 1975 in a review of Seebohm 1972. The problem is that Gadamer’s critique of methods in Gadamer 1965 criticizes methodologies of philological research as Cartesian methods but neither the methodologies of the human sciences in general nor those of the natural sciences are Cartesian methods more geometrico. They are both empirical, not mathematical sciences.
- 31.
Gadamer 1965, part II, section II, 2.c, 318 ff. insists on the distinction between philological hermeneutics of texts and historics as methodology for the historian.
- 32.
The difference between Gadamer’s analysis of the relation between tradition and application and the analysis given in Sect. 3.4 above is that the possible applications of the parts or of the whole of a tradition always has as their correlate possible rejections of this part or even the whole tradition.
- 33.
- 34.
Perfect prototypes of such self-centered traditions are the chronicles of Byzantine monks, e.g., Malalas or Georgios Hamartolos. History is in this case (but also in derived or similar types) always a universal history of religio-centered salvation. The “pagans” have no history. Their history is a meaningless sequence of events, sometimes punished by God, sometimes not.
- 35.
Gadamer 1965, part II, section II, 2.c.
- 36.
A more detailed account of the problems of law and jurisprudence will be given in Sect. 10.6.
- 37.
Quod non est in actis non est in mundo: “What is not on the record is not in the world” is a well-known principle of Roman law.
References
Dostal, R. 2008. Seebohm’s hermeneutics and Gadamer. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16: 719–730.
Droysen, J.G. 1977. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, vol. 1, ed. P. Ley. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.
Gadamer, H.G. 1965. Wahrheit und Methode, 2nd ed. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr.
Gadamer, H.G. 1975. Truth and Method, ed. G. Barden and Trans. J. Cumming. New York: The Seabury Press.
Grünewald, B. 2009. Geist – Kultur – Gesellschaft. Versuch einer Prinzipientheorie der Geisteswissenschaften auf transzendentalphilosophischer Grundlage. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Hempel, C.G. 1942. The function of general laws in history. Journal of Philosophy 39: 35–48.
Lewis, D. 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nagel, E. 1961. The structure of science: Problems in the logic of scientific explanations. London: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Popper, K.R. 1960. The poverty of historicism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1957. Rpt. 1960.
Popper, R. 1962. Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 14: 233–263.
Ricoeur, P. 1970. Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. Trans. D. Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Scriven, M. 1959. Truisms as the ground of historical explanations, ed. P. Gardiner, 443–475. New York: The Free Press.
Seebohm, T. 1972. Zur Kritik der hermeneutischen Vernunft. Bonn: Bouvier.
Seebohm, T. 1977. Bemerkungen zum Problem der Interpretation irrealer Konditionalsätze als verkürzter Schlüsse. Kantstudien 68: 1–17.
Seebohm, T. 2004. Hermeneutics: Method and methodology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Seebohm, T. 2008. Three responses. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16: 755–769.
Toulmin, S. 1958. The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tragesser, S. 1977. Phenomenology and logic. Ithaka: Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seebohm, T.M. (2015). Causal Explanations in History. In: History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 77. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13587-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13587-8_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13586-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13587-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)