History and Theory 47 (February 2008), 183-199

Wesleyan University 2008 ISSN: 0018-2656

ExplIcatIoN, ExplaNatIoN, aNd HIStory

carl HaMMEr
abStract

To date, no satisfactory account of the connection between natural-scientific and historical explanation has been given, and philosophers seem to have largely given up on the problem. this paper is an attempt to resolve this old issue and to sort out and clarify some areas of historical explanation by developing and applying a method that will be called pragmatic explication involving the construction of definitions that are justified on pragmatic grounds. Explanations in general can be divided into dynamic and static explanations, which are those that essentially require relations across time and those that do not, respectively. the problem of assimilating historical explanations concerns dynamic explanation, so a general analysis of dynamic explanation that captures both the structure of natural-scientific and historical explanation is offered. This is done in three stages: In the first stage, pragmatic explication is introduced and compared to other philosophical methods of explication. In the second stage pragmatic explication is used to tie together a series of definitions that are introduced in order to establish an account of explanation. this involves an investigation of the conditions that play the role in historiography that laws and statistical regularities play in the natural sciences. the essay argues that in the natural sciences, as well as in history, the model of explanation presented represents the aims and overarching structure of actual causal explanations offered in those disciplines. In the third stage the system arrived at in the preceding stage is filled in with conditions available to and relevant for historical inquiry. Further, the nature and treatment of causes in history and everyday life are explored and related to the system being proposed. this in turn makes room for a view connecting aspects of historical explanation and what we generally take to be causal relations.
I. INtrodUctIoN

There is a floating problem in the philosophy of history and explanation to which philosophers in recent years seem to have paid very little attention. this problem concerns not only the philosophy of history, but also causation and commonsense explanation. the heart of this problem lies in the realm of why-explanation or causal explanation, as distinguished by William dray from how-explanation and what-explanation.1 While explanations can take the form of making something clear by investigation of what it is or was, or how it is, was, or could be the case, looking at explanations of why something is or was the case leads to a profound problem in the philosophy of history and related fields.
1. William dray, Laws and Explanation in History (oxford: oxford University press, 1957); William dray, Explaining What in History, in Theories of History, ed. patrick Gardiner (Glencoe, Il: the Free press, 1959).

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Within the theory of historical explanation two prominent goals seem to lead us in opposing directions. on the one hand, we would like to show how one is doing the same thing when one gives a certain kind of historical explanation as one does when giving a natural-scientific explanation of what appears to be the corresponding kind. It would seem that these purported explanations should be, in essence, the same project and so we would like the two tasks to be accounted for in one general way. on the other hand, however, we would like to show how existing historical explanations work, on the assumption that they do work. A conflict between the two aims arises, however, because straightforward accounts of naturalscientific causal explanation do not seem applicable to what historians do when they try to explain historical phenomena causally. Thus, it is very difficult to tie a good account of natural-scientific causal explanation to a good account of historical causal explanation. a great deal of literature exists on this issue, but there is no satisfactory solution to this problem. Many good arguments have been presented for the one principle or the other, but these arguments have generally been taken to show that the other of the two principles is mistaken, since the tension between them seems so irresolvable. on the one side, carl Hempel and his followers have argued that historical explanation must conform to the deductive-nomological model of explanation (or one of its variants), and that this overrides any seeming necessity of interpreting existing history as successful.2 on the other side, there is no unified view, but there are many alternatives to the Hempelian approach that preserve the apparent success of good history but do so at the expense of assimilating historical explanations to natural-scientific explanations.3 the solution to this problem, I hope to show, can be found when one takes a couple of steps back and looks at the way we explicate the concept of explanation.4 an explanation in general tells what makes it the case that something is so. different ways of telling what makes something so give us different kinds of explanation. that is, there are different kinds of conditions that can be given to tell what makes x so: that which x follows in time, follows conceptually, follows compositionally, follows in the general order of events, and so on; where follows is understood as a consequential relation of some kind. different disciplines and areas of inquiry can require many of these different forms of explanation as determined by pragmatic considerations such as interest, practical problems, and limits of our knowledge and methods. areas of biology, for example, may call
2. See for example, Hempels classic 1942 paper, the Function of General laws in History, Journal of Philosophy 39, no. 2 (1942), 35-48; rudolph H. Weingartner, the Quarrel about Historical Explanation Journal of Philosophy 58, no. 2 (1961), 29-45; Morton White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New york: Harper & row, 1965); or more recently clayton roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation (University park: pennsylvania State University press, 1996). 3. See for example, dray, Laws and Explanation in History; dray, the Historical Explanation of actions reconsidered, in Philosophy and History: A Symposium, ed. Sydney Hook (New york: New york University press, 1963); arthur danto, Narration and Knowledge (New york: columbia University press, 1985); and more recently, a review essay of roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation, by paul a. roth, the Full Hempel, History and Theory 38 (1999), 249-263. 4. raymond Martin tries to deal with the problem by giving an analysis of the justification of historical explanations instead of an analysis of the explanations themselves. Even if what he says in this context is right (and it is surely important), the problem of the nature of historical explanation remains. See his beyond positivism: a research program for philosophy of History, Philosophy of Science 48 (1981), 112-121.

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upon conceptual explanations, nomological explanations, causal explanations, or historical explanationsthat is, accounts of how something came to be. In history, our interests and our epistemic capacities typically lead us to give narratives. the narrative form has many structural features, some explanatory and some notlike the structure of a well told story. the explanatory structural features are themselves many, and include conceptual explanations, explanations of the makeup of things, why-explanations (typically causal), explanations of how things came to be, and significance relations. In general we can distinguish dynamic explanations, explanations that essentially require relations across time, from static explanations, explanations that do not essentially require relations across time. the dynamic explanatory structure of narratives includes causal explanations, significance relations (that is, bringing understanding to some events by telling about the significance of some earlier events for those later events), and compositions of these structures (like explanations of how things came to be). Explanations of this latter kind, how things came to be, supply causal explanations between different stages of the process and order them in a sequence or network of sequences of events as determined by significance relations, which, as Arthur danto argued, typically make use of predicates unavailable to the agents involved in the earlier events.5 I take it that, relatively speaking, static explanations are unproblematic for history, in that they create no special division between history and other areas of empirical inquiry. thus, it is dynamic explanations that are fundamentally at issue in the debate over historical explanation and that call for unification with the practice of natural science. Since, as stated above, historical dynamic explanations are composed of why-explanations and significance relations, it is these notions that must be clarified. In this paper, I hope to show that we can explain both why-explanations and significance relations in history in a way that shows they are fundamentally of a kind with dynamic explanations in the natural sciences. In order to do this, I will first discuss methods of explication, and I will argue that the method we want to use, in this case at least, is what I will call pragmatic explication, which will open the way to explicating explanation so as to allow for the desired result. Further, to give this account, I will also try to solve a problem for the study of causation, specifically of the everyday, macro-level kind that is relevant for history. In the literature on this subject, a difficulty exists between distinguishing background conditions from causes and elevating partial sufficient conditions (or contributing causes) to the status of the cause.6 that is, in everyday reasoning and, more methodically, in history there is a need to appeal to causes that are not themselves necessary or sufficient conditions, nor do they have any universal laws directly governing them. The justification for doing so and the basis on which this
5. danto, Narration and Knowledge, 148-153. 6. See for example, donald davidson, actions, reasons, and causes, Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963), 685-700; Michael Scriven, the logic of cause, Theory and Decision 2 (1971), 49-66; J. l. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (oxford: clarendon press, 1974), and Maurice Mandelbaum, The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge (baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press, 1977).

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is or might be done has never been fully made out. at times some have charged that only moral considerations can bring one to make such distinctions between those things that were and were not causes in this sense. raymond Martin has done some excellent work in assimilating and developing ideas on this point and in trying to address the issue by investigating comparative claims of causal importance.7 I will attempt to go beyond his work in dealing with problems of causation relevant for history even as I use it for the project of connecting natural-scientific with historical explanation.
II. ExplIcatIoN

For the project of explicating a concept, a common project in philosophy, there are two prevalent methods in contemporary philosophy (although these do not exhaust the respectable possibilities): what I will call metaphysical explication and linguistic explication. I wish to contrast them with a third method for which I will argue, namely, pragmatic explication. Metaphysical explication tries to discover what a thing correctly referred to by a concept really is by employing metaphysical principles, postulates, and theories. this method investigates what the world must be like, so that we can draw conclusions about what there is for us to talk about. In the case of, say, art the philosopher asks, What is art? and tries to discover what the relevant parts of the world are like and whether they account for how we are willing to use the term art. If collingwood claims that art is imagination, then it is assumed that investigating the nature of imagination and its relationship to other things in the world that we take to be constitutive of art will show us whether art really is imagination and, so, whether we should use art in accordance with the notion of imagination. Similarly, if Frege claims that natural numbers are certain kinds of sets, then the method of metaphysical explication would have us treat that as a claim about how sets fit in with the world and whether they are the way we need them to be in order to talk as though numbers were kinds of sets. Metaphysical explication has us focus on trying to investigate the way the world is, independent of our categorizations, in order to determine how we should use our terms. the second method, linguistic explication, is straightforward, open, and clear. this involves using thought experiments (and other means) to test our linguistic intuitions concerning the appropriate application of a given term. For example, do we want to say that we know x in situation S? Well perhaps S is a situation that theory t says counts for knowledge. If we say that we do know, then we have a small piece of evidence in favor of t, while if we say that we do not know we have what may be a large piece of evidence against t. linguistic explication has us focus on investigating how we do in fact use a term in order to determine how we should use the term. the problem with these two methods is that they do not directly pursue an explication that is useful and meaningful for whatever purpose the term in question is to serve. Instead, they rigidly pursue an explication on the basis of something
7. raymond Martin, causes, conditions, and causal Importance, History and Theory 21 (1982), 53-74. Martin, beyond positivism is also relevant.

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else that is only indirectly relevant to what is useful and meaningful. concerning our problem, these methods employ roundabout means to determine what the concept of saying what makes something the case means, a concept we want to use in our analysis of natural-scientific and historical dynamic explanation. In the case of metaphysical explication, one tries to establish what concept should be adopted by figuring out what explanation must in fact be, on the assumption that explanations have some hidden essence. In the case of linguistic explication, one tries to establish what concept should be adopted by figuring out how natural scientists and historians use the term. both methods have something to be said for them, but they should be used on the basis of how they help establish usefulness and meaningfulness for the purpose that explanation is to serve. the third possibility for dealing with a term or concept involves noting that the discovery of what a thing must in fact be, or of the convention that actually guides usage of a term, is unnecessary for making the argument that a certain definition of the term has significance for the role for which it is needed in our discourse. there is no need to worry about whether we can state what explanation really must be, or what convention guides professional or common usage of explanation. Instead, we can just look for and pick a definition that we can show is what we want. Now, we could not be said to be explicating a given concept or term if the presented definition were not in line with the basic usage of the term. Thus, the third method starts with a generally agreeable notion of what E means and then goes beyond this in precision, not on the basis of any argument concerning the way we naturally apply the term, or an argument concerning how the nature of the world forces us to apply the term, but rather on the basis of some sort of justification by pragmatics. The definition in question is presented as helping us to get something we want. This pragmatic role is the justification for adopting the definition, which is what determines which definition to use under the circumstances.
III. ExplaNatIoN

In this section I will employ this third method, the method of pragmatic explication, to explicate the concept explanation. In doing so, I will start by introducing and defining a series of terms that I will use to lay out a notion of causal explanation. I will come back to significance relations in section IV, where I will argue that they can be handled with the material I develop in this section. In this, I do not claim that my account of cause is what causes really are, nor that it accords with all our linguistic uses of cause, but that mine is the most useful way of understanding cause for the relevant purpose of providing an account of explanation that shows the ways explanations in natural science and history are of a piece while at the same time respecting the way explanations commonly work in history. to get my account of explanation off the ground, we need some direction as to what goal(s) we are after, and what notion of explanation we have to start with. a why-explanation in general tells what makes something the case by answering a why-question. this is the loose but modestly suggestive grounding for a more elaborate account of explanation. an explanation, of the kind we are

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considering, answers the question of why something occurred or why something is the case. What we are after in giving such explanations is, among other things perhaps, control, where control is taken to be the possession of knowledge that could be used to practically manipulate elements of the world in order to bring about other elements. It is a kind of intellectual power. Note that it is important that the power of control is intellectual and only practical in a hypothetical sense. If I know why the book stays on the shelf, then I have (intellectual) control over the books staying on the shelf even if practically I dontI may be unable to reach it, for example; again, it is also the case that if I know why some cousin has schizophrenia then, in this sense, I have (intellectual) control over his having schizophrenia, even if practically I cannot put my knowledge to work to cure him. Similarly, we can have this kind of control over things in the past. If I know what made the book fall off the shelf, then I have this kind of (intellectual) control over the books falling off the shelf, not in the practical sense that I can go back to the past and prevent its doing so, but in the intellectual sense that I could have done so if I had been aptly placed in the past when its falling occurred. In the definition of control, could means that in principle the change in one aspect, if we had the power to bring it about and did, would lead to the other change. In other words, if we could change the one element that our causal knowledge tells us is responsible for another element, this would give us the (intellectual) power to create a change in the other element. the practical power exists in principle, in that we might be unable to affect the first element in the appropriate way, but if we could, then we could thereby affect the second. the world is the universe of our experience as it corresponds to a given conceptual framework, loosely understood. an element is a piece of the world, which can be changed as a whole. that is to say, what we manipulate when we use our control is anything that can play the role of being a unit, the change of which leads to a change in something else, taken also as a whole unit. For example, I have a certain kind of control if I know that I can change the position of this glass by using my hand to move it. I also have a certain kind of control if I know that I can change the distance my projectile travels by changing the angle at which I launch it. Each of the variables here are elements in the desired sense. It does not matter if a glass, my hand, a projectile (or the distance it travels), angle of launch, or other such variables are fundamental particles of the universe, or would survive a nominalist reduction, or are in a particular sense externally real. there is no ontology being given or assumed here. those elements serve as features of the world that are subject to change and for which such change can sometimes be brought about by a change in other variables. they are elements in a practical, if not in a metaphysical sense. they are, of course, compositions or functions of metaphysically real things, but it does not matter how. control, then, is understood here as a kind of intellectual power, which is a function of knowledge. Since we are supposed to create the relevant knowledge by providing an explanation, we must give an account of causal explanation that would have such explanations provide the knowledge that can create this intellectual power. To do this, I will simply put forward a definition of explanation and a definition of cause and then I will argue that these definitions should be

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adopted in order to direct our concepts to the goal of providing intellectual control. Using the concepts in accordance with these definitions helps us organize our knowledge in such a way that we are better able to gain control, which itself is a kind of knowledge. better organization of knowledge helps us gain more knowledge. Moreover, since I will also show that both scientific and historical forms of why-explanations can fit the model of explanation that results from my pragmatic construals of explanation and cause, I will thereby show that scientific and historical why-explanations are of a kind after all. It will probably be objected that we cannot say in what sense natural-scientific and historical explanations actually are the same using the method proposed here, because that question is about what already is, not what we should adopt, and what we should adopt is what is here being discussed. that is, we cannot say that history and natural science are united in terms of explanation if we are changing or manipulating the already given meaning of explanation. If there is no such already-given meaning, then we cannot show that the disciplines are united by making up a meaning. Such artificial tampering can never be more than a game with words. My answer to this objection is as follows. I give descriptions of the two disciplines; insofar as these are true descriptions and they are the same in some sense, or fall under one broader, true description, then they really are the same in that sense. that is, I will have shown that they actually are the same, with respect to that description. the only question that remains is whether this is a sense we should be concerned with, whether this sense is important, significant, insightful, or meaningful. and it is exactly this that I am trying to establish. the point of aiming our proposed definitions at a certain goal of the projects we are studying is to ensure that whatever can be said about how the projects fit with the definitions will be significant or important with respect to that goal. Therefore, we want to define explanation in such a way that it aims at control. to achieve this we need to put the phenomena to be explained into a certain picture, one that gives us the information we need in order to have intellectual control. Such a picture is a conceptual scheme, a way of dividing up the world as it appears to us. What this conceptual scheme must be is a network of the interworkings of elements of the world (using the terms element and world as defined above). In other words, since the world is the universe of experience subject to our conceptual divisions, a causal network is that aspect of the world that determines the ways in which changes in some elements affect changes in other elements. In order for there to be such a network, there must be natural laws that determine how changes in some things produce changes in other things. Since our elements are in some way composed of those things that are subject to laws, the ways in which changes in some elements affect changes in other elements is a function of how the laws determine changes in the basic things of the universe. If there were no such laws, it does not seem that there could be any system of interworkings of our elements of the sort needed for our being able to control them. one must be careful here. there can be a system of such interworkings, that is, relations of affection, even without there being any laws that directly link the changes in the elements. Underlying laws are necessary, to be sure, but they need

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not be laws expressed in terms of our elements. donald davidson pointed this out using the example of a rock breaking a window.8 there is no genuine law governing rocks and windows, although we have no trouble attributing causation in this case. We are sure that laws exist that govern the particles involved, but this fact cannot be straightforwardly translated into terms that apply to the case at hand. causation on this more immediate level presupposes that laws govern parts of what is involved, but not necessarily the wholes considered in the terms we are using to study or manipulate them. (I am using cause here in the ordinary way, as davidson does, not in the way I will define below.) thus, what one does when one puts a phenomenon in the network or system of interworkings is to juxtapose it, in one way or another, with other, similar-scale and similar-type phenomena such that these phenomena are connected by some kind of rules to which the interrelations between the states are subject. These rules are not mere regularities among element types, however, and are in fact not necessarily regularities at all, but only rules of effect among element tokens or particulars, given the surrounding conditions. the state of one thing brings about, under certain conditions, a state, or one of a class of states, in another thing. the rock thrown against the window brings about the breaking of the window, given the surrounding conditions in which it happens. there does not have to be any regularity between rocks hitting windows and broken windows, but there must be a rule that this particular thrown rock, in this situation, will break this window. this rule exists because of the way that genuine natural laws govern the parts of the rock and the window (and the surrounding conditions) involved in this particular case, even though there is no general law for the wholes involved when considered as general typesrocks and windows. the goal of control does not have to involve any law-like regularities, but it does require some kind of regulative connection. these connections occur in virtue of the underlying laws that cover them, but are not themselves laws, either in the sense of applying across different contexts, or in the sense of being able to supply reliable predictions concerning the elements in question. the elements or wholes that are the components of the network can be anything that correlates to a concept within a conceptual framework. this seems to allow for manyperhaps too manythings, but even if it lets in some garbage, this will not do harm in the end, because the garbage will not fit into the network in any damaging way. Normal elements could be cars, chairs, protons, wars, or genes, while abnormal elements (garbage) could be things like square circles, unicorns, or theories of not-being. these latter elements will do no harm, because they will have no connections in the network (except for psychological connections, but that is no problem), while cars, protons, and wars will have connections. cars can be affected by the gas in them and can affect things they go over or run into. protons can be affected by other protons, and can affect neutrons and electrons. Wars can be affected by material supplies and can affect political alliances. Square circles, unicorns, and theories of not-being are not affected by anything and do not affect anything, except as concepts, but then that is something else.
8. davidson, actions, reasons, and causes, 697.

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In order to define our higher-level, more general form of explanation, we also will need to take on a pragmatic definition of cause. First, we need two other definitions. X is a partial sufficient condition for y if and only if the set of x and possibly additional elements forms a sufficient condition for Y, such that if X were not present the set would not form a sufficient condition for Y. (I say possibly additional elements in order to allow that a genuine sufficient condition also count as a partial sufficient condition, the point of which will become clear later.) x is the most control-producing partial sufficient condition within a given sufficient condition for Y if and only if the amount of control we have with respect to X has the greatest positive correlation, among all partial sufficient conditions within the relevant sufficient condition, with the amount of control we have with respect to y. the correlation holds over differing scenarios in which we have various amounts of (and maybe types of) control over the relevant partial sufficient conditions and the effect. In other words, x is control-producing to the extent that control over x results in control over the effect. this notion of results in is to be understood in terms of unanalyzed correlations between scenarios of control over the antecedent conditions and control over the effect. the quality of most-controlproducingness is relative to a sufficient condition and applies to something from among the components of a sufficient condition. We do not need to choose, and for the most part do not want to worry about choosing, between fully sufficient conditions and their respective parts; instead we are concerned merely with selecting a component of a sufficient condition from among its other components. Using these notions I can now define a pragmatic sense of cause: X is a cause of Y if and only if X is the most control-producing partial sufficient condition for Y. Since there may be more than one thing that is in this sense most control-producing, there may be more than one cause. there could be multiple factors that are equally control-producing, and there can also be causes that are components of different sufficient conditions. although I will not spend time trying to argue for this, I do claim that this definition is not entirely abusive of the usual, vague, imprecise use of the term cause. I will come back to some related points later on, but for now I will simply claim that general use requires, or at least allows for, some sort of partial sufficient condition aspect, and does not distinguish between what is causal because of the way the independent world is and what is causal because of the way we perceive and categorize the world. We are now in a position to state the definition of explanation. An explanation of Y is a set of Xs, properly juxtaposed with Y, such that each X is a cause of y, with respect to a network (conceptual scheme). two issues immediately arise from this definition: (1) what is the proper juxtaposition supposed to be? (2) what should the set of Xs include? In response to (1), the proper juxtaposition will vary with the subject matter, since this must be determined by interest and how the explanation will be used. For causal explanation in physics it may or may not be an argument, as is discussed in the literature on that subject. For causal explanation in history it is probably a narrative, about which I will say a little more below. regarding (2), in the natural sciences, the issue of which xs are the appropriate ones to include in the explanation will depend on what question is being answered.

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this is a pragmatic aspect of explanation that has been explored at length by, for example, bas van Fraassen.9 In the case of narratives, the primary format for history, there are many structural features that determine the conditions to be presented as explanatory and how these conditions should appear within the narrative. as I stated previously, the dynamic explanatory structure of narratives consists of causal explanations, significance relations, and compositions of these structure-like explanations of how things came to be. The significance relations along with the direction of inquiry and the structure of the story determine which why-explanations to include in the overall narrative and where. For example, in giving an account of the European religious wars of the sixteenth century, one should include events, processes, and why-explanations of them that are significant for later events and processes with respect to the given inquiry. So, unless one were taking the knowledge as already given, one would describe some of the actions of some of the popes and some of the actions of luther, as well as explanations of why they did those things. of course, there are many other events and processes to be put in such an account, but these, surely, would count as significant for the ensuing religious wars. The conditions (that are among the most control-producing partial sufficient conditions) appealed to in a particular why-explanation should be guided by the same kind of considerations alluded to above. Since I have not yet stated what makes conditions control-producing for history, nor what makes them significant, I will only remark at this point that what is left open by those considerations is to be filled in by the goals of the inquiry and considerations of story-building. one might wonder why necessary conditions are not a part of my account of explanation, since they are involved in various forms of causal analysis. the reason for this is straightforward and derives from the basic goal of giving an account of why-explanation. Necessary conditions do not help to make clear why something happened, so they are not a proper part of a why-explanation. causal explanation is a variety of why-explanation, so it requires (at least) partial sufficient conditions rather than necessary conditions. Necessary conditions can explain why something did not occur, but for that, necessary conditions must be treated as sufficient conditions, in which case they would fall within the present analysis. If we want to explain why x did not happen, we can use necessary conditions for X, because the lack of necessary conditions for X is a sufficient condition for not-x. Say, for example, that a necessary condition for political influence is the ability to communicate with those over which the influence is had. If we wanted to explain why a certain group of farmers had political influence over their local area, it would not help to find that they had the ability to communicate with the people in the area. Many with the ability to communicate with a group of people do not have political influence over them. In order to explain political influence, we would need to cite something like economic power, charisma, high social standing, beneficial prejudice, military power, or perhaps an extraordinary or superior ability to communicate. Not having the ability to communicate, on the
9. bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (oxford: clarendon press, 1980), chapter 5.

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other hand, certainly could serve to explain why someone did not have political influence. However, this is because not having the ability to communicate is a sufficient condition for not having political influence, if the initial assumption is true. Hence, it would not help to add necessary conditions to a why-explanation, except insofar as those very conditions were also control-producing partial sufficient conditions. the debate over historical explanation has usually been formulated as an issue of whether historical explanations must be deductive. the anti-deductivists seem to have won this debate, especially since deduction is no longer the authoritative version of explanation in the natural sciences that it used to be. Even Hempel himself backed off from demanding laws for history and was content to make the case for explanation via regularity or some purely descriptive relation (without normative content) satisfying his expectability criterion.10 assuming Hempel was right about explanation in the natural sciences relying on regularities and quantitative or formalizable descriptions, the problem of unifying historical explanations with this form of explanation remains. However, by analyzing a particular kind of explanation that seems to be the source of the problemthat is, causal explanationand then moving to a higher level of description and finding the unifying similarity at that level allows us to see how natural-scientific and historical why-explanations are appealing to the same formula after all. We can discover what makes it the case that they bring us understanding in the same way. On the present definition of explanation it is easy to see how natural-scientific explanations conform to the model, regardless of which particular analysis of scientific explanation one subscribes to: whether it be Salmons, Kitchers, Hempels, or whatever else.11 there are three relevant kinds of causal explanation that must be shown to conform to the model I am presenting: (1) those using sufficient conditions, (2) those using some notion of cause, and (3) those using statistical regularities. If one provides a sufficient condition for the explanandum, it is automatically the most control-producing partial sufficient condition, since it is the only element of the set making up the sufficient condition. Of course, as mentioned above with reference to van Fraassen, pragmatics may determine which sufficient condition, or which cause, is best used to explain in the given situation. If one appeals to a cause in some way that does not imply a sufficient condition, however one picks out the cause, this will pick it out as the most controlproducing partial sufficient condition. Since I am giving a pragmatic explication of cause, one would hope that explaining by picking out a cause in some other way (like the transmission of a mark or conserved quantity) would pick out
10. carl G. Hempel, reasons and covering laws in Historical Explanation, Philosophy and History: A Symposium, ed. Sydney Hook (New york: New york University press, 1963). 11. Wesley Salmon, Causality and Explanation (New york and oxford: oxford University press, 1998); idem, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (princeton: princeton University press, 1984); idem, Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance, with contributions by richard c. Jeffrey and James G. Greeno (pittsburgh: University of pittsburgh press, 1971); Philip Kitcher, Two Approaches to Explanation, Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), 632-639; idem, Explanatory Unification, Philosophy of Science 48, no. 4 (december 1981), 507-531; idem, Explanation, Conjunction and Unification, Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 207-212.

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that cause as a most control-producing partial sufficient condition. Let me now make this apparent with the following simple argument. 1) Clearly a cause must at least be a partial sufficient condition. If its not, then it in no way contributes to bringing about the effect in which we are interested. 2) all notions of cause must make use of isolating something from the rest of the universe, a something that acts as an initiating or altering force in contradistinction to the other conditions in the universe. 3) to be control-producing is to be productive of knowledge that could be used to practically manipulate elements of the world in order to bring about other elements. 4) to know something as an isolated initiating or altering force in the universe is to know it as something that could be manipulated in order to bring about other elements of the world in which that thing is an element. (Recall the definitions of could, world, and element.) 5) therefore, to pick something out as a cause in an explanation is to pick it out as the most control-producing partial sufficient condition. (The most part comes from the in contradistinction to the other conditions part.) to explain by statistical regularity is to access control-producing conditions without taking the more metaphysical route of picking out a cause. the inferiority of this method (to the extent that it is inferior) stems from the inferiority of the control produced by statistical regularities. In a general sense, this method can still be considered a kind of causal explanation of course, because the regularities are supposed to be causally relevant.
IV. HISTORY

In history, insofar as one seeks to produce a causal explanation, one clearly does not meet the stated requirements in the same way. one does not track conserved quantities to produce causal analysis. one does not deduce descriptions of any events from prior descriptions of events and laws, of which there are few if any in history. one also uses statistical regularities to explain probabilistically only very rarely, and that this happens at all is a fairly recent development in the study of history. The vast majority of historical explanations do without these techniques. yet, as has been noted again and again, historians do explain why things happened. How they do this, or the extent to which they do this, has as yet not been entirely elucidated. Now there is surely more than one way that a historical why-explanation works, or, in other words, there is more than one kind of historical why-explanation. In order to fill out the present account of how one can explain causally in history, two things must be done. First, it must be shown what it would be for something to be the most control-producing partial sufficient condition for the event to be explained. Second, significance relations must be elucidated so that it is clear that they can do the work I have claimed that they do. It is also not immediately obvious how a historian might be able to pick out the most control-producing par-

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tial sufficient conditions. The epistemology of this, in addition to the metaphysics, remains unclear. However, I will focus primarily on the metaphysics and logic of historical explanation and say only a little about the epistemology, although I hope that it will not seem too mysterious once the metaphysics and logic are more fully laid out. I would like to preface this account by citing aristotles dictum that we should not expect greater precision than that of which the subject matter admits. From what I will soon say, many aspects of historical explanation will be left indeterminate, and the limitations on precision of the criteria for causality will not be merely epistemological, but metaphysical as well. this is as it should be, however, since it does not seem at all appropriate that we should be able to pick out a precise and determinate causal explanation of the French revolution, the protestant revolt, or the degeneration of the chinese imperial exam system. Even if we had all the facts in front of us, there should still be some room for dispute and perspectival interpretation as to what the causes of such events or processes were. to show or make clear that something, x, is the cause, that is, the most controlproducing partial sufficient condition, of some event, Y, various considerations can be brought forth and shown to be true of x. Using these various considerations corresponds to giving various kinds of explanation. If one condition is stressed, that will give a certain character to the explanation, which would have been of another sort if a different condition had been stressed. Not all of the following conditions are required, but they can all contribute to the control-producingness of an event or process. Often, the specific question or problem being grappled with by historians will determine on which of the conditions should be focused. For example, while not all causal explanations of historical events must be normative, normative explanation is a kind of historical explanation.12 In general, however, it is the conditions that bear the following characteristics that are in fact the most control-producing partial sufficient conditions. Thus, X is a cause of Y if it bears the following characteristics with respect to y: 1) It is a partial sufficient condition. this condition must be clearly knowable in the absence of laws. assume, for instance, that y is a war and a historian is seeking the causes (x) of this y. In seeking x the historian must assume that a factor, or more likely a set of factors, the exact nature of which is unknown, was a sufficient condition for the war. Now, the historian very likely will be able to identify things like the orders of a king, a territorial dispute, a dispute over succession, economic rivalry, a need to control the army, the glory-lust of a leader or a people, and so forth, which might obviously be partial sufficient conditions for the war. It makes sense that they might have helped to bring about the war in the sense that they, in conjunction with other things, formed a sufficient condition for the war. the historical event might have been over-determined, but this does not prevent any conditions from being partially sufficient, since what is required is that there be some union of elements that is a sufficient condition with the factor and that is not sufficient without it. It is not required that the event would not occur without the factor (that is, it need not be a necessary condition).
12. See dray, Laws and Explanation in History; dray, the Historical Explanation of actions reconsidered.

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2) It is a normative condition. x is a normative condition for y if and only if x has normative force as a reason in the minds of the relevant agents, that is, the agents whose actions would make x a sufficient condition for y, or would have normative force as a reason for other agents whose actions make a sufficient condition for y, or whose actions would have normative force for other agents, and so on. If we want to know why the lombards moved from the danube valley to northern Italy, we might answer that it was due to pressure from the avars. How the pressure from the avars could be the cause of the move is that the recognition of the various manifestations of that pressure by the leader or group of leaders of the lombards was taken as a reason for them to make the authoritative decision to move. this decision in turn was taken by the lombard people as a reason (and surely a very powerful one) to enact the move. thus, the pressure from the avars was a normative condition for the move by the lombards. 3) It is the most recognizable or identifiable. a condition is recognizable or identifiable if we can pick it out, see that it is present and that it is a partial sufficient condition. A certain, subtle variation of weather conditions (just sunny enough, but without too much blue sky, for example) which affects the minds of the relevant agents just so, so that they will act out their part of producing the event is not in general recognizable or identifiable. However, severe rain that floods the land and destroys the years harvest is quite recognizable, in the right situations, as a partial sufficient condition for social unrest or a lack of production of luxury goods. 4) It is the most manipulable. a condition c1 is more manipulable than another condition c2 just in case c1 is more easily made present or absent by hypothetical practical means. Hypothetical practical means are ways of achieving something through genuine human powers known to exist with respect to the context of the conditions, but that were not necessarily within the grasp of any particular real agent. a person can be stopped from delivering a message via hypothetical practical means by killing, capturing, or dissuading that person, even if there was no one available to carry out such a task. a territorial dispute is manipulable in principle, but it is far less manipulable than the delivery of the message. the decision of an authority is clearly manipulable, and far more so than the aggregate opinion and behavior of a people. For this reason, it can be appropriate to emphasize the actions of authorities over the reactions of subordinates in an explanation. 5) It is not easily replaceable.13 a condition may be more manipulable in the immediate sense, but nevertheless produce less control, because it is too easily replaceable. A condition, X, is replaceable with respect to an event, Y, just in case its absence would generally undermine the structure (sufficient condition) leading to y. In other words, x, in this situation, is needed to bring about y, because if x were not present there would not be anything present to do the work of x. In many cases, of course, the absence of one specific factor would not undermine the process toward y, because even in such a case, something else, Z, would fill the role of the subtracted condition, or the process would play itself out in a dif13. It is this condition on which Martin seems to put most of the weight in his account of comparative causal analysis (causes, conditions, and causal Importance).

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ferent, but equally efficacious way. For example, if it were not for the territorial dispute the nations would probably not have gone to war. However, were it not for the presence of a certain wood that was used to make weapons, something else would have been used to make weapons. Were it not for certain messages being transferred concerning the goings-on, other messages would have been transferred. In this respect, the dispute is more appropriately viewed as the cause than is the availability of the wood or the passage of the messages. It is much easier to stop the messenger who would relay news of the territorial dispute than to stop the dispute, but the messenger is easily replaced: if he or she does not bring the message, someone else will. thus, manipulation and replaceability (taken together) make the territorial dispute much more control-producing than the relay of the news. of course, it is possible that the communication could be more control-producing than the dispute, but that would be a different case, and in that case the communication would better serve as the cause in the explanation. this aspect of replaceability can occur even though all the conditions under consideration are partially sufficient. X is partially sufficient just in case it is a member of a set that forms a sufficient condition for the event, such that if x were not present the set would not form a sufficient condition. this definition, however, leaves open what may be the case in terms of elements that are not already members of the set. replaceability concerns the counterfactual situation in which x does not occur and what would happen in such a case. there may be circumstances, extraneous to the set that comprises the sufficient condition, that would provide that something else, Z, should happen if x does not. It might be the case that Z would then do the work of x and unite with the other conditions to form a sufficient condition for y, the event. If the other conditions in the set, by themselves, were enough to provide that Z should occur and fill in for x if x does not occur, then x is not a partial sufficient condition for y (at least, not if there is no other sufficient condition it would be a part of). However, circumstances outside of those that make up the sufficient condition could provide for Z in the case of not-x, so that x is a partial sufficient condition, but is replaceable. these conditions do not necessarily exhaust all the factors that can make something control-producing. there may be others, some of which may be very important. Furthermore, it might be the case that some of the above conditions are rendered superfluous by the inclusion of certain conditions that can be more precisely stated. Nevertheless, the above conditions go a long way toward creating a general picture of what it is for something to be a cause and to fit into a working explanation in the senses here developed. Finally, in order to provide the materials for explanations of how things came to be using causal explanations, it must also be shown how significance relations fit into this picture. recall the earlier claim that explanations of how things came to be supply causal explanations among different stages of the process and order them in a sequence or network of sequences of events as determined by significance relations. the first point to make about significance relations is that they are also control-producing relations, and so, as might be expected, are in the same family as causal relations. to see this, consider that a significance relation must correspond to a chain of relations among events and processes that, so to speak,

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carries over the significance. this chain of relations must be composed of causal relations and relations between earlier events and agents of later events, in which (roughly speaking) the agent sees the earlier event as a reason for actions that bring about the later eventperhaps by way of seeing the earlier event as meaningful for what is happening at the time. Since perception-of-reasons-by-agents relations are control-producing relations, these chains of relations are themselves control-producing relations between the starting point and the endpoint. thus, x is significant for y only if x is control-producing for y. If the French revolution is significant for the revolutions of 1848, this must be channeled by a series of causes bringing about changes in European society that made the people disposed to revolt in the way they did, because of the conditions they were in, or because they thought of the French revolution in such a way that they were inspired to revolt as they did, or both. Whatever combination of these possibilities was the case, the French revolution is significant for the revolutions of 1848 by way of control-producing relations. One subtlety that must be addressed to avoid an objection or just some confusion concerns the status of significance with respect to historical interpretation itself. I have claimed that x is significant for y only if x is control-producing for y, but x may also be significant for the interpretation of y, which might seem impossible to reconcile with the present control-producing analysis. However, this would just mean that X is significant for a third event or process, Z, happening in the present. x is control-producing for Z, the interpretation of y. the historian is just an agent who sees X as a reason to act so as to bring about Z. In such a case, we might say that x is indirectly significant for y, or that x is meaningful for y. as previously stated, significance relations govern the appeal to causes in howit-happened explanations. thus, these two kinds of relations have a different role to play, which means that we must be able to distinguish them. What marks out significance relations is that they do not have a strong immediate connection, but maintain relevance through longer chains of events and processes, and have branching influence over multiple chains. In other words, they maintain their control-producing character longer and further than regular causes. this distinction is only rough, though: in a how-it-happened explanation, the weaker but longer lasting control-producing relations govern the appeal to stronger but more quickly dissipating control-producing relations. In sum, using pragmatic explication we are able to unearth important connections between seemingly disparate phenomenathe gap between the methods and products of history and those of the natural sciences, even if these methods and products seem as though they should be of a kind. the heart of the matter as I have been exploring it here is finding a way to pick out partial sufficient conditions so that they can be used in the same way that laws or quantitatively describable processes are used in the natural sciences. I have attempted to supply this missing piece by focusing on partial sufficient conditions that are normative, identifiable, manipulable, and not easily replaceable. these conditions when met identify the control-producing conditions that are the causes of historical events,

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just as the natural sciences also seek to pick out control-producing conditions of the events they explore. of course, the former does this without invoking laws while the latter typically does invoke them, but this difference is not fundamental from the viewpoint of showing how history and science explain. this is so for the reason that in both cases the point is to explain causally by identifying the explanandums control-producing conditions, something each does in its own characteristic way. City University of New York