Tuesday Metaphysics Blogging

There's an interesting comments thread at Edge of the American West about the status of counterfactual questions in history. Historians are, by and large, loathe to deal with counterfactual issues, viewing the whole question as un-historical and un-professional. This is an interesting contrast with the world of philosophy, where it's very common to analyze counterfactual claims as inextricably bound up with claims about causation. To say that "Bush carried Florida because flawed ballot design in Palm Beach County caused many Gore supporters to inadvertently mark their ballots for Pat Buchanan" is to say that "if the Palm Beach County ballot had been designed differently, then Gore would have carried Florida."

Bigger questions, like what would have happened if Gore had become president, are, of course, not amenable to straightforward conclusions or definitive answers. But from where I sit, thinking about them is just a different way of thinking about how we've gotten to where we are today.

For instance, Jason Zengerle plausibly posits that had Joe Lieberman become Vice President in 2000, he never would have taken his current turn to the cranky right. That's probably correct. By the same token, Gore seems to have been pushed left by his own misfortunes. Indeed, the whole trajectory of U.S. politics would have taken a rather different turn, with most Democrats (and certainly the Gore-Lieberman administration) hewing to the centrist trend of the second Clinton administration rather than to the now-prevailing populism. I think we can assume that by 2004, the constituency for something like a Ralph Nader left-wing third party would have grown and either Gore would have been a successful president who decisively seized the center of the U.S. political spectrum to establish the Democrats as a dominant force, or else Gore might have been a failure who bled support from both the right (from people looking, for example, for action against Iraq or Iran) and the left (from opponents of the quagmire in Afghanistan and of neoliberal economic policy) paving the way for Jeb Bush to seize the White House.

Comments

Like it or not everything happening today IS paving the way for a Jeb Bush presidency.

Posted by steve duncan | April 22, 2008 1:22 PM

I don't mean to be controversial or anything but I believe under Gore's watch, 9/11 would never have occurred.

Posted by Micheline | April 22, 2008 1:35 PM

Philosophers pay a lot of attention to the _meaning_ of counterfactual statements (though as I recall they tend to focus on interpretations in 'possible worlds' rather than relying on slippery notions like causation.) But, with the exception of statements whose truth and falsity are matters of logic, they don't worry about the _truth_ of particular counterfactuals. Such truth is obviously difficult to establish, and that's where historians balk. On the other hand, most historical explanations rely on implicit counterfactuals. If we say the assassination at Sarajevo was the trigger of WWI, we are saying that if the archduke had not been assassinated, the war would not have broken out when it did. So historians don't mind counterfactuals as long as they don't have to look them in the face.

Posted by Jim | April 22, 2008 1:38 PM

If Bob Dole had been elected in 1996, the USS Cole would not have been attacked in Yemen.

Posted by Jaybird | April 22, 2008 1:42 PM

Were it not for the Butterfly Ballot, the presumptive nominee would be...Joe Lieberman. The current self-immolation of the party doesn't look too bad in comparison.

Posted by Matt B | April 22, 2008 1:45 PM

OK, if we are playing with counterfactuals & Gore: If Gore were elected, it would be Democrats defending the invasion of Iraq (just as they defended the bombing of Kosovo) rather than Republicans.

Posted by Al | April 22, 2008 1:48 PM

In many ways you have George Bush to thank for the rise of the blogosphere.

He created that which will destroy him and lay the path for a brighter future for all of humanity.

Yes, I can be a blogger triumphalist!

Posted by MNPundit | April 22, 2008 1:49 PM

if gore won, we'd have no 9/11, global warming would be a part of positive history, the immortality gene would have been found but mooted (via universal health care of course) and all elections would be accurate reflections of the will of the citizenry. amen.

dream big in your counterfactuals!

Posted by mike c | April 22, 2008 1:49 PM

Metaphysics is a word that means all things to all people, of course, but even having said that, I don't think this qualifies. Maybe it would if you took that definition of causality and ran with it.

It's still fun to think about, though.

Posted by Kraz | April 22, 2008 1:54 PM

If the Archduke had not been assassinated (which only occurred because the chauffeur took a wrong turn), would WWI have occurred at all, instead of "when it did"? Everyone tends to assume that it would have, because there was a logic in rising tensions, mobilization plans linked to alliances, etc., but really, there was no absolute necessity about the war. And if it did break out later, it would have been a DIFFERENT war. Maybe one Germany and A-H won. Maybe a war in which Corporal Hitler got a bullet through the head. In all these cases, you can spin all sorts of fantastic worlds, but only one thing is certain - things would have been very different indeed.

That's why historians don't like contrafactuals. As analytical devices they only really help if you assume that one thing changes but all else stays the same, but historians know that if you change one thing, everything else is likely to as well.

Posted by Estrien | April 22, 2008 1:55 PM

Mike C,

I am only saying that 9/11 wouldn't happened under Gore's watch because the Bush administration didn't take Al Queda seriously as the Clinton administration.

Posted by Micheline | April 22, 2008 1:59 PM

I believe that if Gore had been inaugurated (he was, in fact, elected) his administration would most like be judged a failure by history, something along the lines of the Carter administration. And I say this as a tremendous fan of Al Gore, going way back.

Preventing 9/11 is unlikely. Yes, his national security team would have paid more attention to the warnings, but catching those guys would have been nearly impossible. So what you're left with on 9/12 is a Democratic president and a Republican Congress.

The Democrats, following 9/11 very much gave Bush a lot of leeway. They laid off of major criticisms and they did not push the meme the he was in any way to blame for what happened. Can anyone imagine that a Republican-controlled congress would have reacted the same way had President Gore been in charge?

Democrats do often have a tendency to put what they perceive as the greater good ahead of politics. Republicans absolutely do not do this. They impeachment procedings would have begun before the end of September 2001. Gore's efforts to fight terrorism would have gotten absolutely no support from the right (or the left either, for that matter). The very thought of such a scenario is truly frightening.

Posted by Rob Mac | April 22, 2008 2:02 PM

Steve Duncan writes: "Like it or not everything happening today IS paving the way for a Jeb Bush presidency."

History repeats itself:

Reagan = James I
GHW Bush = Charles I
1992 election = overthrow of Stuarts
Clinton = Oliver Cromwell
Gore = Richard Cromwell
2000 election = restoration of Stuarts
GW Bush = Charles II (son of Charles I)
Jeb Bush = James II (brother of Charles II)

Don't ask me how we end up with Jeb instead of McCain in 2009, but it'll happen. Followed by a Glorious Revolution!

Posted by J | April 22, 2008 2:05 PM

The mention of Iraq is weird. I fail to see how Iraq would have been a very big issue, even for conservatives, without Cheney et al. to invent/push it. North Korea might have been on the radar though...

Also, Rob Mac's scenario seems depressingly realistic.

Posted by jack lecou | April 22, 2008 2:09 PM

Historians don't like counterfactuals because it makes it plain that their talk about historical causation is empty.

Posted by Bryan | April 22, 2008 2:23 PM

Historians are, by and large, loathe to deal with counterfactual issues, viewing the whole question as un-historical and un-professional. This is an interesting contrast with the world of philosophy, where it's very common to analyze counterfactual claims as inextricably bound up with claims about causation.

As a historian in training, I can assure you that historians love to discuss counterfactuals--amongst themselves, that is. We love what-ifs over beers and professors use them in grad seminars and in qualifying exams as a means of testing the strength of a given thesis.

The reason Matt thinks historians hate counterfactuals is because we hate counterfactual scenarios posited by people who have only read a couple books on a given subject and have grossly simple models of human motivations and historical causation.

It's simply not true, as Estrien argues above, that changing any one little thing changes everything. If historians believed that, we'd be unable to defend our theses: how could you argue your point that factors x, y, & z explain the development of trend a if you believe factors m, n, o, & p are all just as important as x, y, & z?

While history is not a science and is not as theoretically rigorous as other social "sciences," there is a general method and an absurd amount of research required to be an historian.

Of course it's fun for everyone to consider what-ifs. But if your history professor doesn't want to discuss counterfactuals, it isn't because she doesn't like them; she just doesn't think you're very good at them.

You need to spend at least a half-dozen years of your life reading hundreds of history monographs and primary documents to play the what-if game with any skill.

Posted by Philly | April 22, 2008 2:26 PM

With the Bush administration, they could blame 9/11 on the Clintons. Gore would have no such leeway. He would be f*cked. But there is also a chance he would have prevented it.

But if it happened at the R's took over in 2004, there might be more than just war with Afgan and Iraq in the offing. It would take longer to discredit those failed wars, too, since the Dems would have no credibility.

Posted by mpowell | April 22, 2008 2:30 PM

This counterfactual has already been definitively covered.

Gore might have been a failure... paving the way for Jeb Bush to seize the White House.

That would have been much, much better than the current situation.

Posted by right | April 22, 2008 2:32 PM

Real philosophers understand that what did happen is what was always going to happen. "What is cannot be what is not". Something else looks possible to us only because we don't know all the causes. So there's wisdom to be gained in trying to understand what happened; but dreaming that something else might have been is just dreaming.

Posted by Gary Sugar | April 22, 2008 2:35 PM

Matt,

Please learn that loathe is a verb meaning "feel intense dislike or disgust for."

You're looking for loath, the adjective meaning "reluctant; unwilling."

Call me anal retentive, but you're a freakin' professional writer! If you're gonna try & sound all erudite and shit, learn the damn language.

Posted by michael | April 22, 2008 2:38 PM

Can anyone imagine that a Republican-controlled congress would have reacted the same way had President Gore been in charge? - Rob Mac

Exactly. And that, not any better handling of security issues, would be why 9/11 would not have happened under President Gore.

Look at what happened after 9/11: GW Bush managed to get us into a land war in Iraq that has been wonderful for the Al Qaeda anti-American/unification of Islam message as well as for their brand. At the very least, was there, before our invasion "Al Qaeda in Iraq"? Now there is -- thanks to us, Al Qaeda's expanded their brand, if nothing else, and hence likely their message.

OTOH, if they tried 9/11 under President Gore and Gore decided to invade Iraq, the GOP would be screaming "wag the dog" at him mercilessly. No invasion of Iraq, no big brand boost for Al Qaeda. Nu? Why attack then?

Al Qaeda knew what kind of person GW Bush was and how the political gears in our country would respond and attacked us accordingly. Remember, we call Al Qaeda "terrorists" for a reason! They aim to terrorize us -- and they knew, from various threats (which have been largely swept down the memory hole) pre-9/11 that Bush & CO would run around like chickens with their heads cut-off if we were attacked whilst our idiot media, always keen to be seen as "unbiased" by not going after conservative leaders (whilst savaging liberals) would "rally around the President". Knowing that they could terrorize us into pretty much doing their bidding, they attacked ...

... and they've not needed to attack us since, because we've only needed one attack to continue to follow their agenda. See Bush does keep us safe. So don't be surprised that, if a Dem. wins, they attack us again just to weaken the Dem. and hope that the Dem. gets politically backed into a corner to continue to (ironically) implement the Al Qaeda agenda in order to "appear strong on terror".

If Gore were President, Al Qaeda would have known that we would not have responded as we did -- so they might have continued with USS Cole style nipping at our heels (and the politically constrained Gore would have nipped at their heels) but nothing big would have happened.

Posted by DAS | April 22, 2008 2:41 PM

I wonder if the distaste for counterfactuals on (some?) historians' part might not have something exactly to do with their distaste for the notion of historical causality. Some of the academic historians I know reject the notion that there could even be any correct narrative to be told about historical events (and they don't think this just because history is complicated). This is a shoddy thinking, in my view, but people seem to take it seriously, at least when wearing their historian hats.

Posted by Brendan | April 22, 2008 2:46 PM

"It's simply not true, as Estrien argues above, that changing any one little thing changes everything."

How do you know that?

Posted by Dave Hunter | April 22, 2008 3:16 PM

Lots of things conspired in Florida in 2000 to produce Bush: chiefly, That Woman discarded Florida tradition of accepting unambiguously double-marked ballots. Poor voters had double marked ballots in the past due to Florida electoral hijinx. Republicans conspired to turn that expedient against the poor. Which is hysterically evil: the poor resort to double marking ballots due to the fact that Florida found reasons to discard prior ballots. What's a group of scoundrels to do? Make double marking ballots reason to discard the ballot! (Always attack an opponents strength from your weakness. That's Rove's Law.)

****

One thing may or may not be the fact and everything else remains the same. (roughly remembered from Wittgenstein).

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 22, 2008 3:26 PM

Indeed philosophers talk about "possible worlds" when exploring issues of modality or flaccid versus rigid designators. Of course, they usually make a mess of things when they do this and sow seeds of deep confusions. Usually their possible worlds, unlike many science fiction worlds, aren't even that interesting, as they are populated by zombies, stuff that looks and tastes like water but isn't, and Nixon.
Most counterfactual speculation is harmless and commonplace in expressions of regret (If only I had done x, things would be different). However, since it's tough to test whether such statements are true once they get elaborate enough, their usefulness comes into question sooner rather than later. I would guess this is probably why historians steer clear of counterfactuals except in certain circumstances, which are sometimes hard to specify. Why does it seem important that we try to understand what would have happened if Hitler had conquered Russia, the Persians had won at Salamis, or the Muslims had not been stopped at Tours? And why are military counfactuals so interesting?

Posted by Jack | April 22, 2008 3:28 PM

"Historians are, by and large, loathe to deal with counterfactual issues, viewing the whole question as un-historical and un-professional."

I'll chime in with the other historians to point out that there's a counterfactual implicit in every claim of historical causation. When the then-called "new economic history" started showing up in the 1960s, among the major arguments of people like Robert Fogel was that historians were sloppy in their arguments about causation because they weren't serious about actually assessing what history would have been had their favored cause not been present. Thus Fogel developed an alternative American economic history in which canals did all the heavy lifting railroads had actually done, and concluded that the American economy would have done about as well. Fogel came quickly under attack for failing to be rigorous enough himself in following through all the implications [like how big the Chicago stockyards would have to have been to supply livestock to the meat-packing plants if it couldn't have been shipped over frozen canals in the winter], but I think he did well to point out our hidden assumptions and require us to face up to them.

Posted by David in Nashvile | April 22, 2008 3:32 PM

I'd simply say they require discretion. They're inherently speculative and untestable, and they turn on isolated events, so they can easily encourage plainly uncomfirmable speculation and can point people to models alleging on trivial causes. On the other hand, we all routinely engage implicitly in statements equivalent to hypotheticals when we state, bluntly and reasonably, that Bush abandoned regulation, appointed conservative justices, turned America to torture, took us to war in Iraq, and so on.

In the example from that Web site, I think, say, it's not terribly controversial to say that if Lincoln had lived, he'd have pursued Reconstruction differently than Johnson would have. It's less productive as history to speculate about the impact of his moral authority in surviving a shooting but not Seward. Somewhere in the middle, it's controversial to ask whether JFK would have escalated the war as Johnson did, keep the status quo, or reverse his war policy, just as he learned in office in other foreign policy areas, but it's a not unreasonable topic for discussion among historians interested in exploring JFK's own term in office and his development as president.

One might also observe that hypotheticals have been a tool in analytic philosophy, as part of traditions of appeal to intuition, to ordinary language, or to common sense; and yet they, too, can be worth examining for their potential to mislead. Thus, when a philosopher like Arthur C. Danto asks about the implications of indistinguishable art objects, he implicitly assumes they can exist and assumes certain standards for what counts as a distinguishing feature. I've explored this myself.

Posted by John Haber | April 22, 2008 3:49 PM

Counterfactuals are just masturbation. They're like time travel stories - which I can't stand (Terminator being the sole exception). They basically ask you to presume that nothing is as it was - and worse, that some one event, however small, is sufficient to "change everything" downwind, which is probably a rare situation, "chaos theory" notwithstanding.

The fact that a butterfly fluttering in Japan can alter the atmosphere over Germany is pretty much irrelevant to this.

It's basically a psychological desire on the part of people to believe that who they are matters. So if one person didn't do what they did, all of history would be changed. It's the same need as lionizing "world historical figures" as being the sole effectors of change in human history - which, as most historians would probably agree, is completely wrong. That somebody did something "decisive" is probably the completely wrong way to look at history. All events flow naturally from all other events. There are no real "decisive" events.

Now if you want to see what really influences human history, you have to look at "big" factors - factors like weather, climate, technology, major disease outbreaks, etc. Some of those things may look small - like the first microprocessor back in the early '70's. But they have large impacts. And most of them didn't occur because of one individual, but rather the combined efforts of many.

This is not to say the individual can't have a major impact. It's just not logical to believe that it is ALWAYS one individual or one event that had that impact.

I find the more useful navel-gazing to be, "why did someone do what they did?" Or "why did this series of events materialize?" That gets you to the heart of what happened more than speculating over things that didn't happen - and probably couldn't have happened given that they didn't actually happen.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 22, 2008 5:30 PM

My fav what if Gore had won, is what if 9/11 happened under his watch. That is actually a pretty valid what if. Still, the CIA might not have told the FBI about the guys living with their informant in CA and the FBI head office might still have told agent Rowley (sic) in MN to fuck off about that whack job Moussaoui. Maybe those 133 FAA warning would still have been ignored. .

Then if 9/11 had happened he would have been impeached. Joe too. President DeLay anyone?

Posted by rapier | April 22, 2008 7:24 PM

I don't mean to be controversial or anything but I believe under Gore's watch, 9/11 would never have occurred.

Posted by Micheline | April 22, 2008 1:35 PM

***********************************************

Makes perfect sense, really. I mean Clinton and Gore did such a good job preventing the first attack on the World Trade Center, the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the bombings of the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the attack on the USS Cole. Or there were the times Sudan and an unnamed Arab country offered to turn bin Laden over to us and Clinton declined to take him.

Plenty of OJT, I guess you could say

Posted by Campesino | April 22, 2008 8:12 PM

If Al Gore had been President when 9/11 happened, every day every network would have be opening their evening news with something like "Good Evening. It's the 2013th day since the 9/11 bombing, and Osama bin Laden is still at large. And now, today's headlines....".

The Republicans would have a big flip chart showing the same figure on the steps of Congress and every day they'd invite someone new - minor celeb, p9/11 relative, servicemember- to come flip it over while they talked about the feckless Dems.

Posted by MikeN | April 22, 2008 9:24 PM

Nitwit Campesino fails to point out that, aside from the first Trade Center bombing, all the others happened IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES where the FBI has no jurisdiction and the CIA can't find its ass with both hands.

Hardly relevant to 9/11. As for bin Laden, how many times did Clinton consider cruise missiles for bin Laden? How many times has Bush? Oh, wait, Bush doesn't even care about bin Laden any more - after swearing a blue streak that he wanted bin Lade "dead or alive".

I'm still waiting for somebody to pay me to get bin Laden. Guaranteed results for a lot less than the Afghan invasion cost.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 23, 2008 1:31 AM

Maybe a war in which Corporal Hitler got a bullet through the head.
Posted by Estrien | April 22, 2008 1:55 PM

I vote for that one.

Posted by aleks | April 23, 2008 8:28 AM

Philly: "It's simply not true, as Estrien argues above, that changing any one little thing changes everything. If historians believed that, we'd be unable to defend our theses: how could you argue your point that factors x, y, & z explain the development of trend a if you believe factors m, n, o, & p are all just as important as x, y, & z?"

I don’t understand this statement. Any historian can defend in good faith a thesis about why something happened by considering the interplay of all the prior events, trends and decisions of the actors that s/he is able to identify. But the resulting work is always and only a “possible history”, however sophisticated and convincing it is. What an historian cannot do is to argue or assume that if z was taken out of the equation, x and y would have 1. occurred and/or 2. occurred in the same way at the same strength or in the same sequential order. And since that is true, we cannot tell how the modifications would change the subsequent conditions under which x and y – if they occurred – would continue to affect that alternative future.

The example here is Sarajevo. Without the assassination, it is quite likely that a major European war would have broken out at some point. But not necessarily or inevitably, and if Philly believes this he belongs in a sociology department circa 1960. And, if war had broken out in say 1915 or 1917, the relative strength of the two sides and the sheer contingency of warfare would result in something different from what actually happened – perhaps something radically different. That being so does not in any way reduce the validity of historians’ attempts to explain why in 1914, a war actually happened and why it played out the way it did. Historians are concerned to understand the world as it really exists; they are not there to write backward science fiction.

Posted by Estrien | April 23, 2008 10:46 AM