The psychological basis of historical explanation: Reenactment, simulation, and the fusion of horizons

History and Theory

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 25-42

  Stueber, Karsten R ^a  

^a Department of Biology   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 24944477947     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2303.00189     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. See Carl Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanations (New York: Free Press, 1965), and David-Hillel Ruben, Explaining Explanation (London: Routledge, 1990).
2. For an excellent analysis of Collingwood's claim regarding the scope of reenactment, see W. H. Dray, History as Re-enactment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). I benefited greatly from Dray's interpretation of Collingwood. Nevertheless, it is helpful to situate Collingwood in the contemporary debate about simulation theory for a systematic reconstruction and evaluation of his theory of reenactment
3. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History [1945] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 219
4. For a brief description of our folk-psychological repertoire, see H. Wellman, The Child's Theory of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), chap. 4
5. For good survey of the debate in the philosophy of mind and psychology, see the introduction in Folk Psychology, ed. Martin Davies and Tony Stone (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995)
6. For an analysis of it in the context of traditional philosophy of social science, see especially the detailed introduction in Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, ed. Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten Stueber (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000)
7. Jane Heal, "Replication and Functionalism," in Davies and Stone, eds. Folk Psychology, 47 and Alvin Goldman, "Interpretation Psychologized," in ibid., 85
8. For a distinct and radical version of simulation theory, see also Robert Gordon, "Folk Psychology as Simulation," in ibid., 60-73
9. and "'Radical' Simulationism," in Theories of Theories of Mind, ed. Peter Carruthers and Peter Smith (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11-21
10. Stephen Stich and Shaun Nichols, "Cognitive Penetrability, Rationality and Restricted Simulation," Mind and Language 12 (1997), 297-326
11. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 316.
12. For a survey about this topic and the debate between Dray and Hempel see Kögler and Stueber, eds. Empathy and Agency, Introduction, 12-17, In the recently discovered manuscript The Principles of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Collingwood seems to focus more on this aspect of the difference between history and the natural sciences. Indeed he does not mention reenactment at all. He stresses rather that in contrast to the natural sciences, the historical sciences are essentially "criteriological" sciences (84), because they cannot investigate human action and thought without appealing to normative distinctions such as acting wisely or foolishly and thinking truly or falsely. However, as I will argue in the following, there is a close connection between the necessity for reenactment and the criteriological character of the historical sciences
13. Heal, "Simulation, Theory and Content," in Carruthers and Smith, eds. , Theories of Theories of Mind, 79.
14. For an elaboration of this argument see also David Henderson and Terry Horgan, "Simulation and Epistemic Competence," in Kögler and Stueber, eds., Empathy and Agency, 123ff
15. Heal, "Simulation, Theory and Content," 83f.
16. Karsten Stueber, "Understanding Other Minds and the Problem of Rationality," in Kögler and Stueber, eds., Empathy and Agency, 144-162
17. R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), 101. 16. Ibid., 104
18. In the continental tradition of philosophy Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank argue similarly. See especially M. Frank, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991)
19. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1953), B131
20. Tyler Burge, "Reason and the First Person," in Knowing Our Own Minds, ed. C. Wright, B. Smith, and C. Macdonald (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 256
21. John Perry, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical," in The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 33-52.
22. See Robert Howell, "Kant, The T Think,' and Self-Awareness," in Kant's Legacy, Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck, ed. Predrag Cicovacki (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001) supporting this point of view. In her article, "On Interpreting Kant's Thinker as Wittgenstein's T,"' in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000), 33-63, Patricia Kitcher takes issue with this interpretation of Kant. She reminds us that Kant's reflections on the have to be situated within his larger epistemic project. I think that, insofar as her critique of McDowell's take on Kant is concerned, her point is well taken. Yet, pace Kitcher, I do not think that Perry-like considerations about the "I" are necessarily incompatible with Kant's larger epistemological project. Kitcher argues that Kant could be interpreted in that manner only if he had asserted a "philosophically interesting asymmetry between first person and third person ascriptions of mental states" (49). She cites the same passage that 1 quote, in support of the view that Kant did not acknowledge such an asymmetry. Yet only in the context of a Cartesian conception of the mind, which Kant rejects, does the other mind problem arise. If one accepts, on the other hand, that other persons are psychologically structured similarly as I am, either for empirical or transcendental reasons, then one can accept simulation as a method of recognizing other minds and at the same time acknowledge the special status of the I-concept. More importantly, if I am right, accepting such special status supports a conception of interpretation favored by Collingwood and simulation theorists."I"
23. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edition (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989), 373
24. I am mainly interested in what I take to be Gadamer's paradigmatic critique of reenactment as a psychologistic conception of interpretation, not in an exhaustive critique of Gadamer. At times Gadamer even seems to admit the role of intentions in interpretations and comes close to arguing for something like reenactment. See, for example, Truth and Method, 333-334. One thus could see the difference between Gadamer and Collingwood as quantitative and not qualitative, as one reader for this journal has suggested. They differ in regard to how optimistic they are in regard to our ability to connect to other minds. This indeed is a plausible and maybe the most charitable interpretation of Gadamer. Yet in his explicit critique of Collingwood, Gadamer seems to reject Collingwood's notion of reenactment wholeheartedly; I am interested in probing whether his arguments hold up under scrutiny in this respect. Interestingly enough, Gadamer distinguishes strictly between the understanding of another person in everyday oral communication and the understanding of the written tradition. In an oral communication we understand a speaker only if we reconstruct his intentions; only then can we grasp what he or she meant. Yet such a psychological conception of understanding does not apply to our understanding of written texts
25. See his "Reflections on My Philosophical Journey," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. L. E. Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 52f. As my argument in this section will show, however, such a strict distinction can hardly be sustained
26. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 372.
27. I therefore agree with Ramberg, who maintains against Gadamer that we have to take into account the intention of agents, otherwise "agents drop out of the picture along with authors." See B. Ramberg, "The Source of the Subjective," in Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, 465. Yet this critique of Gadamer applies only insofar as the rationalizing explanation of action and the interpretation of certain texts are concerned. It does not apply immediately to literary texts whose interpretation Gadamer takes to be paradigmatic
28. See in this regard the work of Paul Roth, who argues for a position of narrative antirealism. See especially his article "The Object of Understanding," in Kogler and Stueber, eds. , Empathy and Agency, 243-269. However, given the argument I present in this article, I would opt for a realistically grounded conception of historical narratives; but this needs to be developed in more detail in another article
29. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992)
30. and Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
31. See my "Understanding Other Minds and the Problem of Rationality." especially 154-160
32. For my take on the question of interpretive relativism, see also the last section of my "Understanding Truth and Objectivity: A Dialogue Between Donald Davidson and Hans Georg Gadamer," in Hermeneutics and Truth, ed. Brice Wachterhauser (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 183-189