How Rosenberg Gets Things Wrong:
Three Reasons to “Drop the Why.”
“How History Gets Things Wrong”
This page is meant to provide a closer look at Rosenberg’s, How History Gets Things Wrong. It critiques, more specifically, the author’s strange condemnation of Theory of Mind as being somehow “incorrect” (how can a subjective mental phenomena be “incorrect”?), and critiques furthermore his over-reliance on why-questions (i.e., “why did Hitler declare war on America?”, or, “why do Historians study History?”), and how this line of investigation is not only fruitless but also, and very ironically, mired in over-simplistic Theory of Mind assumptions.
History, to Rosenberg, is not just biased by this “theory”, it is rather synonymous with it. He asks us to consider the following:
What use is History in explaining human affairs if it cannot explain the “why” behind the decisions its actors? For example, what use is History if it cannot answer the question, “why did the Hitler declare war on America?”
What recourse do Historians have in answering these sorts of questions except by deploying their own “Theory of Mind?” In other words what recourse do Historians have in answering the above question except by postulating what Hitler’s motivating beliefs and desires may have been and, even more problematically, assuming Hitler’s ultimate decision was an outcome of some simplistic belief-desire pairing. The following would be an example belief-desire pairing:
“He declared war because he BELIEVED that America was weak”
“He declared war because he DESIRED to knock America out of the war before it could become too strong.”
For Rosenberg, therefore, showing the “Theory of Mind” to be incorrect is tantamount to invalidating the objective potential of History. This is at least the task that he sets up for himself in the first chapter of his book, as well as his rationale for devoting the rest of the book to “disproving” Theory of Mind.
In what sense is Theory of Mind “Incorrect?”
Rosenberg correctly observes how an overwhelming body of evidence suggests human decision-making to be much less rational or deliberate than our intuitive “Theory of Mind” makes it out to be. Human beings do not, for the most part, make decisions through deliberate rationalization of their beliefs and desires. As counter-intuitive as it may seen, our beliefs, our desires, and even our reasons exist as post-hoc justifications.
Rosenberg is therefore correct in implicating our innate “Theory of Mind” to be no more than a mental illusion, a convenient simplification that betrays the true depth of human cognition — be it our own or that of dead people. Therefore, to answer Rosenberg’s motivating question in the few words that it deserves, the “theory” is of course incorrect insofar as it is a subjective mental experience. Likewise, Historians should definitely refrain from psychoanalyzing historical figures with the same subjective mental rubric that I use to intuitively understand why Rachel is angry with Monica while watching Friends.
That said, while “Theory of Mind” is tautologically by subjective, i.e. by virtue of its being a subjective mental experience, it seems odd to write-it off as “incorrect,” and it definitely seems very silly to devote an entire book to this tautology. Colors, much like our simplistic model of the human mind, do not really exist in the world beyond our own minds. Objects are not really red, blue, or green — the sensation is created in our minds using the wavelengths of incoming light. But it would be absurd to say that color is “incorrect,” because we all understand the sensation to be an objective phenomenological reality. In much the same way, “Theory of Mind” is an objective phenomenological reality.
While Rosenberg does make a fair point regarding the danger of “Theory of Mind” to oversimplify historical explanations, I will argue that historians are by no means condemned to making these sorts of oversimplifications. Instead, i suggest that it is the duty of Historians to make these objective phenomenological realities the object of their research. In this way, I envisage “Theory of Mind” as being for, not against, History.
As such, the problem is not with “Theory of Mind” itself. The problem is with the Rosenberg’s understanding (or rather misunderstanding) of History.
Rosenberg motivates his critique of History with questions like, “why did Hitler declare war on America?”, but Historians are, I think, much more interested in questions like, “how did Nazism become socially viable in 1930s Germany?”. Unlike the former question, the latter is not concerned with intimately psychoanalyzing Hitler so much as it is with confronting the phenomenological experience of Nazism as a thing in and of itself. Whereas the “illusion” of subjective mental experience might be an impediment to the former question, it is rather the raison d’etre of the latter question.
However, Rosenberg would would say that even this question is flawed insofar as it still invites a degree of psychologizing, (i.e., “Why did many Germans choose to become Nazis?”). Unlike Rosenberg, however, this blog suggests that instead of dropping History altogether, we are much better off simply dropping these sorts of “why-questions” in favor of “how-questions.” This is something that serious Historians already do, and it is supremely ironic how Rosenberg, in spite of recognizing how the very asking a “why-question” invites all sorts implicit assumptions, centers his entire book around an assumption-cum-answer to the question, “why do people study History?”.
Three Reasons to “Drop the Why”
Let us return to the question that began this whole investigation: “Why do people Study History?”. As stated before, I have no definitive answer to this question. Sure, I have heard many academic Historians tell me why they study History, but I am not convinced that the layperson studies it for the same reasons, and I am not convinced that the layperson’s relationship with it is any less important than that of a professional. Above all, I not even sure if most people deliberately “study” History, so much as they experience it, viscerally, as a a kind of preexisting reality.
Like Rosenberg, I too am interested in using recent findings in Cognitive Science to arrive at a deeper understanding of History. Unlike Rosenberg, however, I think that the first step is to bracket-out our presuppositions as to why people study History, and to instead isolate and consider the experience of History as a thing in and of itself. The problem with Rosenberg’s approach is not only that it is extremely self-defeating (using his own “Theory of Mind” to answer the question, “why do people study History?”), but also that is impossible from the perspective of historical objective and, a reason that is especially relevant to this interdisciplinary blog, it is a dead-end from the perspective of connecting Cognitive Science with History. Below are the three reasons for “why we should drop the why.” The motive in explicating them is not so much to poo-poo Rosenberg’s book, How History Gets it Wrong, so much as to demonstrate to this blog might Get it (more) Right.
Reason One: The “why-question,” not History, is mired with Theory of Mind
Consider the following questions,
How does the brain direct human behavior?
Why does the brain direct human behavior?
Note how the first question seems much more natural than the second. The is brain is after-all an inanimate object, and the latter “how-question” seems to respect its inanimacy. The second question, conversely, is strange insofar as it implicates the brain, an inanimate biological object, to have agency over its direction of human behavior. Since we intuitively recognize this to be an absurd state of affairs, we might assume that the question is really asking “why, for our being, do our brain direct our behavior?”.) Of course the question is still rather silly (the reason in the fact of our having brains is as self-evident as in our being alive), but the larger point here is how the simple word, “why”, seems to imply agency. As shown by the following series of questions, this presumption of agency is none other than our innate “Theory of Mind.”.
Why did Hitler declare war on America?
Why do people study History?
And,
How did Hitler declare war on America?
How do people study History?
The latter set of how-questions seem absurd. How did Hitler declare on America? Well, you might say to yourself, “he just did.” But stop for a second to observe how these questions are only unnatural insofar as they prevent our otherwise natural, intuitive, and ultimately over-simplistic “Theory of Mind” from explaining (for us) the decision-making of others. This is after all Rosenberg’s entire point: any answer we offer to the question, “why did Hitler declare war on America?”, will rest necessarily on our presupposition of Hitler’s beliefs and desires — even more fundamentally on our presupposition to “get inside his head.”
But the supreme irony is this. Rosenberg is only able to present the question, “Why did Hitler declare war on America?”, as a knock-down to History by in the first place presupposing Historians to care about this question (they don’t), and by more specifically using his own Theory of Mind to answer this question, “Why do people Study History?”. His answer to the question, unsurprisingly, is characteristic of the why-question induced presumption of agency: he assumes that people choose to study History for the sole purpose of arriving at the “fact of the matter.” However, in the next and following bullet-points we will see how this assumption-cum-answer is false in a dual sense. First and foremost, the presumption of agency is antithetical to the phenomenological experience. We do not choose to study History. Rather, History comes to us. This will be argued in the third bullet-point. In the second place, and of more immediate concern to the question of historical objectivity, Historians are not at all interested in getting at some singular “fact of what happened” — the presupposition stems from Rosenberg’s own obsession with why-questions.
Reason Two: Complex phenomena, be it History, the brain, or the connection between the two, deserve a how-question approach
The very notion of there being a “fact of the matter” is yet another “Theory of Mind” fallacy brought on by the why-question. For example, consider the following question pertaining to an episode of Friends: “Why did Monica share her secret with Rachel?”. You intuitively understand intuitively that a good answer to this question will begin with the word because and, as a result, will therefore also be a single-reason answer (i.e., “because she wanted Rachel to understand why she could not come to the party”, or “because she felt that Rachel just deserved to know.”)
But Historians understand that this intuition is a fallacy, and that complex phenomena do not operate on this dimension of single-causes.
In this way, the question, “How does the brain direct behavior?” seems like the opening words of a Neuroscience textbooks, whereas “why does the brain direct behavior?” seems like something a five-year old might ask after opening a Neuroscience textbook. Historians understand this well. This is why they treat the question, “Why did World War I start” with a skeptical attitude. Did it start because a Serbian national assassinated the archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand? Did it start because the complex alliance system among European Great Powers practically guaranteed that such an assassination crisis would send the whole continent into flames? Or, did the conflagaration represent the only natural conclusion to a decades long arms-race, and a century-long imperialist competition (literally, the “great game”)? Serious Historians recognize that neither one of these answers is wholly correct nor incorrect. World War I is, above all else, a very complex phenomena. In the same way, I argue that if we want to apply a Cognitive approach to History, we must at the very least treat it as a complex phenomena. As argued below, the how-approach allows us to tackle the complexity by separating historical phenomenology from historical objectivity.
Reason Three: Justifying the Phenomenological Approach
Although it is important that we appreciate the depth of academic History, this blog is altogether more focused on the experience of non-academic everyday people. Once again, the hope is that such a phenomenological approach will allow us to make deeper connections between History and Cognitive Science, and at the very least to make connections that transcend Rosenberg’s dead-end conclusion, “History is bad because it uses Theory of Mind.”
In this bullet-point we will also consider whether Rosenberg’s blanket rejection of History is even possible.
Consider the following scenario:
A Jewish girl comes of age in 1950s New York City. One day, she learns that her parents were survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Does this girl have a choice in confronting the historical reality of the Holocaust? Does she have the option of not asking or struggling to answer the question, “Why did the Holocaust happen?”.
History is not something that people choose to do. It is rather something that comes to you. Rosenberg is blind to this reality, which is perhaps why he recommends Historians to simply refrain from asking questions and just “get over it” (pg. 160).
But how could this girl, confronting the enigma of the Holocaust for the first time, just “get over it?” Rosenberg is at least sensitive to how the horror of the Holocaust practically demands an explanation, but his own explanation is self-defeating.
Rosenberg’s thesis is that History is mired in all sorts of false Theory of Mind assumptions, and that it is therefore bad. In an analogous way, he claims that Nazism is just another example of “Theory of Mind” gone wild, and that this is why Nazism is also bad.
On the one hand, Rosenberg does have a fair point. It is not difficult to see the trace of “Theory of Mind” in Nazism and in ideology more generally. Likewise, although I do not condemn academic Historians to the dustbin of "Theory of Mind,” there is no doubt that most laypeople cannot conceive of History without it. Finally, I agree that there is some connection between History, Theory of Mind, and ideology, and this connection is in fact core to my larger thesis.
On the other hand, it is tragic that Rosenberg cannot see the value in these observations as things in and of themselves, and that he is instead blinded by his need to answer the question, “Why do people study History.” The explanation is, apart from being rather inflammatory in how it suggests Historians to be no less deluded than Nazis, also self-contradictory. Indeed, any claim regarding the “fact of the matter” on Nazi ideology is after all a historical claim.
In the end, it turns out that Rosenberg himself cannot escape his own Theory of Mind, and he cannot even escape History.
This blog will not pretend to escape either of these things. It will try to do the seemingly paradoxical: to recognize the potential for historical objectivity and to recognize as well the potential for History exist as a rather peculiar mental experience, one that springs not only from “Theory of Mind” but also, as we will see, our deepest sense of being, consciousness.
Finally, the blog is only able to resolve the apparent paradox by through its phenomenological approach. That is, to appreciate the experience of History as something outside of History itself. One does not negate the other.
The Road from Here: Phenomenology, and the Beingness of Historical meaning
Recall the example of the Holocaust, and appreciate how Rosenberg’s misunderstanding of the demanding quality of History is above all a misunderstanding of the phenomenology of historical meaning. The Holocaust is about beings, and it demands an explanation from beings. In later sections of the main blog page, I argue that we, as beings, also inhabit these larger social-narratives, and moreover conceive of the narratives themselves as being kinds of beings. But the more immediate claim here is that such a consideration is impossible if we obsess over the question, “why do we study History?”.