The uses and challenges of counterfactual reasoning in history and the social sciences

Seminar coordinated by Jean-Matthias Fleury (Collège de France), Quentin Deluermoz (Paris XIII) and Pierre Singaravelou (Université Paris I).

The aim of this seminar, which follows on from discussions in the "What if history" seminar at EHESS (Deluermoz, Singaravelou), and in a seminar at the Collège de France devoted to the epistemology of causality (Fleury) last year, is to explore in greater depth the historiographical, epistemological and even ontological issues raised by this type of reasoning, from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Indeed, since the pioneering work of cliometry in the 1960s, the reconstitution of counterfactual alternatives for given historical, economic or social situations has been widely developed in the social sciences, in often very varied forms and research strategies. Where, for example, an economist might try to imagine the industrial development of the United States without railroads, in order to assess the causal relevance of the latter factor by contrast, a theorist of international relations might use counterfactual alternatives to reconstruct the decision-making processes that helped, for example, to avert a third world war during the Cuban missile crisis. But recent developments in this approach have shown that the questions raised by the use of counterfactuals in history go far beyond this methodological framework, and also invite reflection on the cognitive resources of these particular counterfactual scenarios that are historical fictions.
Parallel to the spread of this type of question in history and the social sciences, the philosophy of modality has also undergone considerable development in recent decades, whether through programs associated with modal logic or research into the epistemology of modality or its ontological interpretation. Yet, even if these analyses are regularly cited in certain works of history or social science, it has to be said that, with very rare exceptions, the dialogue between the two undertakings has not really taken place, particularly in France, where the reception of counterfactual history has remained relatively marginal. We hope that the framework of this seminar will help to initiate this dialogue between philosophers and social scientists.