Wesleyan University

Causes, Conditions, and Causal Importance

Author(s): Raymond Martin
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), pp. 53-74
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE

RAYMOND MARTIN

The problem of clarifying what is meant by judgments which assign relative

importance to the causes of particular results, and of explaining how such
judgments may be confirmed, is an important one for historians. Disagreement
over relative causal importance is often a major point of controversy among
historians who address the same explanatory problem (according to E. H.
Carr, "Every historical argument revolves around the question of the priority
of causes"'). And the ambiguous and poorly understood character of judg-
ments which assign relative importance to causes frequently constitutes an
obstacle to the resolution of such disagreement.
Although historians are not unaware of the importance of this problem,
they have devoted surprisinglylittle energy to solving it.2 And some historians
seem content to dispatch it simply by claiming that judgments which assign
relative importance to causes are subjective. Even among scholars who argue
that such judgments themselves are objective, there is some tendency to sup-
pose that historians are so incapable of adequately defending them that their
commitment to them is little more than subjective preference. Ernest Nagel,
for example, after arguing impressively that judgments which assign relative
importance to causes often have "an undeniably clear and verifiable content,"
stresses that "it is doubtful in most cases" whether such judgments are "sup-
ported by competent evidence" and concludes that historians "are therefore
compelled, willy-nilly, to rely on guesses and vague impressions in assigning
weights to causal factors."3
The goal of the present study is to defend an analysis of causal weighting
according to which judgments which assign relative importance to the causes
of particular results can be objective. Part I is a consideration of what may be
said for the claim that such judgments are subjective. Part II is an examination
of a significant instance of causal weighting in historical studies. Part III
contains my analysis.

1. E. H. Carr, What Is History? (New York, 1962), 117.

2. See J. H. Hexter's candid remarks in "Power Struggle, Parliament and Liberty in
Early Stuart England," Journal of Modern History 50 (1978), 30.
3. Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York, 1961), 587. Compare the
different tone of Nagel's remarks on 588-592.

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54 RAYMOND MARTIN

The mere claim that judgments which assign relative importance to causes
are subjective raises more questions than it answers. For example, it does not
reveal in what sense of "subjective" they are subjective, or to what degree
they are subjective, or whether it is what the judgments assert or rather the
manner in which the judgments are defended which makes them subjective,
or whether ways may be found to reduce the subjective element in such judg-
ments, and so on. In addition, if all judgments which assign relative importance
to causes are subjective, it should be a serious question whether historians
ought to continue to make them. Yet, few who claim that such judgments are
subjective advocate that historians cease to make them. And those who do
so advocate are all but universally ignored. Finally, it does not appear, at
least prima facie, that all judgments which assign relative importance to causes
are subjective. Consider, for example, the judgment that Lenin's participation
in the Russian October Revolution was a more important cause of its success
than was Stalin's participation, or the judgment that Germany's declaration
of unrestricted submarine warfare was a more important cause of the United
States entry into World War I than was the disclosure of the "Zimmermann
Note." Or consider the fact that historians who assign relative importance to
causes commonly appear to support their judgments with evidence which
lends credibility to their claims.
Recent arguments by William Dray contain the best defense in print of the
claim that judgments which assign relative importance to the causes of par-
ticular results are subjective.4 Dray's position is that the judgments themselves
are subjective and not merely the manner in which they are made. Dray
argues convincingly through a careful examination of alternative interpreta-
tions of the American Civil War, and more recently through an examination
of the dispute among A. J. P. Taylor and his critics over the origins of the
Second World War, that historians often use causal language in a covertly
moral, or at least normative sense. Dray shows that their doing so, especially
their doing so without recognizing that and how they are doing so, constitutes
a major obstacle to the resolution of their disagreements. Dray argues for
these conclusions by showing that the historians he examines often attempt
to support their causal claims and attack rival claims by appeal to normative
considerations such as whether a given course of action was "reasonable" or
"moral." For example, he argues that historians who wrote in the immediate
wake of the American Civil War tended to divide along sectional lines and to

4. William Dray, Philosophy of History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964), 47-58, and
"Concepts of Causation in A. J. P. Taylor's Account of the Second World War,"
History and Theory 17 (1978), 149-174. See also H. Stretton, The Political Sciences
(London, 1969) and Behan McCullagh, "Interpretationin History," Australian Journal
of Politics and History 17 (1971), 215-229.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 55
subscribe to what he calls "the conspiracy theory." To Southern historians of
this period, the fact that the secession of the South (even the firing on Sumter)
was simply a warranted response to a Northern threat was a reason for not
regarding it as the cause of the war. To Northern historians, on the other
hand, the fact that the South had no constitutional right of secession or legal
claim to possession of federal property was a reason for regarding Southern
resistance to rightful occupation - the last act in a series expressing resistance
to the idea of the Union - as the cause of the war.
One could, of course, disallow such normative attempts to confirm or dis-
confirm causal claims on the ground that they are irrelevant. But Dray is at
pains to document his view that appeals to normative considerations of the
sort he cites are often regarded by historians as appeals to relevant evidence.
If one grants that appeals to normative considerations do tend to confirm or
disconfirm causal claims, one must allow that the causal claims themselves
are normative. In my opinion, Dray's argument that historians often use
causal notions in a normative sense is both convincing and important. How-
ever, a central reason why his argument is important, namely that it demon-
strates the need for and direction of significant methodological reform in
historical studies, is apparently rejected by Dray. At places in both arguments
Dray suggests that historians who assign relative degrees of importance to
causes either cannot or ought not to do so on factual grounds alone. For
example, in reply to Taylor's claim that "it is not part of the historian's duty
to say what ought to have been done. His sole duty is to find out what was
done and why," Dray remarks that "the view of what ought to be the practice
of the historian that Taylor expresses here conflicts with views he has himself
expressed elsewhere and which are, I think, better considered."
Taylor accepts Butterfield'sadmonitionto historiansto avoid "moralfervor";but
he rebels against the notion that they should remain "objective"at the price of
confining themselves to judging past agents by those agents' own standards.The
historian,he says, cannot hope in such a way to evade "moralconcerns."I agree.
One of the reasonswhy this is so, however,is surely that (as Taylor puts it himself)
his task is "to find out what was done and why"-which, among other things,
involves him in the discoveryof causes by contrastwith mere conditions.5
Dray's remarks here suggest that in his opinion, for the historian who dis-
tinguishes causes from conditions, there is no acceptable alternative to making
moral, or at least normative, judgments. Presumably Dray would say the same
of the historian who assigns greater importance to some causes than to others.
It is my view that historians usually do and always can use a factual
principle of selection to distinguish between causes and conditions and be-
tween more and less important causes. Before considering what such principles
of selection might be, it is worth noting that Dray, like most other philosophers

5. "Conceptsof Causation," 168-169, emphasis added.

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56 RAYMOND MARTIN

who have written on this topic, either ignores or conflates the distinction
between judgments that one event or fact caused or was the cause of another
event or fact and judgments that one event or fact was more important than
another as a cause of some event or fact. Dray, for example, routinely treats
the attempts of historians of the American Civil War to assess the relative
importance of causes as if they were always attempts to determine what caused
the war or some aspect of the war which in turn Dray routinely treats as an
attempt to distinguish causes from conditions.6 Morton White, in his alterna-
tive account of such judgments, assumes that "the cause," "the real cause"
and "the decisive cause" are often used equivalently and that "more important
cause" and "most important cause" at least imply "the decisive cause."7
There is no hint in White's account that having analyzed the distinction
between cause and condition via his theory of abnormalism, an additional
analysis is required for the distinction between more and less important
causes.
I shall argue below that judgments that one event or fact caused or was
the cause of another and judgments that one event or fact was more important
than another as a cause of some result require radically different analyses and
that neither is necessarily subjective. I believe that a clear, working under-
standing of the relationship between the two sorts of judgment is essential to
a satisfactory sorting of the central issues involved in most mature, explana-
tory controversies in historical studies.
A number of philosophers have proposed factual principles of selection for
distinguishing between causes and conditions. There is enough similarity
among many recent accounts, including those of Ducasse, Feinberg, Gorovitz,
Hart and Honore, Scriven, Shope and White, to warrant talk of a "consensus
account."8 Since I have characterized this account in detail and technically
elsewhere, I shall characterize it only briefly and informally here.9 The basic
idea is that the cause is selected from among contributory causes on the basis
of a comparison between the situation in which the result to be explained
occurred and some other situation, which may be called "the comparison-

6. Philosophy of History, 47-58. See also Dray's treatment of Hinsley's remarks,

"Concepts of Causation," 174.
7. M. White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York, 1965), 106, 129.
8. C. J. Ducasse, Causation and the Types of Necessity (Seattle, 1924) and "'Cause'
and 'Condition'," Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966), 238-241; J. Feinberg, "Causing
Voluntary Actions" in Metaphysics and Explanation, ed. W. Capitan and D. Merrill
(Pittsburgh, 1964), 29-47, 55-61; S. Gorovitz, "Causal Judgments and Causal Explana-
tions," Journal of Philosophy 62 (1965), 695-711, and "Aspects of the Pragmatics of
Explanation," Nous 3 (1969), 61-72; H. Hart and A. Honored,Causation in the Law
(Oxford, 1959); M. Scriven, "Causes, Connections and Conditions in History," in
Philosophical Analysis and History, ed. W. Dray (New York, 1966), 238-264; R. Shope,
"Explanations in Terms of 'The Cause'," Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967), 312-320;
and M. White, Foundations.
9. See my "Singular Causal Explanations," Theory and Decision 2 (1972), 221-237.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 57
situation." In the comparison-situation, events of the same types as many of
the contributory causes of the result to be explained are present, but an
event of the same type as the result to be explained is absent. The cause, then,
is that (or those) contributory cause(s) of the result to be explained which
satisfies (or, jointly satisfy) the following two conditions: (1) it is not an
event of a type present in the comparison-situation; (2) it, together with
events of types that are present in the comparison-situation, is sufficient to
ensure the occurrence of an event of the same type as the result to be ex-
plained. On this account, what qualifies as the cause is relative to which
comparison-situation is under consideration. A contributory cause may qualify
as the cause relative to one comparison-situation but not qualify as the cause
relative to another comparison-situation. Which comparison-situation is rele-
vant on a given occasion can be indicated by the explanatory question under
consideration. For example, a correct answer to the question, "Why did the
Roman Empire in the West succumb to barbarian pressure in the fifth century,
when it had successfully resisted barbarian pressure in the previous four
centuries?" - hence, from one point of view, "the cause of the collapse of
the Roman Empire in the West" - may well differ from a correct answer to
the question, "Why did the Roman Empire in the West succumb to barbarian
pressure in the fifth century, while the Roman Empire in the East successfully
resisted barbarian pressure?"
That the consensus account of the cause/condition distinction is applicable
to many judgments which distinguish causes from conditions is amply defended
in the literature from which that account is drawn. There is no need to rehearse
that defense here. It does not matter, for present purposes, whether the con-
sensus account is correct as an account of how historians typically distinguish
between causes and conditions. Since it is always possible to distinguish
between causes and conditions by addressing an explanatory question of the
appropriate form, once such a question has been addressed it is a factual
matter which contributory causes are elevated to causal status and which are
relegated to "mere conditional" status.10
If the consensus account adequately characterizes a way in which historians
could distinguish between causes and conditions, this should be of method-
ological interest to historians. First, if there is an adequate factual way for
historians to distinguish causes from conditions, it is questionable whether they
ought ever to distinguish causes from conditions on moral or other normative
grounds. This is not to say that historians ought never to make moral or
other normative judgments. But confusion can result, as Dray has convincingly
shown, from an historian's addressing explanatory questions and normative
questions in the same breath. Second, it is difficult to understand the logic of
most historical controversies over relative causal importance without first

10. Dray seems to admit as much in "Conceptsof Causation," 161-163.

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58 RAYMOND MARTIN

separating the issue of how causes may be distinguished from conditions. This
is because the distinction between more and less important causes is typically,
if not always, drawn among causes, conditions having already been excluded
from consideration.
What of the objection that even if one grants that there is an analysis of
judgments which assess relative causal importance according to which such
judgments can be objective, an historian's preference for any such judgment
will rarely, if ever, be objective for the simple reason that historians rarely,
if ever, have evidence adequate to defend such a judgment? The problem with
this objection is that it is not true that either the historian has evidence ade-
quate to justify his assessment of relative causal importance or else his
preference for a particular assessment of relative causal importance is subjec-
tive. An historian who has not shown that his favored assessment of relative
causal importance is true may still have argued adequately that his favored
assessment is better supported by available evidence than is any competing
assessment. That an historian has only evidence that is meager and ambiguous
does not imply that he cannot show, objectively, that some claim is better
supported by that evidence than is any competing claim. Indeed, most histori-
cal argumentation is an attempt to do just that. And there are many problems
in every branch of science, including the most rigorous, where no more than
that can be accomplished.
It is not enough to refute arguments which claim to show that judgments
which assign relative importance to causes are subjective. Such refutations
may clip the leaves of subjectivism, but they leave the roots intact. It is
necessary also to propose plausible analyses of judgments which assign rela-
tive importance to causes, according to which such judgments can be objec-
tive, and to demonstrate the applicability of such analyses to significant
instances of actual historical controversy. This demonstration of applicability
is especially important for my purposes. One of the main objectives of the
present study is to illustrate how judgments of relative causal importance are
typically parasitic on a prior distinction between causes and conditions.
Another is to support the suggestion that in significant instances of actual
historical controversy, judgments which assign relative importance to causes
are rarely ever simply an expression of subjective prejudice, but are rather
supported by an array of arguments which appeal to factual considerations.
A convincing case for these objectives requires a detailed look at actual his-
torical argumentation.

II

Few historical problems have sustained more controversy or attracted more

historical talent than the problem of explaining the fall of the Roman Empire
in the West. Few have received more meticulous scholarship. More is known

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 59
today about the circumstances of Rome's fall than ever before, at least in
modern times. Yet the controversy over why Rome fell is as vigorous as it
ever was. Many of the difficulties which block further progress are widely
recognized and are what might be called "empirical." The available evidence
is meager and ambiguous. The corpus of useful supporting theory from the
social sciences is slender. But other difficulties, some no less serious, are
conceptual and only dimly intimated in the literature on the fall. Of these
latter, one of the most troublesome and ubiquitous, even if rarely acknowl-
edged, is that of determining the meaning and mode of confirmation of judg-
ments which assign relative importance to various causes of the fall.
The late English classicist, A. H. M. Jones, is one of the most distinguished
twentieth-century historians of the later Roman Empire. Jones's views on the
relative importance of various causes of the fall are expressed primarily in
his major two-volume work, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602, (Norman,
Oklahoma, 1964) and in its shorter sequel, The Decline of the Ancient World,
(London, 1966).11 What follows is a philosophical evaluation of Jones's rea-
sons for assigning greater relative importance as a cause of the fall to increased
pressure from barbarians, during the fourth and fifth centuries, than to other
causes of the fall which Jones also recognizes. These other causes, on Jones's
view, include a decline in agriculturalproductivity, depopulation, the expansion
and excessive centralization of government, the growth of governmental cor-
ruption, the expansion of the army, a crippling tax burden, a growing dis-
equilibrium between economic producers and idle consumers, an increasingly
unequal distribution of wealth, civil wars, and a decline in public spirit. My
evaluation will be philosophical, rather than historical, because I shall not
question the truth of any factual claim upon which Jones bases his judgments
of relative causal importance. The objective rather is to consider whether and,
if so, how these factual claims confirm Jones's judgments of relative causal
importance.
The problem of understanding the manner in which historians assign relative
importance to causes is really two problems. The immediate problem, which
virtually every good historian addresses, is that of determining how a given
body of evidence bears on a particular question of relative causal importance.
The underlying problem, which even good historians typically ignore, is that of
determining what is meant by the claim that one event or fact is more impor-
tant than another as a cause of some particular result. Jones addresses the
immediate problem. Like almost all historians, he ignores the underlying prob-
lem. The best way to solve the underlying problem is to provide an analysis,
or contextual definition, of the causal-weighting aspect of the historian's assess-
ment of relative causal importance which is such that what the historian cor-

11. Compare Jones's earlier views in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
History n.s. 40 (1955), 209-226.

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60 RAYMOND MARTIN

rectly provides as evidence for his assessment is: (1 ) evidence for his assess-
ment on the analysis provided; and (2) better evidence for his assessment on
the analysis given than there is for any competing analysis. I shall give in
Part III such an analysis for Jones's claim that increased barbarian pressure
was a more important cause of the fall than were other causes which Jones
recognizes.
Jones proceeds on two fronts. One is a comparison of the circumstances
and fates of the eastern and western parts of the empire. The other is a com-
parison of the western empire at the time of the fall and the western empire
during earlier, happier times.
Jones explicitly uses his comparison of the eastern and western parts of
the empire to make three points: that causes present both in the eastern and
in the western parts of the empire cannot by themselves be sufficient causes of
the fall, that barbarian pressure was an important cause of the fall, and that
barbarian pressure was the most important cause of the fall. Since Jones's
East/West comparison is not the only way in which he argues for the greater
relative importance of barbarian invasions as a cause of the fall, it will be
useful to inquire what Jones can establish merely on the basis of this compar-
ison in order to determine what more he needs to establish on the basis of
independent considerations.
Jones argues that causes present in both eastern and western parts of the
empire cannot by themselves be "complete and self-sufficient causes" of the
fall. Strictly speaking, many of the individual events which contributed to the
fall and to which Jones is referring, say, certain civil wars, were not present in
the East; to be sure, there were civil wars in the East, but not the same civil
wars. But Jones must be assuming that those events which contributed to the
fall did so just because they were events of certain types. His argument, then,
is that since events of these same types were in the East, where the empire
did not fall for another thousand years, the mere fact that events of these types
were present in the West is not a sufficient cause, or does not sufficiently ex-
plain, the fall. If one accepts the factual premise of this argument, the conclu-
sion follows.12
Jones argues that increased barbarian pressure on the West was an im-
portant cause of the fall as follows:
All the historianswho have discussed the decline and fall of the Roman empire
. . .tended to forget, or to brush aside, one very importantfact, that the Roman
empire, though it may have declined, did not fall in the fifth century nor indeed
for anotherthousandyears. During the fifth century, while the Westernparts were
being parcelled out into a group of barbariankingdoms, the empire of the East
stood its ground. In the sixth it counter-attackedand reconqueredAfrica from
the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths,and part of Spain from the Visigoths.

12. For a defense of this claim, see my "Historical Counterexamples and Sufficient
Cause," Mind 88 (1979), 59-73.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 61
Before the end of the century, it is true, much of Italy and Spain had succumbed
to renewedbarbarianattacks,and in the seventh the onslaughtof the Arabs robbed
the empire of Syria, Egypt, and Africa, and the Slavs overranthe Balkans. But in
Asia Minor the empire lived on, and later, recovering its strength, reconquered
much territorythat it had lost in the dark days of the seventh century.
These facts are important,for they demonstrate that the empire did not, as
some modern historians have suggested, totter into its grave from senile decay,
impelled by a gentle push from the barbarians.13
There are problems of interpretation with the remarks just quoted. Granted
that barbarian pressure was a contributory cause of the fall, what exactly
demonstrates that barbarian pressure was more than "a gentle push?" The
mere fact that the East survived while the West collapsed does not demon-
strate that barbarian pressure was more than a gentle push. If two men are
standing on the edge of a cliff, a gentle push to one but not to the other may
explain the most radical differences in their respective fates. Jones's point
must be that the manner in which the empire in the East survived demon-
strates that it was not on the edge of a cliff. That the empire in the East was
not on the edge of a cliff is no doubt debatable. But even if Jones means to
assert that it was not and he is right, he has still not shown that barbarian
pressure on the West was more than a gentle push. In addition to greater bar-
barian pressure on the West than on the East there were, on Jones's view,
other contributory causes of the fall which were also not present in the East.
For example, Jones argues that the West was less populous, less intensely
cultivated, poorer and less politically stable than the East. Until some inde-
pendent basis is provided for comparing the relative importance of the fact
that the West had various internal weaknesses to a greater degree than the
East with the fact that the West was subjected to more pressure from barbar-
ians than was the East, one cannot dismiss the possibility that these differenti-
ating internal weaknesses together with other causes which were common to
East and West were sufficient, or all but sufficient, to cause the fall.14 Further,
the claim that increased pressure from barbarians was an important cause of
the fall by itself says nothing about how such pressure is to be weighted
vis a vis other causes of the fall.
Jones eventually uses the comparison between the circumstances and fates
of the eastern and western parts of the empire in order to make the point that
increased pressure from barbarians was "the major cause" of the fall. The
passage in which he does so, from The Later Roman Empire, concludes his
explanation of the fall and provides a better synopsis of his overall argument
than does any other single passage in his books:
The western governmenton the other hand was almost bankruptby the end of

13. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 1026-1027.

14. Paul Alexander develops a similar criticism in his review of Jones in American
Journal of Philology 87 (1966), 337-350.

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62 RAYMOND MARTIN

Valentian III's reign and had virtually abandoned conscription, relying almost
entirelyqn barbarianfederates.The collapse of the West was howeverby no means
entirelyattributableto its internalweaknesses,for the governmenthad by now lost
to the barbariansmany of the provinces on which it had relied for revenue and
recruits,and those which it still controlledhad sufferedso severelyfrom the ravages
of the barbariansthat they had to be allowed remissionof taxation.
Of the manifold weaknesses of the later Roman empire some, the increasing
maldistributionof wealth, the corruptionand the extortion of the administration,
the lack of public spirit and the general apathy of the population,were to a large
extent due to internal causes. But some of the more serious of these weaknesses
were the result, direct or indirect, of barbarianpressure. Above all the need to
maintain a vastly increased army had far-reaching effects . . . The Western empire
was poorer and less populous, and its social and economic structure more un-
healthy. It was thus less able to withstand the tremendousstrains imposed by its
defensive effort, and the internal weaknesses which it developed undoubtedly
contributedto its final collapse in the fifth century. But the major cause of its fall
was that it was more exposed to barbarianonslaughts which in persistence and
sheer weight of numbers far exceeded anything which the empire had previously
had to face. The Eastern empire, owing to its greaterwealth and population and
soundereconomy, was better able to carry the burdenof defense, but its resources
were overstrainedand it developedthe same weaknessesas the West, if perhapsin
a less acute form. Despite these weaknesses it managed in the sixth century not
only to hold its own againstthe Persians in the East but to reconquerparts of the
West, and even when, in the seventh century, it was overrun by the onslaughtsof
the Persians and Arabs and the Slavs, it succeeded despite heavy territoriallosses
in rallyingand holding its own. The internalweaknessesof the empire cannot have
been a major factor in its decline.15
These remarks show clearly that Jones is not relying exclusively on his East/
West comparison in order to support his claim that increased barbarian pres-
sure was the most important cause of the fall. Nevertheless, let us continue to
consider, first, just what is established by this comparison and then what the
additional arguments add to his case.
Although talk of "important causes" and "major causes" is ambiguous, it
seems that Jones has overstated his case. Even if increased barbarian pressure
were the major cause of the fall, it does not follow that internal weakness
"cannot have been a major factor." There is conceptual room for more than
one major cause of the fall. But, given that increased barbarian pressure was
a contributory cause of the fall, the important questions for present purposes
are the following: (1) Can Jones show, simply on the basis of his East/West
comparison, that contributory causes of the fall of a sort which were absent
in the East were more important causes of the fall than were contributory
causes of the fall of a sort which were present in the East? (2) Can Jones
show, simply on the basis of his East/West comparison, that increased bar-
barian pressure was a more important cause of the fall than was some other
(any other) cause of the fall? Question ( 1 ) concerns all of those causes of the

15. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 1067-1068.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 63
fall which differentiate between East and West. Question (2) concerns just
increased barbarian pressure on the West.
The answer to question (1) is a qualified "No." Historians often appeal
to the fact that one cause, or some set of causes, differentiates between a situa-
tion in which a result to be explained occurred and some comparison-situation
to conclude that the differentiating cause "caused" or was "the cause" of the
result to be explained. Even Jones does this at the end of his discussion of the
fall in The Decline of the Ancient World. Either ignoring or forgetting his
earlier claim that many causes of the fall were not present, at least to the
same degree, in the East, Jones concludes as follows:
It must, however, be emphasizedthat the eastern empire shared to the full these
various weaknesses,economic, social, and moral, and that it neverthelesssurvived
for centuries as a great power. It was the increasingpressure of the barbarians,
concentratedon the weaker western half of the empire, that caused the collapse.t6
But even if increased barbarian pressure on the West were the only contribu-
tory cause of the fall which differentiates between East and West, the most
one could conclude from Jones's East/West comparison is that relative to
that comparison increased barbarian pressure was the cause, and not merely
a condition, of the fall. One could not conclude anything additional concerning
the importance of increased barbarian pressure vis 'avis other causes or condi-
tions of the fall. Moreover, as indicated above, any special causal status which
derives solely from the fact that a contributory cause differentiates between
the situation in which the result occurred and some particular comparison-
situation is a status only relative to that comparison-situation. It is always
possible that a different contributory cause differentiates between the situation
in which the result occurred and some different comparison-situation. Jones
employs more than one comparison in his analysis of the causes of the fall.
In addition to the East/West comparison, he compares the empire in the
West during the fourth and fifth centuries, just prior to the fall, with the earlier
circumstances of the empire during the first three centuries A.D. The causes
which differentiate for the former comparison are not identical with the causes
which differentiate for the latter comparison. The latter causes, but not the
former, include the "worsening" of many internal causes of the fall as well
as the administrative separation of the eastern and western parts of the em-
pire. Moreover, if historical usage makes sense, then there must be at least one
sense of "more important cause" which is not exclusively dependent on the
sort of comparisons just discussed. The reason is that one of two contributory
causes, each of which differentiates between a situation in which a result
occurs and the same implied comparison-situations, is often regarded as more
important than the other. Jones himself claims that increased barbarian pres-
sure was more important than other differentiatingcauses of the fall. It appears

16. Jones, The Decline, 370.

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64 RAYMOND MARTIN

that there is more to the business of assessing relative causal importance than
merely distinguishing causes from conditions.
The answer to question (2) is an unqualified "No." Increased barbarian
pressure on the West was not the only cause of the fall which differentiated
between East and West. Even if one could show, on the basis of Jones's
East/West comparison, that the differentiating causes taken as a whole were
more important than nondifferentiating causes, nothing would follow concern-
ing the importance of some proper subset of the differentiating causes.
What then has Jones established merely on the basis of his East/West
comparison? The fact that the East survived while the West collapsed shows
that those causes of the fall of a sort present both in the East and in the
West are not by themselves sufficient causes of the fall. The manner in which
the East survived while the West collapsed provides evidence that those causes
of the fall which differentiate between East and West, taken collectively, were
important causes of the fall, as Jones puts it, were more than "a gentle push."
Jones has shown nothing, however, about the importance of increased bar-
barian pressure on the West vis 'a vis any other contributory causes of the
fall. The main burden of showing that increased barbarian pressure on the
West was a more important cause of the fall than was any other cause of the
fall must rest on his appeal to considerations other than his East/West com-
parison.
Jones argues independently of his East/West comparison that increased
barbarian pressure on the West contributed not only directly but also in-
directly to the fall of the West. For example, Jones argues that because of
barbarian pressure the Romans significantly increased their army which in turn
necessitateda rate of taxationso heavy as to cause a progressivedecline in agricul-
ture and indirectly a shrinkage of population. The effort to collect this heavy
taxation requireda great expansionof the civil service, and this expansionin turn
imposed an additionalburdenon the economy and made administrativecorruption
and extortion more difficult to control. The oppressive weight of the taxation
contributedto the general apathy.17
Of course, the mere fact that increased barbarian pressure on the West con-
tributed both directly and indirectly to the fall cannot be a good reason for
concluding that it was a more important cause of the fall than was any other
cause. Since causes do not always make an equally important direct (or in-
direct) contribution to a common result, it is possible that the direct (or in-
direct) contribution of one cause could be more important than both the
direct and indirect contributions of another. In any case, Jones concedes that
many so-called "internal causes" of the fall contributed both directly and in-
directly to the fall.18

17. Jones, The Later Romani Empire, 1067.

18. Ibid., 1027.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 65
Jones's argument that the direct and indirect contribution, taken as a whole,
which increased barbarian pressure made to the fall was more important as a
cause of the fall than were the contributions of other causes involves a de-
tailed survey of various putative contributory causes of the fall. The survey
consists in an attempt to determine, first, the relative importance of each
putative cause as a contributory cause of the fall, and, secondly, the relative
importance of increased barbarian pressure as a contributory cause of the
putative cause under consideration. Thus, Jones's main conclusion concerning
the relative importance of increased barbarian pressure as a cause of the fall
is defended by appeal to various subsidiary conclusions concerning relative
causal importance. To understand the argument for Jones's main conclusion,
one must understand the arguments for each of Jones's subsidiary conclusions
and the relationship between these arguments and Jones's main conclusion.
Jones's treatment of putative causes which he denies were contributory
causes of the fall is relatively unproblematic. Jones sometimes denies that a
putative cause contributed to the fall either on the grounds that it is doubtful
that the putative cause was present or on the grounds that even if it were
present, it is doubtful that it was efficacious. For example, Jones refutes the
arguments of other historians that there was a growth in regional sentiments
or a serious decay in trade and industry (excepting agriculture) or a gradual
elimination of the "bourgeoisie" or "middle class"; and Jones argues that even
if there were a decline in trade or a gradual elimination of the middle class,
it is doubtful that these changes contributed to the fall. It is not important
for present purposes to examine these arguments. It is important to examine
Jones's arguments concerning the relative importance as contributory causes
of the fall of those putative causes which he admits were both present and
efficacious.
Each putative cause of the fall which Jones considers, with one exception,
was a change which occurred sometime during the period from the first cen-
tury A.D. to the fall. This suggests that what Jones has explained is not why
Rome fell per se, but rather why it fell in the fifth century when it hadn't
fallen during the Principate or even during the dark days of the third century.
His treatment of the exception, to be discussed below, further reinforces this
suggestion. He makes his case in this part of his argument that increased
barbarian pressure was a more important cause of the fall than were other
contributory causes of the fall by means of a five-stage argument. First, he
argues that barbarian pressure on the West increased significantly from the
period of the Principate to the time of the fall, hence the constant reference
to "increased barbarian pressure" as the most important cause of the fall.
Second, he downplays the magnitude of many other changes which he ac-
knowledges were contributory causes of the fall. For example, he argues that
the quality of the army did not deteriorate and that public spirit did not decline
as much as some have supposed. Third, he argues that some causes of the

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66 RAYMOND MARTIN

fall were not as efficacious as other historians have suggested. Thus, he argues
that legislation designed to enforce social regimentation was largely ineffectual.
Fourth, he argues that one cause of the fall made a contribution which prob-
ably would have been made by something else if the cause had not been
present. According to Jones, although the administrative separation of the
eastern and western parts of the empire did contribute to the fall, it is "doubt-
ful that one man could have effectively controlled both the East and the West
in the political and miltary conditions of the time, when communications were
so slow and crises so frequent and sudden" and it is "arguable that the
resources of the eastern parts might have been exhausted, and the West have
none the less been lost."'19Finally, Jones argues that many so-called "internal"
causes of the fall were largely the result of increased barbarian pressure; for
example, he argues that barbarian pressure was importantly responsible for
growth in administrative corruption and increased taxation and that increased
taxation was importantly responsible for agricultural decline and depopula-
tion: "The burden proved too heavy for agriculture to bear. The higher rate
of taxation led to the progressive abandonment of marginal land once culti-
vated, and many of the peasants, after paying their rents or taxes, had too
little food left to rear their children, and the number of producers thus slowly
shrank."20
Jones's arguments in each of the first three stages address straightforward
factual questions of a sort historians routinely address quite apart from their
attempts to assess relative causal importance. His arguments in the fourth
stage, while relatively unproblematic, deserve and will receive separate dis-
cussion below. There are two aspects of his arguments in the fifth stage that
must be distinguished. The first is his defense of the subsidiary judgments of
relative causal importance. The second is the judgments themselves. Jones's
defense consists simply of arguments of the same sort as those characterized
in the first four stages of the strategy now under discussion. Hence, his use of
these subsidiary judgments of relative causal importance raises no new issues.
Moreover, the judgments themselves are expendable. The subsidiary judg-
ments do not constitute support for his main assessment of relative causal
importance beyond the support provided by the evidence upon which the
subsidiary judgments are based.
When Jones does, just once, consider a putative cause, which he acknowl-
edges to be both present and efficacious, but which was not a change which
occurred sometime during the period from the first century to the fall, his
strategy for dealing with this cause is remarkably different from his strategy
for dealing with other causes of the fall. His argument, which follows, bears
on the question considered earlier concerning the mixing of explanatory and
normative considerations:
19. Ibid., 1032.
20. Ibid., 1047.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 67
The Romans have been criticizedfor their uninventivenessand lack of enterprise.
The economic situation clearly demanded labour saving devices . . . There existed
moreovera fund of theoreticalscientificknowledge . . .
It is however hardly responsible to single out the Roman empire for criticism
on this score. Until the scientific and industrial revolution which began in the
eighteenth century, mechanical invention had been in all civilizations excessively
rare, and the Romans do not compare unfavorablywith the Chinese, the Indians,
or with medievalChristendomor Islam.21
Jones appears to be dismissing "uninventiveness and lack of enterprise" as an
important cause of the fall for the blatantly normative reason that it is not
"reasonable to single out the Roman empire for criticism on this score."
Shouldn't one admit then that Jones is using "more important cause" in a
normative sense and that the subjectivists were right after all? I think not.
Since the rest of Jones's argument is clearly an attempt to assess causal impor-
tance on factual grounds, it seems more reasonable simply to regard the
present argument as an appeal to irrelevant considerations. Given the struc-
ture of the rest of Jones's argument, there is no real need for him to show
that "uninventiveness and lack of enterprise" was a less important cause of
the fall than was increased barbarian pressure. He could have claimed that
his objective is to explain why Rome fell during the fifth century when it had
not fallen during the previous four. Any contributory cause of Rome's fall,
such as "uninventiveness and lack of enterprise," which was present through-
out this period may be dismissed from consideration on the grounds that it is
irrelevant to this explanatory objective. Since "uninventiveness and lack of
enterprise" was also present in the East during the period in question, it is
also irrelevant to explaining why the empire fell during the fifth century in
the West, but not in the East. If Jones were to have argued in this way, as I
think he should have, then his distinction between more and less important
causes of Rome's fall would have been explicitly dependent on a prior dis-
tinction between causes and background conditions. In other words, he would
have been arguing not that increased barbarian pressure on the West was the
most important cause per se of Rome's fall, but rather that it was the most
important cause of the fact that Rome fell in the fifth century when it had
not fallen during the previous four. If Jones were not to take this line, then
it would be difficult methodologically, for reasons I shall explain below, for
him to show that "uninventiveness and lack of enterprise" was a less impor-
tant cause of the fall than was increased barbarian pressure. His resort to
normative considerations to dispose of this challenge to his conclusion is
symptomatic of these methodological difficulties.
It may be useful at this point to summarize the discussion above of Jones's
argument for the greater relative importance of increased barbarian pressure
as a cause of the fall. In the context of comparing the empire in the West

21. Ibid., 1048, emphasis added.

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68 RAYMOND MARTIN

with the empire in the East, he has established the importance of whatever
accounts for the fact that the West collapsed while the East not only survived
but was strong. He has also argued that barbarian pressure on the West was
much greater than barbarian pressure on the East and has downplayed the
magnitude of other differentiating causes of the fall. Sometimes, as we have
seen, he even inconsistently asserts that these other differentiating causes
were also present in the East. In the context of comparing the empire in the
West in the fifth century with the empire in the West in the first and second
centuries, Jones has argued that barbarian pressure was much greater in the
fifth century than it had been earlier. His primary strategy with respect to
other differentiating causes which he acknowledges were both present and
efficacious is either to minimize their magnitude as changes or to argue that
increased barbarian pressure was largely responsible for them.

III

The question to be considered now is "What is meant by 'more important

cause' in Jones's claim that increased barbarian pressure was a more impor-
tant cause of the fall than was any other contributory cause of the fall?" It is
apparent that Jones has not just asserted his main assessment of relative
causal importance. He has argued extensively for it. Further, none of his
arguments, except one which may be disregarded, depend upon appeal to
moral considerations or to normative considerations of a sort not present in
scientific attempts to confirm explanatory claims. These facts are important
because they provide a strong prima facie case that Jones's main assessment
of relative causal importance is a factual claim.
It is not difficult to show that there is a factual sense of "more important
cause" and it is plausible to suppose that Jones at least once assesses relative
causal importance in terms of it. Consider the following:
(Dl) A was a more important cause of P relative to 0 than was B if
(1) A and B were each a cause of P relative to 0, and
(2) A was necessary for P, and
(3) B was not necessary for P.
In (DI), "A," "B," and "P" are placeholders for expressions of the form,
"the fact that . . . ," where ". . ." is replaced by a sentence in the indicative
mood. For example, the letters, "A," "B," and "P" may be replaced by ex-
pressions such as "the fact that the empire in the West was subjected to
barbarian attacks with such and such characteristics during such and such a
period," where the "such and suches" are suitably replaced. 0 is a place-
holder for an expression denoting a comparison-situation, such as, "the
circumstances of the empire in the West during the first two centuries A.D."
(1) of (Dl) is satisfied if and only if A and B are each contributory causes
of P and are factors of a type which differentiate between the situation in

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 69
which P occurred and 0. In other words, A and B are at least partial causes,
rather thah mere conditions, of P relative to 0. The "necessary" in (2) and
(3) of (DI) means "necessary under the circumstances." A is necessary
under the circumstances for P if and only if had A not occurred, then P
would not have occurred.
(Dl) specifies a logically sufficient condition for an intuitively acceptable
sense of "more important cause." Consider the following example: suppose
that a bill requires fifty-one affirmativevotes to pass the U.S. Senate and that,
on a certain occasion: Senator X votes for the bill - (A1); Senator Y votes
for the bill - (B1); and the bill receives exactly fifty-one affirmative votes
and passes the Senate - (P1). Suppose further that had Senator X not voted
for the bill, the bill would have received only fifty affirmative votes; but that
had Senator Y not voted for the bill, then Senator Z, who voted against the
bill, would have voted for the bill and the bill would have received exactly
fifty-one affirmative votes and passed the Senate. Under these circumstances,
Al, but not B1, was necessary for P1. If Al and B1 are each causes of P1
relative to some comparison-situation, 0, then in accord with both intuition
and (DI), Al was a more important cause of P1 relative to 0 than was B1.
Moreover, (Dl) expresses a factual sense of "more important cause" that
Jones seems at least once to have employed. Jones's claim that many other
causes of the fall were more important than the fact that there was an admin-
istrative separation of the two parts of the empire may be understood as an
instantiation of (Dl). Jones argues, in effect, that although administrative
separation did contribute to the fall, administrative cohesion would have
made a comparable contribution.
It would be a neat victory for objectivity if Jones's main assessment of
relative causal importance could be understood plausibly as an instantiation
of (Dl). It cannot. While Jones's arguments for his main assessment tend to
confirm that increased barbarian pressure on the West was a necessary cause
of the fall, they are not designed to support that many other causes of the
fall which he also recognizes were unnecessary. In addition, his arguments
for his main assessment confirm it better if it is interpreted as an instantiation
of a different sense of "more important cause." The same is true of virtually
all of the rest of his subsidiary assessments of relative causal importance.
Consider the following: 22
(D2) A was a more important cause of P relative to 0 than was B if
(1) A and B were each a cause of P relative to 0, and
(2) either A was necessary for P or B was not necessary for P, and
(3) had B not occurred, something would have occurred which more
closely approximates P than had A not occurred.

22. (D2) closely resembles a proposal made by M. Hammond in "Weighting Causes

in Historical Explanation," Theoria 43 (1977), 103-128.

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70 RAYMOND MARTIN

The interpretation of "A," "B," "P," and "0" and of (1) and (2) are the
same as in (Dl). The interpretation of (3) is problematic, partly because
(3) is a counterfactual and counterfactuals are notoriously troublesome, but
also because the notion of "more closely approximates" requires clarification.
Although counterfactuals are problematic in a variety of ways, the mere
fact that (3) of (D2) is a counterfactual is not a good reason to reject (D2)
as specifying a sufficient condition for an intuitively acceptable sense of "more
important cause." For one thing, (2) and (3) of (DI) are counterfactuals
and (Dl) specifies a logically sufficient condition for an intuitively acceptable
sense of "more important cause." For another, as many philosophers have
correctly argued, counterfactuals neither less problematic nor problematic in
different ways than (3) are required in order to explicate a variety of causal
and explanatory claims of a sort which are routinely made by historians and
scientists and which do not include an assessment of relative causal impor-
tance.23 Finally, counterfactuals may also be required in order to explicate a
variety of other notions, such as the notion of "evidence," that we cannot
easily get along without.24 Whatever the problems with counterfactuals, we
seem to be stuck with them.
There is a problem with (3), however, that is not a problem with counter-
factuals generally, namely, the problem of clarifying the notion of "more
closely approximates." I shall not define this notion, but only illustrate how
it is to be understood. It is a familiar and intelligible notion, albeit a vague
and problematic one. To the extent that it is a familiar and intelligible notion
and the illustrations apt, what follows should provide an acceptable working
understanding of (3). To take the simplest case first, (3) is to be understood
so that (Dl) is just a special case of (D2). Consider again the example used
to illustrate (Dl). Had Senator Y not voted for the bill, something would
have occurred which more closely approximates the fact that the bill received
exactly fifty-one affirmative votes and passed the Senate than had Senator X
not voted for the bill. Had Senator Y not voted for the bill, the bill would
have received fifty-one affirmative votes and passed the Senate; had Senator
X not voted for the bill, the bill would have received less than fifty-one
affirmative votes and failed to pass the Senate. To revert to symbolism intro-
duced in the initial discussion of this example, had B1 not occurred, P1 would
have occurred; had Al not occurred, P1 would not have occurred. The occur-
rence of P1 more closely approximates P1 (how close can you get?) than
does the nonoccurrence of P1. Thus, substitution instances of (D2) which
are also substitution instances of (Dl) raise no problems for the interpreta-

23. See, for example, J. L. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe (Oxford, 1974),
passim.
24. See, for example, Mark Pastin, "Counterfactualsin Epistemology," Synthese 34
(1977), 479-495.

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 71
tion of "more closely approximates." But as noted above, most substitution
instances of (D2) which are gleaned from actual historical studies are not
also substitution instances of (DI).
More problematic substitution instances of (D2) are of two different kinds.
The first may be illustrated by considering a variation on the example above.
Suppose that Senator X controls a block of five votes, but that Senator Y
controls only his own vote, such that the following counterfactuals are true:
on a certain occasion, had Senator X not voted for the bill, the bill would
have received five less affirmative votes than it did; on the same occasion,
had Senator Y not voted for the bill, the bill would have received one less
affirmative vote than it did. Given these suppositions, it would be correct to
say that had Senator Y not voted for the bill, then something would have
occurred which more closely approximates the fact that the bill received
at least fifty-one affirmative votes than had Senator X not voted for the bill.
Given that the other requirements of (D2) are also satisfied, it would be
correct to say that the fact that Senator X voted for the bill was a more impor-
tant cause of the fact that the bill received at least fifty-one affirmative votes
on the occasion in question than was the fact that Senator Y voted for the
bill. Some of Jones's subsidiary assessments of relative causal importance
seem amenable to this sort of interpretation, such as Jones's claim that poverty
was more important than either plague or barbarian massacres as a cause of
the fact that the peasant population declined below certain limits.
The interpretation of "more closely approximates" in the examples above
is unproblematic because it may be interpreted in a conventional, quantita-
tive manner. Sometimes, however, an interpretation of "more closely approxi-
mates" will lack the sort of quantitative tidiness of the examples above and
must be understood in a nonquantitative, comparative manner. Sally may be
so much happier today than she was last week partly because she passed her
calculus course, but more because her love life has improved. In this case,
we might have reason to say that had Sally not passed her calculus course,
she would have realized more of her recent gain in happiness than had her
love life not improved, although we could not say, and it may not even make
sense to say, how much more. Similarly, we may have reason to say that a
person's health has deteriorated partly because of one condition but more
because of -another, even though we cannot say, and it may not even make
sense to say, how much more.
The illustrations above do not provide a systematic account of the mean-
ing of "more closely approximates." I hope that they illustrate the notion
sufficiently well to provide an intuitive grasp of it clear enough to determine
whether (D2) is or is not satisfied for a wide range of examples. While vague,
there is nothing about the notion of "more closely approximates" which sug-
gests that any but factual considerations are relevant to determining which

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72 RAYMOND MARTIN

of two possible states more closely approximates an actual state. If, for a
given instantiation of (D2), it is not sufficiently clear which of the counter-
factual states postulated more closely approximates P, either because it is
not clear in the case in question what is meant by "more closely approximates"
or because the available evidence does not support either hypothesis better
than the other, then the causes under discussion may not be assigned relative
importance in the sense explicated by (D2). However, as the examples above
illustrate, it often is clear what is meant by saying that one counterfactual
state more closely approximates P than does another and it is sometimes clear
that the available evidence supports one hypothesis better than the other.
When these things are sufficiently clear, then the causes under discussion may
be weighted in the sense explicated by (D2).
Consider now Jones's main assessment of relative causal importance. If it
is possible to understand it as an instantiation of (D2), then it must be
meaningful to say that various possible states more closely approximate
Rome's fall than do other possible states. If it is plausible to understand it as
an instantiation of (D2), then what Jones correctly provides as evidence for
his assessment must be better evidence for his assessment as an instantiation
of (D2) than it is on any competing analysis of his assessment.
Jones and most other historians of the fall routinely talk in ways which
suggest that, in their opinion, it is meaningful to say that some states more
closely approximate Rome's fall than do others. This is reflected, for example,
in the hackneyed use of the expression, "the decline and fall of Rome" and
more generally in the various ways in which Rome's history from the first
to the fifth century is characterized as progressive stages of deterioration.
Although such talk is neither precise nor perspicuous, it is meaningful. And,
if it is meaningful, then it is also meaningful to regard one state as more
closely approximating Rome's fall than another if it would have constituted
a more advanced state than the other in the process of deterioration which
led to Rome's fall. Thus, it is possible to understand Jones's main assessment
as an instantiation of (D2).
The evidence Jones provides for his main assessment is evidence for his
assessment as an instantiation of (D2). Jones's East/West comparison is an
argument for the importance of whatever accounts for the fact that the West
collapsed while the East survived and was strong. He also provides evidence
that there was much greater barbarian pressure on the West than there was
on the East, and that the other factors which account for the fall of the West
and differentiate between East and West constitute relatively insignificant
deviations from circumstances also present in the East. The remainder of his
argument consists of evidence which tends to show that there was a significant
increase in barbarian pressure on the West from the first to the fifth century,
but that other changes from the first to the fifth century which contributed to
the fall either were relatively minor changes, or were ineffectual, or were not

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 CAUSES, CONDITIONS, AND CAUSAL IMPORTANCE 73
necessary causes of the contribution they made to the fall, or were themselves
Largelythe result of increased barbarian pressure. Jones's evidence for his
main assessment is evidence for it because it is evidence for the claims just
mentioned. But it is hard to imagine how it could be evidence for the claims
just mentioned unless it were also evidence for his main assessment when
interpreted as an instance of (D2), or at least of some counterfactual analysis
that is closely related to (D2).
It may now be relatively clear why Jones would have had a harder time,
for methodological reasons, supporting his claim that increased barbarian
pressure was a more important cause of the fall than was lack of technical
inventiveness than he had supporting his claim that increased barbarian pres-
sure was a more important cause of the fall than were other causes which he
acknowledges. The reason is that the evidential situation in which Jones finds
himself, like that in which most historians find themselves, is such that he is
forced to rely importantly on historical comparisons in order to justify his
causal claims, including his assessments of relative causal importance. The
most useful comparison is usually between a situation in which the result to
be explained occurred and other similar situations in which factors of the
same sort as the result to be explained were absent. Comparisons of this sort
tend to be more useful the more similar are the situations compared to the
situation in which the result to be explained occurred. The most available
comparison of this sort and happily, usually the most useful, is an aspect of
the prior history of the entity whose fate is being explained, in the case of
Jones's analysis, the western part of the Roman empire. Sometimes an his-
torian is fortunate enough to have another comparison sufficiently similar to
be useful. Jones has such a comparison in the circumstances and fate of the
empire in the East. But as a situation compared becomes less similar to the
situation in which the result to be explained occurs, its value as a source of
evidence to confirm an assessment of relative causal importance generally
significantly diminishes. In the case of Jones's explanation of Rome's fall, he
can say something about what the western empire may have been like if
barbarian pressure and the other causes of the fall had been less acute because
there was an earlier time when they were less acute in the western empire and
a contemporaneous time when they were less acute in the eastern empire. It
is difficult, in the absence of well-confirmed theories of social change of a sort
which are not available to historians of the later Roman empire, to judge the
relative causal importance of a factor such as "lack of technical inventiveness"
which is constant over these comparisons. And there are no other sufficiently
similar comparisons to which Jones might have appealed to support his claim
that increased barbarian pressure was a more important cause of the fall than
was lack of technical inventiveness. Hence, Jones's desperate and irrelevant
appeal to normative considerations.

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74 RAYMOND MARTIN

IV

I have examined in detail one particular, but complex, example of an his-

torian's argument for a judgment which assigns relative importance to the
causes of a particular result. I have attempted to determine the meaning and
mode of confirmation of that judgment. While I believe that the way in which
that judgment was defended in the example examined is typical of a way in
which good historians often attempt to justify judgments which assign relative
importance to causes, I must leave it to the readers of the present article to
judge for themselves the extent to which this is so. In any case, the argument
above supports the following theses: that neither judgments which distinguish
causes from conditions, nor judgments which assign relative importance to the
causes of particular results, nor the manner in which historians defend such
judgments are invariably subjective; that judgments which distinguish causes
from conditions and judgments which assign relative importance to the causes
of particular results require radically different analyses and that a working
understanding of the relationship between these two sorts of judgments is
essential to a satisfactory sorting of the central issues involved in at least some
significant explanatory controversies in historical studies; and finally, that the
task of clarifying the manner in which historians assign relative importance to
the causes of particular results is an important one, both methodologically for
historians and also for any philosophy of history which takes as an important
goal the formulation of adequate theories of historical explanation.
The work in the present study is part of a larger program of clarifying the
manner in which historians attempt to show that one explanation is better
than any competing explanation.25 This program can be accomplished only
through detailed studies of significant instances of actual historical argumenta-
tion. Although the literature over the last thirty years on historical explanation
is voluminous, it contains very few such studies and has barely scratched the
surface of this program. In my opinion, there is no more important work for
critical philosophy of history in the 1980s.

University of Maryland

25. I have discussed this program in more detail in "Beyond Positivism: A Research
Program for Philosophy of History," Philosophy of Science 48 (1981), 112-121.

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