The evidence is ambiguous and causal claims are unprovable. Still, History is largely a discipline. There are many facts, some interpretations. It turns out, after hard work, there are competing narratives. Is there something wrong with that? (Accepting that there are some cranks we rule out because they don't accept rigourous practice)

Yes. That's why we are best of discarding notions of 'causality' in history and instead looking for enabling conditions - of which there will be many.

My favourite history quote:
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past".
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Cause? Depends on who's asking and why. An example from a book: a car flips on a county road. Driving too fast, says the driver. Car's suspension faulty, says an auto engineer. Road geometry wrong, says a surveyor.

Cause is a difficult and slippery concept and must be kept on a secure leash whenever it's out. So it has to be very well-defined within context. I think of it as being a template of sorts, the idea being to find the best-fitting template. But even just a moment's reflection reveals that templates - causes - are never found; they're imposed - and therein lies a whole bunch of topics, not least McDoodle's "competing narratives," above!

But here's a question: no doubt lots of historians are interested in causes, but is identifying causes the historian's first business?

RG Collingwood, The Idea of History (this not an exact quote): What is history? What is it about? How does it proceed? What is it for? Answers: 1 History is a kind of research or inquiry done as a science. 2 seeking to find out answers about human actions done in the past. 3 accomplished by the interpretation of evidence. 4 for the furthering of human self knowledge.

Well yeah. I feel that they are manipulating history to justify current ideology. (Politicians, moralists, ideologues and so on).

I don't agree with historians using psychological analysis without emphasing that it is speculation.
I don't really know how to solve the problem of reporting history without bias and speculation.

In terms of wars I think causality equals blame. Blame and cause are used interchangeably. Blame seems to involve a strong causal claim beyond mere A causes B to invoking motives and desires.

To ask who was to blame for WW1 would involve a moral judgement but to simply report who acted first and caused the war that way, may be more valid and informative. I think there is a danger of reaching false conclusions any which way. I always advocate agnosticim in general.

But how controversial should the cause of the two world wars be anyway? Historians can just manufacture controversy.

History is part detective work part lawyering where a historian puts together some quotes from other historians and witnesses and presents a case based upon some biases. A history buff reads all of these biased cases and puts together their own story. It can be quite a lot of fun and a never-ending search.

I thought the discipline of history aims to explain the past.

Political scientists, economists, sociologists, psychologists--social scientists--might try to find causal relationships and historians might borrow their findings to incorporate into explanations of the past, but I have never heard of historians trying to find causation.

Think about the definition of causation. It mentions causes and effects. "WWI was an effect of this cause..."--I have never heard any historian think that way.

Conventional thinking says that the American Civil War was about slavery. Morris Berman, I have discovered, says that the American Civil War was about progress (the South was considered to be an obstacle to progress, I think he is saying). But that is not two competing versions of "y is an effect of the causal agent x". It is two competing explanations for a particular historical event.

Just like there are a multitude of reasons that someone might have voted this way or that way in the last election, so there are a multitude of factors that led up to the Civil War. One thing that all wars have in common is that there is some sort of elite class that monetarily benefits from it in one way or another.

I don't agree with historians using psychological analysis without emphasing that it is speculation. — Andrew4Handel

While clinical methods of diagnosis cannot be applied to dead people, the mental state of any individual (dead or living) may be inferred from their actions. So historical figures are an appropriate subject of psychological analysis to the extent that available evidence permits. Their biographies may even reveal the probable cause(s) of their psychological condition (i.e., biological and/or social).

For example: it should be intuitively obvious that historical mass murderers are lacking in empathy, as indicated by this quote from Joseph Stalin: "One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic." If you wanted to be more specific and label him a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath, that would require gathering more evidence.

There are lots of debates about the causes of WW1 and who was responsible. I was surprised to find that there are apparently thousands of books on this topic. That suggests to me not only that there is no no consensus but that the evidence is ambiguous. Also causal claims seem unprovable to a some degree including looking at problems of causal regress. There is chaos theory tom contend with also.

Even with a well documented recent event like 9/11 the question of what "caused" it is controversial including value judgements (American foreign policy? Islamic extremism?) — Andrew4Handel

One could point to the Big Bang as the cause of WW1 and 9/11. Everything is interconnected. The causal relationships can be complicated and extend over long periods (even eternity). It is we who divide things up into causes and effects, this year and last year, this generation and the next generation, etc. as a result of our relative perspective of change in the universe and the projection of our own goals emphasizing one event over others in our attempt to assign "blame".

I have read quite a lot of "Mein Kampf" and like a lot of Hitler's writings it is quite contradictory. I am not sure peoples motives are that easy to pin down. I favour a Freudian analysis personally. For instance Hitler overidentifying with the German people is a Freudian hallmark.

Hitlers stance on religion is widely debated but his opinons on it clearly underwent change so there is ambiguity there.

I feel that Hitler was an intelligent but irrational person. I am not sure you could rationally analyse his war aims.But I suppose as they say actions speak louder than words. Are we going to judge history on peoples actions or do we have to also invoke their words and mental states? I don't know.

You could say "what if Gemany had won the war and written the history books" But I don't think that would have been possible so maybe history is somewhat predictable or mechanistic. Can one persons desires and motives reallybe a major cause?

An so on..

There does seem to be a definite moral undercurrent to History where events are given moral weight especially in terms of slavery, colonialisation, women's rights etc. How much that happens cannot be morally analysed? Comunism seems to be a moral appraisal of capitalism and so on.

I think once you get to human motives (volition and so on) causality becomes murky. I suppose the closest to science would be a behaviourist analysis of history. A series of stimuli-response events.

I am not sure peoples motives are that easy to pin down. — Andrew4Handel

Not all mental states can be inferred all the time.

Are we going to judge history on peoples actions or do we have to also invoke their words and mental states? — Andrew4Handel

Writing and speaking are actions. Thinking is also an action. As far as history is concerned, the difference between corporeal and mental action is one of evidence as it varies on a continuum between strong and weak.

...maybe history is somewhat predictable or mechanistic. — Andrew4Handel

Knowing how a person or social group has acted in the past provides a degree of predictability about their future actions in similar situations.

Given new situations, predictability may be possible if actions are sociologically reflexive and their value can be quantified in terms of multitude (the number of people affected) and magnitude (the degree of benefit or harm produced). Human actions can be described as:

1) Altruistic (positive) and aggressive (negative).
2) Cooperative (positive) and competitive (negative).
3) Prosocial (positive) and antisocial (negative).
4) Moral (positive) and immoral (negative).

I suppose the closest to science would be a behaviourist analysis of history. A series of stimuli-response events. — Andrew4Handel

History is a social science which reduces to (can be explained in terms of) sociology, and sociology reduces to psychology, however; psychology doesn't reduce to physiology.