Historical Truths Can be Discovered

Thank you Anaxa for the kind words! :-)Critique of Historical Relativism Lack of Direct AccessAnti-Realism of ConstructionismThere are two types of Constructionism, Methodological Constructionism which is a thesis for how the historical past should be regarded as what the evidence indicates. And then there's Ontological Constructionism (Strong / Weak), which is a thesis for how reality is constituted. Let's look at the former. For Methodological Constructionism, it posits that the evidence says x, it would not be x unless my hypothesis were true, therefore my hypothesis is true. Here there is no incompatibility between historical realism and methodological constructionism. But now for Ontological Constructionism, Historians actually constitute the past via representations, and so there's no real past, rather just a subjective ‘past for you, a past for me’ mentality. This view implies a fantastic subjective idealism!Lack of Direct Access If the evidence justifies belief in the historians statements, then knowledge is obtained. But weak Ontological Constructionism says, “but we don’t know that the reconstruction is actually corresponding to the past." But to know that we know x, we don’t have to know that we know it! Justifying our justification is an epistemological principle which should be rejected, for the historian who reconstructs on the basis of justifying evidence know the past by definition. Here the Ontological Constructionist will say that, “Realism doesn’t factually contribute to historian’s work in a global sense.” But now realism is a thesis lending to science & history a significance they would otherwise lack, and through evidence, realism constrains anti-realism’s tendency for incompatibilities. Thus Constructionism ontologically fails while it remains methodologically vital. Anti-Realism of ConstructionismModern Relativism holds that historical objects doesn't equate to Scientific objects. Traditional historical relativists therefore claim a greater inaccessibility compared to the scientist. First to think that scientists always have direct access to what they study is naive. Scientists are largely dependant upon other reports (counting as historical documents), and their object of study is often indirectly accessible in theoretical fields like physics, glaciers, dinosaurs, galaxies are all highly inaccessible yet these are postulated constantly!Second, the residue of the past is directly accessible. The historian is not simply dependant upon prior historical writings or translations, for archaeological data just IS direct access: though the evidence are not the events, nevertheless it leads to knowledge OF those events. Modern Historians therefore aren't so heavily dependant upon subjective literary writings as they were before the advancements in linguistics, sociology, anthropology, numismatics, archaeology etc, all of these are well developed fields of inquiry. Thus History in the humanities is like Geology in in the Sciences. The human factor is the only difference, since rocks don’t lie deliberately! But even that can be circumvented since the humanity sciences mentioned earlier are well developed. The accessibility to the data is the same in both fields however. The Geologist subject matter is earth history whereas the historian's subject matter is human history. Their task is the same: thus the Modern Relativist argument loses all its punch. Hence if lack of direct access can’t preclude geological knowledge, then it can’t preclude historical knowledge. Nature of Historical FactsThe mind-dependant meaning of historical facts is ridiculous, for the notion of a fact without meaning is logically incoherent. Meaning is inherent in the very concept of fact: what the fact is is its meaning! Using particular vocabulary in no way implies that the the description fails to express a fact. When Postmodern Relativists say historians impart meaning to facts, they use meaning to mean significance. This type of meaning is in an evaluative sense like importance, etc. But this does nothing to undermine objectivity, just because some attribute different perspectives Facts are “out there,” and the historian’s subjective influences are constrained by these factsTestability of Historical FactsHistorical facts are tested like Science by logical consistency the ability to explain the evidence, etc. The historical application of scientific testing even involves the Hypothetico-deductive model, where one invents a hypothesis (H) to explain a fact (f). Then they deduce non-/confirmatory conditions (c) from H. The experiment (E) is then observed to see which c obtain. E for the historian would be evidence constraining (E’): For his H must corroborate with E’. So what happened in the past is what the E’ indicates! Historians also use the inference to the Best Explanation model which starts with available E, infers from a pool of live options what would best explain E’ given our background beliefs, then you select the best explanation which gives the best causal account of E’... then test by experimenting (scientist), or consulting evidence (historian). Historical reconstructions may fulfill some c, but not others, skill is required. But whichever explains with a higher strength of scope, then it is more likely to be true. The Goal of History, therefore is probability, Pr, not certainty: Historical knowledge is a reconstruction related to E’ in a reasonable way. This is the situation with all of our inductive reasoning! We accept what has sufficient evidence to render it probable, guilty is guilty beyond reasonable doubt in the court of law, and so likewise in history. Thus historical truth is tested by evidence and the method is the same as it is in science: The H which best explains the evidence should be accepted. Thus the supposed “Lack of Direct Access” poses no stumbling block. The Problem of Lack of NeutralitySubjectivismRecall the Relativists claim: That no historian can objectively reconstruct the past since they’re all shaped by the cultural conditioning of the present. But it’s not so important how historical knowledge was obtained. What’s important is what the content of that knowledge is & how it’s tested. And if realism is correct, & historical H square with the evidence, then cultural conditioning is secondary and may factor into H generation, but that H will succumb to objective tests! There exists a “logic of discovery” that a investigator follows in framing H. But so far as the truth of H is concerned, it doesn’t matter how H is generated. Testing H by the facts keeps subjectivism at bay. Defending Historical RealismSimply put, within the absence of any defeater for the basic meaning that's constrained by some text, the historian is within her rational right to affirm the meaning that's impressed upon her at the time of her reading it. Of course she could be wrong, but that implies that there's actual meaning to what she's in fact reading! And therefore interpretations of text will be in terms of plausibility, and their meaning constrained by the words used, etc. Same holds true for Artifacts, the historian just can't make up whatever she wants.