AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Was there any event in human history whose occurrence was inevitable? Mainstream theories roughly follow Ben-Menahem’s sensitivity principle, stating that the necessity/contingency of a historical event depends on its degree of sensitivity to the initial conditions of its occurrence. In contrast, I propose to account for historical inevitability using the idea of a (metaphysical) causal sufficient condition. It provides a new theoretical framework and an empirical methodology. The obtainment of a set of events within the target event’s initial conditions, whose types constitute one configuration of the causal sufficient condition(s) of the event type to which the target event belongs, leads to its inevitable occurrence. That is, a historical event token occurred inevitably once a configuration of its causal sufficient condition was realised. Section I briefly illustrates the proposed account. Section II elaborates on explicating historical inevitability by causal sufficient and necessary conditions. Section III draws on interventionist counterfactual analysis to delve deeper into the causal and formal aspects of causal sufficient (and necessary) conditions. Section IV explores an empirical methodology especially suitable for studying the inevitable occurrences in human history. It utilises interventionist ideas to explain the formation of hypotheses of causal sufficient and necessary conditions for applicable historical event types.