re Fred's 4708
>Does "deductive" include or imply the postulation of unobservable
>("metaphysical") entities (e.g. abstract labor) from which explanations or
>conclusions about observable reality are deduced? In more modern terms,
>does "deductive" mean something like "hypothetico-deductive"? Are Sieber
>and Marx saying that it is OK for a theory to be "metaphysical" (in the
>above sense), if it is able to deduce conclusions about the real world?
Here Marx seems to be saying no more than that his theory is not
merely descriptive but explanatory, so that it needs to be logically
ordered in such a way that there is a rigorous distinction between
explanans and explanandum. E.g. the concept of surplus value has to
come, logically speaking, before profit in industrial, commercial
and banking forms. He does not seem to be commiting himself at this
point to the possibility of explanatory 'variables' or 'entities'
being unobservable--and, Fred, I am not sure why and how you think
abstract labor is unobservable (is it unobservable like
superposition?)
Marx does suggest that he does not in idealist fashion logically
derive, e.g., the necessary forms of profit from the incompleteness
or contradictions in the concept of surplus value itself. He does not
begin with concepts; rather he begins with the real relations and
phenomena of bourgeois society the specification of which depends on
the inductivist-institutionalist method of a Richard Jones (whose
great contribution to Marx's method has simply been ignored save by
Grossman), but to explain the interconnections of these phenomena and
relations once historically specified and the dynamics to which said
relations give rise, Marx notes that he has to make use--as Ricardo
and Smith quite *imperfectly* did--of explanatory concepts which are
not themselves part of the explanandum object. I think this is
probably how Marx sees himself following the deductive method of the
English school of political economy. It does not follow from this
however that Marx is assuming a modern hypo-deductive form of
explanation (most certainly not, Andrew B would argue) or that he is
not also an inductivist of the Richard Jones type.
Yours, Rakesh
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