Re Allin's [5550]: > There's a problem here with the term > prediction". > Jerry, you're taking it to mean "telling ahead of > time", which indeed it literally means. Yet in the > sense in which Paul is using the term > -- which is fairly widespread in the philosophy of > science -- no particular temporal order is > implied. Etymologically, "prediction" > and "forecasting" ought to be pretty much > synonymous, but in the > philosophy of science the act of telling ahead of > time is labeled "forecasting", while "prediction" > is given a more generalized meaning. OK, I agree that the word 'prediction' has different meanings in different subjects. I won't say that your understanding of 'prediction' is wrong: rather I question whether the meaning that is widely given to the term in the philosophy of science should also be used in political economy (and 'social science' generally). > This may seem like semantic legerdemain, but > there is a basis for it. > Consider Newtonian mechanics, as applied to > the celestial sphere. > Did Newton really latch onto something, with his > account of how > physical bodies interact via gravitation? An > affirmative answer seems > to be validated by the ability of the Newtonian > theory to predict the > existence of unknown planets, such as Pluto. > Given the existing > observations on planetary motions, the > Newtonian theory suggests that > those observations are best explained by > postulating the existence of > a new planet at (roughly) such and such a > location. We look > carefully, and -- Wow! -- there is a planet there. > Since the theory > was initially constructed with no such data and > questions in mind, > this is very impressive. > Yet the question of temporal order is secondary. Consider another > well known celestial example: the "predictions" of Einstein's theory > of Relativity with respect to the perihelion of Mercury. The problem > was that the orbit of Mercury around the sun exhibited some peculiar > features that were not readily explicable on the Newtonian theory. > To account for the observed orbit, a Newtonian would have to postulate > some unobserved planet that was mucking things up. In itself that > hypothesis was not unreasonable. After all, Mercury (being so close > to the sun) is hard enough to see, and another planet even closer to > the sun would be very tricky to spot. But it was never spotted. The > sole reason for believing in the existence of such a planet was the > Newtonian theory. > Along comes Einstein and says, "Hey, this orbit for Mercury is just > what my theory predicts!" (with no unobserved planet). Of course, he > wasn't actually _predicting_, in the sense of forecasting, since the > facts about Mercury's orbit were well known already. But his theory > "produced the phenomena" in a way that Newton's did not. In > principle, one might worry that Einstein had "cooked up" his theory > precisely to "account for" the previously known facts about Mercury's > orbit. Yet any physicist who examined Einstein's theory would > immediately see this worry was unfounded. Einstein's theory was an > very general one, lacking "free parameters" that could be > surreptitiously tuned to match the perihelion of Mercury. The > "prediction" was highly impressive, even if it was after the event; no > less striking a confirmation of the fact that the theorist was "onto > something" than the Newtonian prediction of unknown planets. I won't take issue with any of the above. I question, though, whether methods and techniques used to verify or dis-prove or test a theorem in the 'natural sciences' can also be used in political economy. The examples that you give above largely concern astronomy and physics. In astronomy, some theorems can be proved though observation. Yet, in political economy we don't have unchanging regularities in nature that can be observed which then can be used to validate/invalidate a political- economic theorem. In physics, a theorem concerning a causal relationship between two variables can be tested by placing them in a vacuum. Yet, we can't do this in political economy (the ceteris paribus assumption is a very poor substitute for a vacuum!). In the other natural sciences, as well, there are established and accepted ways of proving a proposition, e.g. a litmus test in chemistry. Yet, there are no litmus tests in political economy. Thus, I don't think that we can apply the same way of thinking about the 'social sciences' as we do in the natural sciences. Of course, there are points of contact and the social and natural sciences are not _completely_ separate: one might conceive of the social world as existing within the natural world but because of humans ability to comprehend and transform their world (within limits), i.e. because they have subjectivity, human conduct can not be predicted in the same manner as it can in the natural sciences. [Nicky in 5548 seems to have similar reservations as I do on this score]. [An interesting history of thought question is how Marx viewed these issues. I would suggest that he had contradictory positions on this subject, e.g. when he takes the position in the "Preface to the First Edition" of Volume 1 that the tendencies of capitalist production work "with iron necessity towards inevitable results", he is suggesting a meaning to tendencies under capitalism that is very different from that explained elsewhere, e.g. in Volume 3. Similarly, when he wrote in the same "Preface" that from his standpoint "the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history", he seems to suggest that the Darwinian perspective on evolution can be applied to understanding the history of class struggle. This (teleological) perspective on 'necessity' and 'inevitability', does not seem to be in keeping with propositions advanced elsewhere about his philosophy (e.g. in the "Theses on Fuerbach")]. > What's the relevance to Marxism? Paul is arguing (and I agree) that > the labour theory of value is a predictive theory in the extended > sense. It can "produce the phenomena" (not necessarily ahead of time) > in a way that (e.g.) Value Form theory cannot. VFT might counter, though, by claiming that embodied labor theories of value shave too closely with Occam's razor by over-simplifying the subject matter (I took this to be part of what Geert was saying in 5527 ). Andy seems to agree in 5545 when he wrote: "If a theory tells me that money doesn't exist, or is purely 'inessential', I reject that too." Do you agree that this is an issue in this debate? How would you (and e.g. Gary and Ajit) answer Andy's rejection of a theory using this criteria? > Paul also argues (and > again I agree) that this sort of predictive theory > is needed to > validate (or even make sense of) key points of > Marxist theory, such as > the theory of relative surplus value. > The idea of relative surplus value is that > capitalists pursue an > increase in surplus value by reducing the labour > content of the > workers' means of subsistence. (snip, JL) Suppose that output/working hour increases in that part of Department II that produces commodities that are solely consumed by capitalists while output/working hour remains constant in Dept I and the rest of Dept II. Is that an example of relative surplus value where the labor content of the workers' means of subsistence can remain unchanged? In solidarity, Jerry
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