I wrote:>>I think that Levins & Lewontin's DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST is a good antidote to these "analytic" approaches. They see micro as determining macro -- and macro determining micro -- as part of a dynamic and holistic approach. Within this context, Marx's "law of value" makes total sense.<<
Justin writes:> This isn't going to work without explanation of how and why value (labor value, that is) as a macroproperty actually does work and avoids the problems that have been posed for it.< the messages on this subject I've recently posted to pen-l answer that. >It's quite possible to believe in emergent properties and entities and reject "redyuctionsim" ... about such properties and entities, and still think value talk is hopeless. At the risk of quoting myself again, I thought that I settled this in my paper Functional Explanation and Metaphysical Individualism, Phil of Sci 1993, where I sorted out the confusions around methodological individualism. It's a red herring.<< the problem with meth.indiv. is that its practioners (e.g., many AMists, such as Elster) deliberately limit the questions they ask and the answers they are willing to accept. The rejection of that blinkered vision has nothing to do with "functionalism." >MI (the idea that the social can be explained entirely in terms of the properties of individuals) is a reductionist doctrine. Reductionism is entirely consistent with the existence of macroproperties and entities. If I say, mind can be reduced to brains (explained entirely in terms thereof), I do not say there are no minds, just that they are explicable as brains. When Elster and some of the AMs talked about MI, they meant, really, eliminativism about macroproperties, which was a mistake.< right. It was a mistake, one that dominated the AM field. the thing about reductionism (of this sort, not GA Cohen's) is that it tries to derive "macroproperties" and "entities" from microproperties and entities without looking at the way that macroproperties and entities _feed back_ to determine the character of microproperties and entities. JD Now, I don't know if MI as a reductionist theory is true, although I rather doubt it. I also don't think it's taht important. What the real point was, which folks were confused about, is the need to provide microexplanations, to fill in the causal chains at least in principle, especially where functional explanations are involved, so you can be sure that you don't have accidental nonexplanatory functional relations. Wright, Sober, and Levine, AMs all, are expressly antireductionist. They believe, as I do, that macroproperties and entities like class, the state, and so forth can be real and explanatory. They are also skeptical about the LTV, as I am, So it is only a preliminary to defending the LTV to say that such properties exist. The hard work is in showing that value is one of these properties and that we really need it. Moreover, also, that it is fruitful and useful to talk that way. jkks _________________________________________________________________ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
