I >think Marx was genuinely dialectical in a specific Hegelian sense--he >proceeds by immanent critique, for example--but this isn't a matter of >giving an alternative to explanation by means of probabalistic laws or >tendecies, but rather a style of explanation that offers a framework for >offering lawlike explanations. > >^^^^^^^^^ > >CB: What's the difference between a lawful explanation and a lawlike >explanation ? ( no fuzzy answers) >
The explanations invoked in physics are lawful, i.e., they use preciselt formulated lawsto generate specific (if sometimes probabilistic) predictions. On the most charir=table interpretation of laws in social science, any lawlike generalizations that exist are not like this. They are riddled with exceptions, burdened with ceteris paribus clauses, and generally fuzzy. Moreover many social scientific explanations are, like the explanations in evolutionary biology, entirely nonwalike, but instead proceed by giving a specific sort of narrative. Darwinian explanations are generally like this. However, there sre some more or lessrobust explanatory generalizations that are like laws, if not ful--fledged laws like the laws of physics. Precise enough for you? Books have been written on this; I could give you cites. >CB: Is exploitation a heuristic ? Does the other way of showing that >exploitation is going on use heuristic devices ? > No, exploitation is a fundamental fact. And yes my way of proceeding does use heuristics; there's nothing wrong with using heuristics, as long as you remember they are not fundamental theoretical concepts that describe the Way Things Are. (I was a graduate student of Prof. Mary B. Hesse, author of the pioneering study "Models and Analogies in Science," still the place to start in thinking about this stuff.) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
