OK, Jim, do you really wanna rehash this? We have been over these grounds before.
--- > apologies] > > JKS writes:> ... I have explained the differrence > between functionalISM and > functional EXPLANATION at several points ... FE is > not a general doctribe > about the nature of society; it is a style of > explanation of the sort you > get in Darwinian adaptive explanations.< > > a sort of explanation that has been much over-done. This changes the subject. I do not here offer a defense of FE (for that see an old paper I wrote, Functional Explanation and Metaphysical Individualism, Phil Science 1993). I say here only that FE is not F-ism. FE might be something otherthan F-ism and utterly terrible, unworthy of the slightest consideration -- but not because it was F-ism, supposing F-ism to be objectionable for some reason. > > for what it's worth, Marx's analysis (in one of his > sketchiest writings, one > that can be interpreted in at least two ways, not > just in G.A Cohen's > mechanistic way) was that the forces of production > develop over time and > then _come into conflict with_ [are dysfunctional > with] the relations of > production. This is PRECISELY Cohen's interpretation. You misread Cohen to say that Marx think the forces happily develop ad infinitum without conflict. Cohen does not say that. He has a careful analysis of "fettering," namely the dysfunctionality (a term which when I used it in the last go around we had on this sent your blood pressure through the roof) that happens when the forces are fettered by the relations. > the quality > and quantity of the development of the forces of > production are not given > exogenously (as in tech-determinist theories) but > are instead largely > determined by the societal mode of production. So > there's a dialectical > process, not some simple functional explanation. > Jim The objection not that the functional explanation is functional, but tahtit is simplistic. jks > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/
