{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","uuid":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","normalized_title":"theviolenceofabstractiontheanalyticfoundationsofhistoricalmaterialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","isbns":["0631153187"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":93,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/The%20Violence%20of%20Abstraction%20The%20Analytic%20Foundations%20of%20Historical%20Materialism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"116 / 117","pdf_page":64,"physical_index":64,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ee1b274f21225c92c5b2fdc0bf400c8e4ba389e50e3dba9919a1064e998d48c0"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Cohen favours is: ‘e occurred because it would cause f, or, less tersely but more properly: e occurred because the situation was such that an event like e would cause an event like f (1983b: 115). In functional explanation, it is the fact that were an event of a certain type to occur, it would have a certain effect, which explains the occurrence of an event of the stated type' (1978: 261). Cohen calls this fact – that described by the words he italicizes - a ‘dispositional fact'. Thus in Cohen's Marxism the emergence of production relations of a given type is functionally explained by the dispositional fact that were such relations to emerge, they would promote development of the productive forces. Similarly with superstructures vis-à-vis bases.\n\nCohen emphasizes, additionally - and very importantly for my argument - that such explanations may be confirmed in the absence of a theory as to how the dispositional property figures in the explanation of what it explains ... we may have good reason for thinking a functional explanation is true even when we are at a loss to conjecture by what means or mechanism the functional fact achieves its explanatory role' (ibid.: 266). As his later article puts it: ‘to say that A explains B is not necessarily to indicate how A explains B . . . In a widely favoured idiom, [we] may not know the mechanism linking cause and effect, or, as I prefer to say, [we] may be unable to elaborate the explanation'(1983b: 118-19).\n\nThus specification of causal mechanisms is not for Cohen necessary to explanation. To use his own terms, explanations answer ‘whyquestions' and we may be able to say why an event occurs without knowing how it occurs. In a functional explanation, the answer to the question why an event occurs is necessarily and sufficiently furnished by citation of the relevant consequence-law and antecedent (dispositional) conditions, exactly as within the conventional D-N schema to say why an event occurs is simply to invoke a covering causal law whose antecedent conditions are satisfied. Identification of causal mechanisms - saying how the explanandum-event is actually brought about – pertains to what Cohen calls the elaboration' of explanations. Such elaboration – the provision of a theory of causal mechanisms – may be desirable. But it is not in any way mandatory. Functional explanations as such are sufficiently characterised by their formulability in terms of Cohen's modified D-N schema alone, and hence remain valid as explanations even in the complete absence of theoretical elaboration. This is, of course, the standard position adopted by positivists (and denied by realists) with regard to ordinary causal explanations.\n\nII\n\nDiscussion may best be advanced from here by considering one of Cohen's examples of functional explanation in more detail. I shall treat it as a paradigm. It is this:\n\nA population of giraffes with a mean neck length of six feet lives in an environment of acacia trees, on whose leaves they feed. The height of the trees makes it true that, if they now had longer necks, their survival prospects would be better. They subsequently come to have longer necks. So far all we have is evidence of a consequence generalization. But if Darwin's theory of evolution is true, then the fact that were they to have had longer necks, they would have fared better, contributes to explaining the elongation. The environment selects in favour of variants with longer necks precisely because it is an environment in which longer necks improve life chances. On no construal can that dispositional fact be reduced to an unexplanatory precursor of the acquisition of the feature. Its explanatory relevance to the elongation of the neck is entailed by the Darwinian theory. (ibid.: 269)\n\nCohen then confronts an imaginary sceptic, who argues that the dispositional property (that the environment is of a kind in which longer necks would improve life chances) merely correlates with what really explains the elongation. This is the presence of the trees, a quite undispositional circumstance' (ibid.: 270). Cohen replies as follows:\n\nWe can agree that it is the trees which, aided by the chance genetic variation, cause the neck of the species to grow. But what is it about the trees which makes them have that effect? Answer: where trees are of the given height giraffes with longer necks would prosper better. The dispositional fact is an essential element in the explanatory story. (ibid.)\n\nConsistently with his disjunction between explanation and its elaboration', Cohen claims, additionally, that in this example the dispositional fact is essential to the explanation of the lengthening of giraffes' necks irrespective of whether we favour Darwinian or Lamarckian accounts of how the elongation occurs - the latter,\n\n116\n\nINTERLUDE: THE GIRAFFES AMONG THE ACACIAS\n\nINTERLUDE: THE GIRAFFES AMONG THE ACACIAS\n\n117","previous_page":63,"next_page":65}