{"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":"124 / 125","pdf_page":68,"physical_index":68,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ed01e9b262d13ffab7348d9ff6affb7a237978c0b183900f992803e629b1a0bc"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Keat and Urry (1975: 11-12) use a famous illustrative example. The onset of measles is invariably preceded by the presence of small white marks in the lining of the cheeks, known as koplik spots. The latter have both of the necessary characteristics of a Humean cause (temporal precedence, and invariant succession), and could therefore serve as a major premise to D-N explanation of the form ‘if koplik spots, then measles'. And if D-N formulability suffices to characterize what is required for an explanation, then we have no good reason not to explain measles as the outcome of koplik spots. Yet we would not ordinarily want to say that the spots cause the measles. The cause, rather, is invasion of bodily cells by a virus of the family paramixo viridae, of which koplik spots are an early manifestation. Certainly we may predict the imminent onset of measles from the presence of koplik spots, but the spots do not in any meaningful sense explain the disease.\n\nAscription of causes - explanation - for realist critics of positivism, necessarily entails giving an account of the actual mechanisms through which a given effect is seen as being really produced, in this case the activities of the virus. It is only in virtue of such an account that we can differentiate real causes from merely incidental correlations, or stop a potentially infinite causal regress of empirical antecedents. This in turn requires what Bhaskar calls 'ontological depth' - the invocation of real, and sometimes invisible entities distinct from the phenomena observed, whose characteristics, properties and powers are capable of explaining those phenomena in this materially causal sense. Such are viruses with measles, and genes with giraffes’ necks. This conception of causal explanation clearly deviates considerably from Hempel's authoritative characterization of the positivist model, which Cohen straightforwardly accepts, for it centrally involves going beyond mere empirical regularities. Indeed for realism such regularities – like the manifest adaptedness of species to their environments - are characteristically part of science's explananda. An instance in Marx would be the correlation between fertility of land and differential rent, which he does not accept as in itself explanatory (see Sayer 1983: 49–52).\n\nThis means that giving a causal explanation necessarily involves elaborating’ a theory of causal mechanisms. It is only such a theory which makes a series of propositions into an explanation. We cannot answer a why question except by saying how. We cannot give a properly causal explanation without elaboration, for it is precisely in the supposed ‘elaboration' - the development of a theory of mechanisms - that explanation, as distinct from unexplanatory (or insufficiently explanatory) correlations of the koplik spots/measles (or acacias/long necks) variety, finally consists. In my final chapter I shall argue that in Marx, the analogous mechanisms lie ultimately in the actions of real individuals, and that causal explanation of social phenomena must acordingly be historical. We do not explain such things as Protestantism or law by their functionality but their genealogy.\n\nTo defend realism, whether as a philosophy of science or in relation to Marx's method, is beyond the remit of this book. I have made some gestures in this direction elsewhere (1983). But it is not irrelevant to my overall argument to suggest that what finally vitiates Cohen's account of functional explanation is exactly what realists argue undermines positivism, the lack of any material conception of cause. For Cohen's characterization of functional explanation is, as he goes to some lengths to show, a variant of Hempel's D-N model. Had Cohen operated with a material understanding of cause, he would never have made the mistake he did with the giraffes - excluding what actually makes their necks grow from the category of explanation proper, whilst ascribing a contingent empirical correlate (the dispositional properties’ of the environment) an illusory causal role. Nor would he have had the gall - or should I say the historical ignorance, comprehensible only in an analytic philosopher? - to suggest that, in effect, in the social world we have explained a phenomenon by demonstrating its functionality for another, whilst establishing how it was brought about (or is materially sustained) is a mere optional extra, irrelevant to the truth or falsity of our supposed explanations. To call such a procedure either historical or materialist is a travesty of either adjective, and about as far away from Marx as we could conceivably get.\n\n124\n\nINTERLUDE: THE GIRAFFES AMONG THE ACACIAS\n\nINTERLUDE: THE GIRAFFES AMONG THE ACACIAS\n\n125","previous_page":67,"next_page":69}