On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:20:36 -0500 (EST) bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
(Rakesh Bhandari) writes:
>First, an apology to Justin. I should not have used the word ad hoc.
>In his
>last post, Justin would differentiate between analytical and value
>theoretic explanations. It's not clear to me what work analytical is
>doing.
>It seems that explanation on the basis of the law of value is what
>Justin
>is ruling out while recommending good--not ad hoc, not
>contigent--explanations broadly consistent with historical materialism
>in
>their place. Again, what Justin means by analytic I do not
>understand, but
>this should stimulate me to read his published work.
>
>If Justin still objects to this characterization, I will of course
>reconsider. And since I have only read some of Cohen's essays in
>History,
>Labor and Freedom, not the big book, I have not read Justin's reply.
>It was Jim F who (I think) suggested the influence of Hempel on Cohen.
I plead guilty. -:)
>
>I am confused by Justin's argument that Hempel gave up the distinction
>between theoretical and observational terms in 1965. I refer him to
>the
>publication of that year Aspects of Scientific Explanation, esp the
>essay
>The Theoretician's Dilemma. Though written in 1958, there is no
>postscript
>retracting the argument. Where does Hempel abandon it? Why did the
>rest of
>the profession abandon it?
Well Justin can correct me if I am wrong but I believe the distinction was abandoned under the influence of Quine (i.e. his essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism") as well as the influence of other writers like Thomas Kuhn. So I am sure that Hempel, too, had abandoned it by the 1960s. In any case, that was not the aspect of Hempel's philosophy of science that Cohen seemed to be interested in when writing _Karl Marx's Theory of History_. Also, it should be noted that Cohen in KMTH described his position concerning Marx's theory of value as one of agnosticism. It was only subsequently (no doubt under the influence of Roemer) that he finally rejected it altogether.
Jim Farmelant
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