Functional Explanation Again

[Michael McIntyre]

Don't worry Yoshie.  I knew Jon Elster.  Jon Elster was a friend of mine.  Yoshie, you're no Jon Elster.  But seriously - I sat through his classes on rational choice theory and analytic marxism and never once heard him say a word about race.  Within the channel he cut for himself, he was extraordinarily incisive - incisive enough to lay waste to almost everything around him (both Marx and rational choice theory in the end) with the exception of the holy grail of methodological individualism.  I even heard him finally refer to his explanatory focus on ad hoc causal mechanisms as "almost nihilist".  But never once did I hear him say a thing about race.  Not on the radar screen.

MM


>>> jkschw at hotmail.com 03/21/01 11:05PM >>> wrote in part:
"Your points about the differences between the needs of individual 
capitalists and that of the capitalist class, etc., are good and remind us 
of the need for microexplanation. You are becoming an analytical Marxist, 
Yoshie! Those are characteristics obsessions of the AMs. In fact, dragging 
in the World Spirit in a derogatory way, you are starting to found like 
Elster. Next thing you know, you will be posting Roemerian models, and 
Carrol will flip."

-jks