To say that it was an accident means it was
>not
>intended, planned, or otherwise necessary. What's your problem
>with that?
>
>===================
>
>Hello, anthropomorphism! One can only make sense of the notion of
>an accident in contradistinction to the notion of intention or
>plan; intention, plan/accident, error and the like are features of
>our descriptions of causal dynamics in physical systems. The
>systems themselves do not have intrinsic descriptions of their own
>processes. It makes no more sense to say nature has accidents than
>to say nature has plans.
Sigh. To say that something is an accident is to deny teleogy. Incidentally,
intentionality is only one kind of teleology. It's true that to say that
darwinina evolution is accidental involves a contrast class, namely
teleological explanation. But it makes perfect sense to do that. We
communicate. We even agree. So, you can continue to play language cop, but
it's a bore, eh? Anyway, we were talking about capitalism. To say that that
was accidental doesn't even raise the issue posed by Darwinian evolution,
since it's human behavior that we are discussing.
>
>
>
>Nor does it makes sense to say capitalism was
> >an aberration-compared to what?
>
> >
>Feudalism. Brenner argues that cap emerged in England and not
>France or
>Poland because of a special concatenation of historical
>circumastances
>
>This is like saying Keynesianism is an aberration of Marshallian
>economics or art is an aberration of engineering or atheism is an
>aberration of theism. If everything is an aberration of everything
>else, nothing is an aberration.
It's not to say that at all. Brenner's point is that SOMETHING happened in England around 1500 that was historically special. Feudal-type societies were the norm around the world, stable and long-lasting. Then the English did something--quite accidentally--that created an anomalous but very dynamic alternative that has, in 500 years, swept all before it. You know this. You are being deliberately perverse.
Feudalism is an ex post
>description of an epoch; the participants in that epoch didn't say
>"hey, we're the feudalists and anything that's not feudalistic is
>an aberration."
Actually, they did say just that. "Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone," for my fellow Donne-lovers. Or Edmund in Lear: "Nature's bounty is to bastards as well as to the legitimate!" (I paraphrase that from memory.)
jks
jks
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