Explananda Re: Psycho-sexual explanation

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 11:18 AM -0800 3/29/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>But the psycho-social factors are unique to each individual. I have 
>>yet to see anyone explain a social event in terms of pscycho-social 
>>factors without reaching the same conclusions that he/she would 
>>have reached _not_ invoking psycho-social factors.
>
>Carrol,
>
>Sometimes i think that you like making flat assertions that are 
>ridiculously exaggerated just to provoke debate.
>
>What you say here is equivalent to saying that P-S factors have no 
>explanatory power. That is not true. It is hard to deny the 
>importance of sexual psychology in a lot of social phenomena. How 
>can you understand the abortion debate without it? Or the right wing 
>prejudice against welfare? Or indeed the enthusiasm for war both at 
>elite levels and among the general population? For a very nice 
>partly P-S account of the divergence ofa ttitudes among women in the 
>abotion debare, see Kristin Luker on the politics of motherhood.
>
>Moreover the first sentence is clearly false if taken in the sense 
>intended. Naturally P-S factors at a very specific level of 
>description are unique to each person. But that does not mean that 
>useful generalizations cannot be drwan. Btw, economic factors are 
>unique to every individual at a fine enough level of description. 
>But that also does not mean that there are no useful generalizations.

Explananda = statements that describe what is to be explained.

Explanans = statements that refer to the laws that are to explain the 
explananda.

"Psycho-sexual" matters -- feelings about abortion, feelings about 
poor women's fertility in debates on social welfare, etc. -- are 
explananda, not explanans, as far as research useful for political 
organizing on the left is concerned.
-- 
Yoshie

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