Explananda Re: Psycho-sexual explanation

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sun Mar 30 06:04:30 PST 2003


Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: At 8:40 PM -0800 3/29/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>(B) What explains the fact that while some Americans subscribe to
>>one or more or all of the above while others do not?
>
>Haven't a clue. Is that supposed to be a problem for me?


> Presumably, a big part of the reason why many LBO-talkers are
interested in the "psycho-sexual" as explananda and some of them look to the "psycho-sexual" as explanans is our observations of backward or reactionary political behaviors of some Americans

Oh, so you're redaing my mind now? No, I'm interested in such explanatioons because I think there must be something to them.


> What makes you think that sexual anxieties are temporally prior to
class?

Because gender indentification i solder than class, as you well know. You're not telling me that the you don't know that the fiest thing anyone has ever said about a new person is, I's a boy/girl!


> Most observable sexual anxieties are clearly new -- evidently
quite modern -- in history: e.g., the myth of black men's sexual rapacity, anti-abortion ideology, homophobia. The fear of poor women's fertility is older than homophobia, anti-abortion ideology, and the myth of black men's sexual rapacity, but how old is it exactly?

A splendid gift for changing the subject. I expressly acknowledged that the specific form of sexual anxieties was historically contingent. Why does deliberately misunderstanding people amuse you? You're not a teaching a first year school class.

At 8:40 PM -0800 3/29/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Or if you think that economics is the fundamental level of social
>explanation, there can be no economic explanations, that is, no
>explanations of economic phenomena.


> Economic explanations and explanations of economic phenomena aren't
the same thing, are they?

No, which is why I qualified an ambiguous expression to make it precise. Do you find this sort of remaek helpful, pointing out distinctions your interlocutor has already made as if he hadn't? This is the second time you've done that in this post.

At 8:40 PM -0800 3/29/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>not all explanations are or can be reductive.


> Sure, but aren't questions that do not require explanans of a
different order rather trivial (politically and epistemologically), as in the example you give below?

No. It is not the case that only reductive explanations are deep and interesting. Do you thibk the theory of gravity is rather trivial? All of its explanations are of the same "order" -- that is, physical.Note that on your story economic explanations of economic phenomena are trivial.

At 8:40 PM -0800 3/29/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Why is the Shrub Prez? Because Gore bollocksed the campaign. Because
>a GOP dominated S.Ct lawlessly awarded him the job for partisan
>reasons. Because Nader drew too many votes in Florida. What's so
>hard about that?

You got a problem with true and informative explanations? You want to account for in terms of geberal relativistic quantum electrodynamics? Be my guest. Most people, when they ask a political question, are asking for the political explanatory factors.

jks

-- Yoshie

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