Cohen Marxism And Functionalism Notes

Gerry Cohen - Functional explanation, consequence explanation, and Marxism

1. Marxism, Functional Explanation, and Game Theory

• Marxism relies on consequence explanations, in which consequences are used to explain their causes

  • according to Elster, consequence explanation is available to biology but not to the social sciences

    • Elster claims that Marxism should rely upon game theory rather than functionalism

      • but this is not possible to historical materialism, which necessarily relies on consequence explanations

  • historical materialism claims that:

    • the level of development of the productive forces in a society explains the nature of its economic structure

    • its economic structure explains the nature of its superstructure

    • for this to be consistent with the following Marxist theses, the species of explanation must be functional:

      • the economic structure of a society promotes the development of its productive forces

      • the superstructure of a society stabilizes its economic structure

    • functional explanation = ‘e occurred because the situation was such that an event of type E would cause an event f type F’

• Historical materialism cannot contain game theory because it is not a theory of behaviour

  • rather it is a theory of the forces and relations constraining and directing behaviour

    • the short term outcomes of class struggle may be determined by behaviour, but the long term outcomes are governed by a dialectic of forces and relations of production, not by behaviour

2. Functional explanation and the theory of chance variation and natural selection

• Functional explanation = where something is explained by its function, or where something is explained by the function of something or other (possibly not itself)

  • consequence explanation = where the fact that E causes F helps to explain the occurrence of E

  • evolution is an example of consequence explanation, because ‘it is because an environment is such that in it a certain feature would improve the reproductive capacity of members of a species that the species acquires that feature’

  • the central Marxist explanations are consequence explanations, but not necessarily (or not clearly) functional explanations

• Does evolution provide/justify functional explanations?

  • do particular organisms develop certain features because they are or were functional for that organism?

    • no - features are developed in particular organisms because of genetic endowments, regardless of whether they are or were functional for that organism

      • particular organisms have no way to remove features that are no longer functional

  • do particular organisms develop certain features because they are or were functional for something other than it (e.g. the species)?

    • if an individual organism has a particular feature because it is a functional feature (as opposed to being because of random variation) then it is because it was functional for past organisms, rather than being functional for that individual organism

      • this led to higher reproduction rates for those organisms

      • this is not a full functional explanation - A has feature F which is functional for A, and has feature F because of F’s function, but not because of F’s function for A

      • if such an explanation were a functional explanation, then we would be committed to functional explanations of non-functional features, because of the functionality of the replication mechanism for past organisms

  • does something other than a particular organism have/develop a certain feature because it is/was functional for it?

    • yes, species develop certain features because they are functional to that species...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Sociological Theory Notes.