Článok porovnáva chápanie metód dedukcie a indukcie, s ktorým pracujú vybrané texty zo spoločenskovednej metodológie, s poňatím týchto metód, o ktoré sa opiera moderná logika. Ukazuje, že viaceré príručky spoločenskovedného výskumu vychádzajú zo zastaranej koncepcie, podľa ktorej dedukcia predstavuje „postup od všeobecného k jednotlivému" a indukcia „postup od jednotlivého k všeobecnému". V niektorých prípadoch sa tiež obe metódy chybne stotožňujú s metódami výstavby teórie, prípadne sa dvojica dedukcia - indukcia mylne spája s dvojicou kvantitatívny - kvalitatívny výskum. Článok upozorňuje na (...) niektoré problematické dôsledky takého postupu a navrhuje jednoduché riešenia. (shrink)

The paper offers a reconstruction of the development of Karl Marx’s thought in 1842 – 1844 proceeding from the philosophy of law and social philosophy to political economy and its critique. It puts forward a new interpretation of the categories “bürgerliche Gesellschaft“, “alienation“ and “alienated labor“. This interpretation shows that the development of Marx’s thought did not proceed from „philosophy“ to “political economy“ or from “humanism“ to “scientism“, but from an “external“ to an “internal“ critique of political economy.

The method of “abstraction” had been the centerpiece of earlier attempts at founding a Marxist philosophy of science – from Engels to Soviet Marxism. This paper confronts Marx’s writings on abstraction with contemporary views of the method, stemming mostly from the analytic and (post-)empiricist traditions. In Section 2, I reconstruct the roles that abstraction was to play, according to Marx, in the construction of a scientific theory, focusing exclusively on his own writings. The analysis reveals certain rules, left mostly implicit (...) in Marx, for the correct application of the method of abstraction. These are discussed in Section 3. The first rule states that concepts of the historically specific aspects of target systems (e.g., the capitalist economy) cannot be defined simply by means of transhistorical concepts. The second rule prohibits abstraction from the explanatorily relevant aspects which pertain, in Marx’s vocabulary, to the “essence” of the target system. In Section 3, I confront Marx’s notion of “abstraction” with contemporary statements on the method. It is shown that it covers both abstraction and idealization as understood in some modern accounts (notably, that of M. R. Jones). Under this approach, abstraction involves the tacit omission of properties, which are simply left unspecified. In contrast, idealization consists in the explicit counterfactual ascription of properties (and values of magnitudes). Finally, the representational goals pertaining to Marx’s “abstraction” are discussed, using distinctions due to M. Weisberg. It is shown that Marx was a proponent of “minimalist idealization”, focusing on the identification of causally relevant mechanisms that characterize all capitalist societies. I conclude with a suggestion for further research. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that Karl Marx’s critique of political economy can be interpreted as a critique of what philosophers have termed “category-mistakes”. Therefore, I first turn to the origins of this term in Gilbert Ryle’s “Categories”, to further developments in “Philosophical Arguments” and in P. F. Strawson, as well as to W. H. Walsh’s approach to categories, to establish a workable meaning of the term “category-mistake”. In the second part, I briefly discuss some of the (...) previous uses of this term in exegeses of Marx. Based on Marx’s writings and D. Sayer’s work on Marx’s methodology, I then explicate the meaning of Marx’s term “economic category”. Finally, I arrive at an interpretation of Marx’s critique of economic theories as an analysis concerned with the improper use of theoretical concepts. By way of conclusion, I offer some general remarks on one important aspect of critique in Marx and in social science in general. (shrink)