I argued in Karl Marx's Theory of History that the central claims of historical materialism are functional explanations, and I said that functional explanations are consequence explanations, ones, that is, in which something is explained by its propensity to have a certain kind of effect. I also claimed that the theory of chance variation and natural selection sustains functional explanations, and hence consequence explanations, of organismic equipment. In Section I I defend the thesis that historical materialism offers functional or consequence (...) explanations, and I reject Jon Elster's contention that game theory can, and should, assume a central role in the Marxist theory of society. In Section II I contrast functional and consequence explanation, thereby revising the position of Karl Marx's Theory of History, and I question whether evolutionary biology supports functional explanations. Section III is a critique of Elster's views on functional explanation, and Sections IV and V defend consequence explanation against metaphysical and epistemological doubts. A concluding section summarizes my present understanding of the status of historical materialist explanations. (shrink)

The volume also publishes for the first time a part of his Debrecen Ph.D. thesis and it is concluded by a bibliography of his Hungarian writings.

In ?The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation? I distinguished between two ways in which the labour theory of value is formulated, both of which are common. In the popular formulation, the amount of value a commodity has depends on how much labour was spent producing it. In the strict formulation, which is so called because it formulates the labour theory of value proper, the amount of value a commodity has depends on nothing about its history but (...) only on how much labour would (now) be required to produce something just like it. I argued that strict and popular formulations are often wrongly treated as substantially equivalent, and that the practice of conflating them sustains two false impressions: that the labour theory of value is a basis for saying that capitalists exploit workers, and that the labour theory of value is true. The present paper is a reply to Nancy Holmstrom's recent attempt, in ?Marx and Cohen on Exploitation and the Labor Theory of Value?, to refute the theses of the article referred to above. (shrink)

A significant proportion of conservationists' work is directed towards efforts to save disappearing species. This relies upon the belief that species extinction is undesirable. When justifications are offered for this belief, they very often rest upon the assumption that extinction brought about by humans is different in kind from other forms of extinction. This paper examines this assumption and reveals that there is indeed good reason to suppose current anthropogenic extinctions to be different in kind from extinctions brought about at (...) other times or by other factors. Having considered – and rejected – quantity and rate of extinction as useful distinguishing factors, four alternative arguments are offered, each identifying a way in which anthropogenic extinction is significantly different from other forms of extinction, even mass extinction: (1) Humans are a different kind of natural cause from other causes of extinction; (2) Extinctions brought about by humans are uniquely persistent; (3) Anthropogenic extinctions are effectively random whereas past mass extinctions are rule-bound; (4) The impact of the current anthropogenic extinction event differs from the impact of other extinction events of the past, such that future recovery may not follow past patterns. Together, these four arguments suggest that the present-day extinction event brought about by humans may be unprecedented and that we cannot clearly extrapolate from past to present recovery from extinctions. Although insufficient as justification for the claim that present-day extinctions are undesirable, the arguments provide some ammunition for conservationists' conviction that species extinction – in which humans play an accelerating role – ought to be prevented. (shrink)

Anderson-Shaw, Baslet, and Villano (2010) have rightfully pointed out the need for a more systematic approach in diagnosing and communicating to patients the effects of diseases and treatments on t...

This volume presents new texts of Cicero's dialogues on political philosophy, De Re Publica and De Legibus, together with corrected versions of the editor's previously published editions of Cato Maior de Senectute and Laelius de Amicitia. The texts are based on a full reconsideration of the manuscript evidence and are presented in a clear and readable form.