Ryle and Marx on Absurdities Juraj Halas department of logic and methodology of science faculty of philosophy, comenius university, bratislava

March 15, 2012

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Introducing...

• I work in the field of philosophy of social science,

specializing in methodology of political economy. • I am intrigued by Fay & Moon’s (1977) question “What is the role of critique in social science?” • Current research: Construction of so-called “critical theories”.

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Marx’s critique of political economy • Marx’s economic theory, to which he referred as

“a critique of political economy”, is an example of critical theory. • What does “critique” mean in Marx’s case? • As I will try to show, this “critique” can be interpreted as a critique of “category-mistakes” in economic theory.

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Ryle on doctrines of categories

• “Doctrines of categories and theories of types are

explorations in the same field.” “Categories”, 1938

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Ryle: Example The gap-sign “φ” in the sentence-frame “φ is in bed” can be complemented with both “mother” and “Sunday”, resulting in the grammatically correct sentences: 1 2

“Mother is in bed.” “Sunday is in bed.”

However, the latter sentence is absurd: as a day of week, Sunday cannot be “in bed” in any meaningful way.

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Ryle: Categories

• “Two proposition-factors are of different categories or

types, if there are sentence-frames such that when the expressions for those factors are imported as alternative complements to the same gap-signs, the resultant sentences are significant in the one case and absurd in the other.” “Categories”, 1938

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Ryle: Category-mistakes

“Sunday is in bed” is an example of a category-mistake or a type-trespass. • To ask about the category or type of an expression is to

ask about the sort of (non-absurd) propositions (and the positions in them) that the expression can appear in.

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Ryle: Categorial discipline • “Category-propositions (namely assertions that terms

belong to certain categories of types) are always philosophers’ propositions, but. . . the converse is also true.” • “So we are in dark about the nature of philosophical problems and methods if we are in dark about types or categories.” A theory of categories should enable us to identify more complicated category-mistakes and replace “category-habits” with “category-discipline”.

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Ryle: Delineating categories

• Category-mistakes take the form of absurd sentences. • Hence, identification of categories should be possible

by testing sentences for absurdity. • As Ryle famously ends his article, “But what are the tests of absurdity?”

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Marx’s categories • Marx uses the term “category” in a much narrower

sense than Ryle. • In Marx, categories refer to fundamental theoretical concepts of political economy, such as commodity, value, capital, profit, rent, wages etc. • These concepts appear in definitions and explanations and denote the very subject-matter of political economy: social relations.

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Marx: On absurdities

• In Capital and elsewhere, Marx often accuses political

economists of providing “absurd” or “irrational” explanations and definitions. • The last chapters of Vol. 3 of Capital present a wealth of examples.

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Marx: On absurdities (rent)

“The relation. . . is in itself absurd and irrational. . . ”, “as if one desired to speak of the relation of a five-pound note to the diameter of the earth” (On the explanation of rent solely by fertility of land)

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Marx: On absurdities (“The Trinity Formula”)

“They have about the same relation to each other as lawyer’s fees, red beets and music”, it is a “uniform and symmetrical incongruity”. (On the supposed relations between capital and profit, land and rent, labor and wages)

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Marx: Why absurd and irrational?

• In these examples, Marx obviously rejects some of the

theses of political economists of his time. • But why do these theses – in Marx’s view – constitute absurdities? • In other words: Are Marx’s allegations of absurdity and irrationality just a peculiar way of expressing disagreement, or do they follow any rules?

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Marx: Metatheoretical premises 1

2

3

Regardless of the kind of social relations that prevail in a given type of society, its members must engage in production in order to satisfy their needs. The proper subject of economic science are the specific features (differentiae specificae) of modern capitalist economy which differentiate it from previous epochs. These specific features then consist chiefly in the social relations (“social forms”) in which production is realized.

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Marx: Concepts in political economy

Transhistorical:

• labor, product, intercourse, means of production,

surplus product. . . Historically specific: • wage labor, commodity, exchange & money, capital,

profit. . . “Thing-like” (natural): • gold, means of production, nature (land). . .

Social: • money, capital, rent. . .

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Marx: The two rules 1

Transhistorical vs. historically specific • Explanations of social phenomena must not rely solely

on categories expressing transhistorical features of economic life. 2

“Thing-like”/natural vs. social • Explanations of social phenomena must not rely solely

on categories expressing “thing-like”, natural aspects of economic life.

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Marx: The example of capital (1) 1

2

3

4

“No production possible without an instrument of production, even if this instrument is only the hand.” “No production without stored-up, past labour, even if it is only the facility gathered together and concentrated in the hand of the savage by repeated practice.” “Capital is, among other things, also an instrument of production, also objectified, past labour.” “Therefore capital is a general, eternal relation of nature; that is, if I leave out just the specific quality which alone makes ‘instrument of production’ and ‘stored-up labour’ into capital.” (Grundrisse, Vol. 1) 18/23

Marx: The example of capital (2)

• Thus the false notion arises that

“These means of production are in themselves capital by nature; capital is merely an ‘economic appellation’ for these means of production” • Capital as means of production appears as eternal.

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Marx: The example of capital (3)

• Marx’s alternative approach defines capital as a social

relation between people mediated by things (commodities, incl. means of production and labor-power, and money). • Capital is thus understood as a historically developed and historically specific social relation. • Capital as a social relation is shown to be transient.

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Marx: Category-mistakes • A breach of the two rules results in a proposition that is

– from Marx’s point of view – “absurd”. • In this sense, such a proposition constitutes a category-mistake based on an inappropriate usage categories of one type in place of categories of another type. • The two rules provide Marx with criteria for testing for absurdity.

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Concluding remarks • Marx wants to reconstruct political economy on the

basis of a rigorous distinction between the historically specific and the transhistorical, and between social and “thing-like” (natural). • This reconstruction takes the form of a critical investigation of existing economic theory and its concepts, which seeks to identify category-mistakes. • Marx’s goal is to eradicate category-mistakes from political economy – to replace “category-habits” with “category-discipline”.

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Questions?

Juraj Halas [email protected] Thank you kindly for coming to this talk!

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