Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 28)

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Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 28)

المحتوى

The French philosopher Louis Althusser makes this point in a
critique of the empiricist problematic where he states:
The whole empiricist process of knowledge lies in
fact in an operation called abstraction. To know is
to abstract from the real object its essence, the
possession of which by the subject is called
knowledge. Abstraction (which ever its variant)
defines an invariant structure, which constitutes a
specific index of empiricism. Empiricist
abstraction which abstracts from the given real
object its essence, its real abstraction. leaving
the subject in possession of its real essence. What
does real abstraction actually mean? It accounts
for what is to be called a real fact... Knowledge
is an abstraction, in the strict sense, i.e. an
extraction of the essence of the real which
contains it. (27)
Now, although Althusser's critical target is much broader
than the philosophical empiricism which we would wish to
denote - i.e. the British empiricist tradition from Hume to
the Logical Positivists —- it should be clear that the process
that Althusser depicts, by the category "empiricist
abstraction", is nothing other than the method of induction.
Induction refers to an empirical a posteriori sorting
Procedure. The concept of induction is the definitive concept
of this process and not the concept of "abstraction" or
“empiricist abstraction". Althusser's appellation
"abstraction' is in this context ambiguous since in latter
stages of the same text he applies the concept abstraction to
denote a method which is distinct in logical form from
Induction. Abstraction is a method through which we link
observable terms to rational connectives, e.g. the concepts
electron, atom, capitalist mode of production, surplus value,
etc. are all abstract concepts and not empirical terms. (28)
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Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production

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Alex Pollock

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