DJC Wagnon

This paper deploys the concept of Natural Kinds - as theoretical identifications about metaphysically necessary sub-structures that demarcate individual entities within the actual world - as providing resources for re-interpreting the traditional claim of Marxism as aspiring to the status of a "science." To this end, the "general formula of capital" as elaborated by Marx will be taken up as providing an algorithmic interpretation of the sub-structural mechanism which make up the Natural Kind of "Capital" - where this formula represents something that is metaphysically necessary in every possible world where capitalism is said to exist, and stands as something which we only come to know a posteriori. In this vein "Das Kapital" will be re-read as offering what Kripke calls a "baptismal moment," where the rigid designation of "Capital" was first assigned and the theoretical identification of capital set out. This interpretation will then be utilized in three ways: (a) as a means of re-understanding what Marx meant by referring to his late works as "Scientific," (b) as a means for exploring what implications this has for this tradition today, and (c) as the grounds for offering a rejoinder to the work of Brian Ellis who argues that economics cannot form a natural kind.

General Introduction for into Media Studies, Critical Theory, and Postmodernism that uses the Media coverage and Media events of the COVID 19 Pandemic as a heuristic for introducing students to an array of different topics, theorists, and theories, that also speculates about how human beings have changed in terms of their relation to the media in a post Covid world.

This paper puts the theories of Donald Davidson into conversation with those of Edmund Husserl, arguing that their work can be read as representing different species of a singular kind, with both defending: (1) versions of anomalous monism, and (2) the legitimacy of event explanation by way of intentionality, rationality, and talk of agentive action. Through these they provide an account of the mental that aligns with the physical while also avoiding the mental's nomological capture, or its reduction to physicalist causality. A demonstration will be provided in closing as to why this Husserlian-Davidson position is worth exploring, as we will utilize their conjunction as a platform for responding to problems raised against anomalous monism and the intentional rationalization of action by behaviorists, eliminativists, pragmatists, and conceptualists. In this manner their paired reading will be shown to enlighten us about the nature of their individual theories, while simultaneously deepening our understanding of the nature of the (1-2) problematic that their theories shared in common.