The Problematic Concrete Individual Implied by Scientific Realism

Arocha’s (2021) article provides readers with an insightful perspective on how we can understand human behavior based on the concrete individual with a final cause rather than on aggregate data. The concrete individual, however, is not concrete in itself, but dependent on the concrete meaning of a final cause. But the sources of a final cause cannot be addressed by Arocha’s methods on their own. This makes Arocha’s methods incomplete for the study of the concrete individual he suggests. We propose that this lack of completion results from Arocha’s taken-for-granted concrete individual. The final cause is only concrete in specific historical relations shaped by a Marxist mode of production; the corresponding individual is therefore also only concrete in specific historical relations.