Subsumption involves considering something as a particular case that is subject to a general principle.
Subsumption is the act and result of subsuming . This verb (subsume) refers to taking something as a particular case that is subject to a general principle or as a component of a larger group.
The action of subsuming, at a general level, refers to considering an element as part of a broader classification or synthesis. Subsumption, therefore, is the effect of this process.
Subsumption as a logical mechanism
The concept is used in various sciences. In the field of law , subsumption is a logical mechanism that allows us to maintain that a legal fact is responsible for reproducing the hypothesis presented by a general rule . A subsumption error , in this framework, is a failure in the legal diagnosis used to determine which rule applies to the factual assumption.
Subsumption, in short, is an operation of logic from which we go from an individual statement to a general one. In the legal field, we move from the fact to the law: a concrete and specific situation is considered and it is linked to the hypothetical provision made by the legislation.
Karl Marx studied subsumption of labor in capitalism.
Marx's contribution
The idea of subsumption also appears in philosophy . Karl Marx , for example, reflected on the subsumption of labor into capital .
For Marx , there is a formal subsumption of labor in capital through which the labor force is consolidated as a commodity. Simultaneously, this thinker affirmed the existence of a real subsumption that promotes the development of new mechanisms to generate surplus value .
This word, therefore, can be understood in general rules as a concept of philosophy or logic that refers to ordering a certain group of particulars so that they are subject to a universal. In this way, it is possible to describe several fundamental ontological or logical relations as relations of this type; For example, we can affirm that dogs or the concept of "dog" are subsumed in the group of "mammals."
Subsumption according to Kant
If we move for a moment to the idealist philosophy of Germany, the concept of subsumption is found in the works of more than one author, among whom Schelling, Kant and, less frequently, Hegel stand out. In these cases, the use it receives is less static, since it is applied to a process through which the particular and the universal can be related.
For Kant, the "categories of understanding" and the "multiple" are related through subsumption, through an abstraction that returns to us the truth of the latter. It can be said that this point of view formally resembles the relationship that Marx proposed between the "particular" and the " universal ", since in both cases there is an external universal with which a particular is related through subsumption.
It is possible that this homology has more depth than can be seen at first glance: Kant proposes the transcendental scheme as an attempt to resolve the way in which a pure concept of reason can be related to appearances, and considers it a "third thing" that unites them; Marx also needs a third element (labor) for the comparison of two commodities.
Hegel finds a problem in Kant's proposal regarding the subsumption and abstraction necessary for understanding, in particular because the truth of particulars must abstract a universal and, consequently, obscure and transform the very thing that it theoretically knows. This leads us to note that subsumption can be understood as an absurdity if the particular happens to be less true than the universal to which it is subsumed.