Harry Pollard wrote:
>
> Keith,
>
> Of course we can predict how humans will behave.
I am not going to "beat a dead horse" -- or, more precisely:
an animal which has never yet had a chance properly to
be born (yes, I know, everybody says that about their
pet ideas, including, e.g., fundamentalist freemarketeers...).
I would welcome any opportunity to help elucidate the
Habermas quote. I could easily but with
humble passion teach at least one
and probably more than one graduate
level university course on it -- extemporaneously.
Here's a quote from Norbert Elias:
Seedcorn scattered to the winds.
Knowledge for whoever finds.
And one from Elias Canetti (from a writer's diary found
in the rubble of WWII):
But everything is over.
If I really was a writer,
I would have been able to prevent the war.
\brad mccormick
>
> They have unlimited desires, which they seek to satisfy with the least
> exertion, and they are subject to unrewarded curiosity.
>
> Cute things.
>
> Actually, "people prediction" takes place constantly and is usually pretty
> correct.
>
> Stores have to predict what people want or they wouldn't know what to put
> on their shelves. Economists couple their techniques to knowledge and
> experience in order to tell the production staff how many widgets will be
> needed next month.
>
> I would say that is where economists and economic skills are useful -
> handling widgets, or tomatoes, or cars. It's when they try to bring
> everything into the calculations that they run into trouble.
>
> I'm referring of course to GNP, GDP, CPI, and all the other acronyms with
> which we are saddled. I doubt these figures are of any use to the people
> who are the economy. They are produced by governments for governments.
> Also, I suppose, for politicians so they can appear to understand what is
> going on.
>
> However, all this busy-work serves only to complicate the simple. The
> economy consists of people exchanging goods and services. Indeed, that is
> all that matters.
>
> All these goods are produced by combining the three factors of production -
> Land Labor and Capital. We should understand the relationships between
> these three factors if we want to understand economics.
>
> Why should we worry about "variables" when we have solid invariables. Where
> we need to predict, prediction is possible and indeed essential if commerce
> is properly to proceed.
>
> I know Jim across the road will go to the supermarket. I haven't a clue
> what he will buy. I also know that the supermarket will have the things
> that Jim wants to buy.
>
> The question is do I need to know what Jim is going to buy? If you say yes,
> then economics can't predict. However, you should have said no. I don't
> need to know what Jim is going to buy. Just, that he will be buying.
> Indeed, you know that too - and you don't know Jim.
>
> Does the Supermarket need to know what Jim is going to buy. Of course not.
> But because there is a demand for these things, they will stock them. Is
> this prediction?
>
> This happens all over the economy in tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands
> of stores. And there are millions of Jims buying in these places.
>
> Math doesn't come in to it - until someone decides it's important to find
> how much ketchup is sold in these hundreds of thousands of stores? How much
> ketchup is being produced? How much is imported at what prices?
>
> And so on - also perhaps how viscous of the ketchup. I just simply can't
> resist this, Keith. There is a man in Washington whose job is to test the
> viscosity of ketchup.
>
> He has a little gadget which turns over the ketchup bottle so it drips on
> to an inclined board. He then times how long it takes to ooze down the
> board. It costs the American tax payer a paltry $84,000 a year. I've seen
> the apparatus - and the man. I have a feeling he gets home early each night.
>
> Heck, maybe we should also determine the viscosity most liked by all the
> Jims. (No doubt in the EEC they would then standardize ketchup at the
> preferred viscosity.)
>
> Anyway, we finish up with masses of data to help us conclude the economy is
> complicated.
>
> Freewill and perversity are part of the makeup of people. As such it will
> affect their exertion in which we are theoretically interested.
> Practically, as exertion is a manifest characteristic, we could see their
> effect.
>
> I suppose that the neo-Classicists would have trouble introducing equations
> to cover freewill and perversity - but that's their problem, not mine.
>
> Harry
> ____________________________________
>
> Keith wrote:
>
> >Hi Brad,
> >
> >I'm afraid my mental powers are insufficient to understand what the
> >Habermas quote is saying. However, I think I can understand what you wrote:
> >
> ><<<<
> >I would argue that economics is a *voluntative* science, by which I mean
> >that we can reduce human beings to objects of economic prediction if we
> >choose to do that to them.
> > >>>>
> >
> >I don't believe that economics can ever be used for prediction because it
> >is not at the scientific "level" (in the sense I described in a previous
> >post) by which a sufficient number of variables could be controlled. It
> >would need deeper levels of science -- such as anthropology, then
> >biogenetics, and then neurophysiology before one could do so. A neurologist
> >who inserted two microelectrodes into the pain and pleasure centres of your
> >hypothalamus could control, and therefore predict, your behaviour totally.
> >
> >But economics is at a scientific level in which notions such as freewill,
> >or even perversity, have validity. It's fairly squishy. Newton's Laws of
> >Motion are quite usable for almost everything that happens on earth, and
> >even in the solar system, but would be quite squishy when used to control a
> >spacecraft on its way to Sirius. A deeper level of science (Relativity) is
> >required for that.
> >
> >Keith
> >
> ><<<<
> >(Habermas, "Knowledge and Human Interests", 1968/1971, p. 310):
> > The systematic sciences of social action, that
> > is economics, sociology... have the goal, as do the
> > empirical-analytic sciences, of producing nomological
> > knowledge. A critical social science, however,
> > will not remain satisfied with this. It is concerned...
> > to determine when theoretical statements grasp
> > invariant regularities of social action as such and when
> > they express ideologically frozen relations of
> > dependence that can in principle be transformed. To the
> > extent that this is the case, the critique of
> > ideology, as well, moreover, as psychoanalysis,
> > take into account that information about lawlike
> > connections sets off a process of reflection in
> > the consciousness of those whom the laws are about.
> > Thus the level of unreflected consciousness,
> > which is one of the initial conditions of such laws, can
> > be transformed. Of course, to this end a critically
> > mediated knowledge of laws cannot through
> > reflection alone render a law itself inoperative,
> > but it can render it inapplicable.
>
> ******************************
> Harry Pollard
> Henry George School of LA
> Box 655
> Tujunga CA 91042
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Tel: (818) 352-4141
> Fax: (818) 353-2242
> *******************************
>
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--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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