Dear Bruce:
you have decided it is over and out yet you finish with 3 beguiling questions
which presumably are not intended to be purely rhetorical. as one was directed
to myself i will offer the final summary reply and also then say over and out.
you found Alan's argument (reproduced as follows) to be persuasive.
On Sun, 19 Jun 1994 23:17:32 -0700, Alan G. Isaac wrote
> I will offer a couple heuristic arguments to try to clarify further what
> I mean by there being a fact/value distinction that anyone entering a
> discourse must acknowledge. One way of pointing to this is to note that
> we do not attempt to resolve disagreements about matters of fact by
> attempting to determine the differences in our values (i.e., by turning
> to a different matter of fact). (Of course, sometimes we explain a
> person's views on matters of fact by their values.) Another way of
> pointing to it is to note that once we raise a question about a matter of
> fact, we do not generally attempt to resolve the question by trying to
> find the right values. I am hoping that y'all will see these as
> indicating a sense in which participation in a discourse requires making
> a certain kind of fact/value distinction.
I found it to be unpersuasive.
(1) we often resolve disagreements about matters of fact by attempting to
determine differences in our values. How else could I understand what a
mainstreamer says about profits or unemployment or anything? The point is that
when I look at profits (an accounting convention which we call a fact I
suppose) I see a manisfestation of a surplus, whereas a mainstreamer looks at
the profits and sees marginal rewards to capital productivity.
In other words, even the convention which we both observe (profits) is not a
shared experience - we do not even agree on the fact although we call it the
same thing and maybe even measure it at the superficial exchange level in the
same way. The only way to understand the discrepancy b/tw the observations is
to call up our values.
(2) values are fairly immutable once developed. so to say "we do not generally
attempt to resolve the question ...[about a matter of fact]...by trying to find
the right values" misses the point badly.
First, we will only see the same "facts" if our values are the same. Our values
will filter out the "facts" that others with different values will observe,
even if everyone is observing the same thing. these "facts" are always value
dependent. Of-course we don't go around altering our cultural and ideological
outlook to allay our fears that someone thinks profits is a marginal return to
K prody, whereas we thought it was a manifestation of surplus. We simply refuse
to believe the former story. We hold our faith and frame enquiry accordingly to
help reinforce this faith.
I do not think we can ever find truth - even if we stumbled on it, how would we
know it? What does it look like? Feel like? Sound like? All we find are things
out their to reinforce our faith.
I have been generally confused by the position Alan and Gil have taken here.
They seem to pump out this positivist line about f & v distinctions arguing the
need for it as a means of disciplining discourse and more. But then Gil says
that (not verbotem): "of-course I never said anything about objectified facts"
and Alan said (not verbotem): "of-course there is no such thing as an
uninterpreted fact".
both statements are anti-positivist and dare i say it - In total agreement with
my position which has not wavered in this debate. So despite all the rhetoric I
am left confused about their real position and agenda. Are they positivists,
who believe that the F & V distinction can be made and that Facts provide
independent and objectified data upon which positive theoretica axioms can be
confronted and tested? Or are they not?
In terms of economics, there is only one paradigm which makes the F & V
distinction that both Alan and Gil have been making (despite their lapses
towards my own position as noted above). The mainstream paradigm trades on it,
although even then most of the hard core of the paradigm is impossible to test
(even if we believed such testing could be done).
I have been saying that as radicals we do not make this crude and incorrect
distinction and recognise facts for what they are - extensions in phenomena
space of our values. We can still proceed to use them to glean advanced
understandings of our own thought structures and value sytems. We can still use
them to build models which provide policy advice to Governments.
Which brings me to your question Bruce:
>is this fact / value distinction still
>too close to supporting the normative / positive dichotomy used by the
>apologetics of neoclassical economics?
Answer: YES
Over and Out
kind regards
bill
*******************************************************************************
William F. Mitchell Telephone: +61-49-215027 .-_|\
Department of Economics +61-49-705133 / \ about
The University of Newcastle Fax: +61-49-216919 \.--._/*<-- here
Callaghan NSW 2308 v
Australia Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*******************************************************************************
