> Date sent: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 10:28:10 -0700 (PDT)
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (GC-Etchison, Michael)
> To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [PEN-L:5108] Deductivism (WAS one last . . .)
> Rahul Mahajan asks 7/11 why James Craven objects to libertarians' being
> "deductivists":
>
> >All of science is done by taking the basic underpinnings (axioms,
> equations of motion, etc.), deducing consequences of them, then
> empirically testing those consequences. This is the only way to do it.
> The eq.'s of motion themselves cannot be "directly" tested -- they can
> only be tested by their results.
>
> >In what imaginable sense is this specific to libertarianism?
>
> Libertarian economists (or libertarians considering economics) share
> with their non-libertarian neoclassical colleagues a marked tendency to
> regard only quantifiable things as worthy of attention. They do not
> pause to wonder whether the question "is economics a science"? or "if
> it's science, must it be done in numbers"? or "if it's a science, must
> it _all_ be done in numbers"? or "if economics is not a 'science,' does
> whatever it is require that everything be done in numbers"? Mahajan's
> query assumes that economics is not only a science, but the kind of
> science which requires and permits only quantifiable things to matter.
>
> Neoclassicals do it because it makes their theory tidy, and provides
> ample opportunities to crunch numbers to generate publishable papers (too
> much reading David Colander there). Libertarians do it because once they
> concede the importance of "institutions" (in the comprehensive sense
> that, say, North uses the term), the atomistic libertarian game is up:
> others must be taken into account because in an unquantifiable but
> unavoidable sense, each of us includes the others.
>
> Michael Etchison
>
> [opinions mine, not the PUCT's]
>
Right On IMHO. By the way, the title "Professor in 15th Century
Germany meant "One who teaches otherwise". But I apologize if the
title was offensive because as you note in your piece and as Dave
Colander and others have written there is indeed a lot of ideological
sycophancy, meaningless CV building, out-and-out whoring, number
and "prediction/conclusion" pimping, esoteric and meaningless
"scientific" papers, autocracy in "permissible"--career and CV
building--paradigms, backroom cabals and crony networking etc in
academia--just like in other spheres of society.
Institutions are simply assumed as "given" in the neoclassical and
libertarian paradigms. Institutions are complexes/systems of values,
power relations, traditions, symbols, laws, codes, regulations,
taboos, etc that serve to structure, regulate, proscribe, sanction,
punish, teach, reinforce, legitmate, propagandize, manipulate certain
human interactions, forms of behavior, dominant ideologies, power
relations, systems, material interests, etc. If institutions were
seriously considered:
1) the notion of the atomistic and "human-nature-driven" Homo
Economicus would be seriously trashed; each individual is unaffected
by others;
2) all sorts of "squishy" concepts would have to be considered and
incorporated into analysis and the blatantly metaphysical assertions
and meaningless tautologies of neoclassical and libertarian paradigms
would be exposed even more clearly;
3) the fundamental questions of by whom, for whom, in the service of
whom, with what real consequences on whom etc do economic activities
and relationships take place would have to be dealt with;
4) Institutions other than private property contract rights etc would
have to be considered along with their real historical origins and
real-world consequences;
5) the notions of linear and unidirectional causality in neoclassical
economics and implicit in the libertarian paradigm would be seriously
undermined and replaced by mutildimensional and multidirectional
causality; in deed the whole notion of "ultimate independent
variables" (GIVEN Wants/Needs, Tastes/Preferences, Technology,
Resources, Human-Nature-Driven impulses would be seriously trashed.
So as usual the libertarians and the neoclassicals simply refuse to
discuss such matters and/or discuss caricatures of institutions and
then make sure that young graduate students, young professors,
bureaucrats etc tow the party line or not get published, promoted or
finish their studies--academic fascism.
Jim Craven
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