On 2/16/06, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This confuses me, Ian, because it seems to me that the "in principle" > qualification abstracts from the actual, empirical behavior of human beings. > I'm also not sure about conflating unlimited with infinite. Wants would > always be finite at any given time but they could be assumed to expand > indefinitely over time.
--------------------------------- Well, let's ask if the unlimited wants assertion is an a priori truth, in which case mainstreamers have to run the gauntlet thrown down by Quine in 1953 and elaborated upon in lots and lots of dissertations and monographs in philo. and other disciplines demonstrating the labyrinth of problems associated with a priori arguments...........or if it's an inductive argument from empirical behaviors and/or intentionalities in which the issue of the countability of wants is cardinal or ordinal, in which case mainstreamers have to overcome Brower and the intuitionists arguments contra Hilbert and Cantor or they run into the physicalist argument against the ad infinitum strategy regarding countability and numbers. I've mentioned Brain Rotman's work before and will simply suggest it again :-) The problems of whether the terms indefinite, unlimited and infinite do any referential work and how they relate to/overlap with one another in various contexts of use is an ancient problem that does not seem to be resolvable at this juncture of history although methinks the finitists are winning................. > > This is not to say that I whole-heartedly endorse the unlimited wants (in > principle) assumption. I think it's meaningless aside from its ideological > function within economics. It's just a smarmy "worldy wise" irrelevancy from > hegemony apologists, AFAIC. But I would also contend that with the > qualification it has no policy-relevant analytical "force" and can be > conceded to those who were dreaming it was their trump. Without the > qualification, it's a dingbat perpetual motion machine. ---------------------- Oh it's a dingbat substitute for the desire for immortality 'tis what it is, imo.
