At around 6/8/06 6:06 pm, raghu wrote:
> My guess is Prof. Bernanke
> justifies it in his own mind, by telling himself that he is doing what
> he has to do to control inflation and maximize employment.
>
I think its even more basic/fundamental than that. As we know by now,
all fact/data is "theory laden". One obtains, filters and analyses data
always within and using a theoretical framework. Whether these
meta-activities are driven by an equally rigorous methodology is
arguably ill-established. When are working within the framework you can
be entirely honest (as you point out) and valid in your reasoning
without being in any way aware of the [ideological] commitments of the
framework. Hence it is often unnecessary to investigate or use intention
in analysing the actions of the agents.
We saw an example of this with the exit polls fiasco in the recent U.S
presidential elections. Mitofsky and Co were willing to sacrifice some
of their own analysis and bend the maths in order to satisfy the
commitment to the validating the actual results. If their processes were
mechanical/deterministic then they would not have the wiggle room that
they exercised in their post mortem. Yes?
--ravi
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