Ted Winslow wrote:
Marx's identification of "the greatest wealth" with "the other human being"
With "the other"? Not with the *common*, rich, painstakingly acquired humanity of us all, but with "the other"? Tell me exactly where this Franciscan Marx identifies the greatest wealth with the negation of one self.
isn't an identification of it with the other human being's "consumption"; it's an identification of it with a relation of mutual recognition.
Aren't you attributing to me a narrow definition of "consumption"? Broadly understood, consumption is also the way in which we humans reproduce ourselves materially and socially. I don't see why you downplay "consumption" (your quotes) as merely instrumental. I'm not saying it's not a means. But it also an end in itself. There's no infinite regress here. We're talking about an ongoing reproduction of humans as such, in the material sense (their evolution as, say, a population) and in the social sense (the social development of their mutual relations).
The content of this relation is the creation and appropriation of truth and beauty. The relation isn't "useful"; it's an end in itself. "Use values" are instrumental to it.
The "appropriation of truth and beauty" are "the end"? No means to anything else (e.g. human overall development)? Other human beings are not instrumental to one another? There's no mediation in human relations, only identification? No difference only identity? What kind of monochromatic society is that? Certainly that wouldn't be Marx's communism.
The concept of rationality involved here is very different from the concept of rationality in game theory.
The rationality in game theory is an abstract notion to be filled with the concrete content assigned to it by its specific application. Such is the general nature of mathematical abstractions. And that's what accounts for their universal application, power, and beauty.
In circumstances where this rationality has not yet been fully realized, circumstances characterized by what Marx calls "self-estrangement," thinking and acting will be to some degree irrational. Keynes makes use of a particular theory of irratiionality - psychoanalyis - as a foundation for understanding the particular kind of irrationality he claims dominates in capitalism. This kind of irrationality can't be represented by game theory.
Says who? And why should a particular mathematical theory, a particular deductive syllogism, be apt to model this or that kind of irrationality for it to receive one's stamp of approval as a valid instrument of cognition? Keynes used math and deductive logic. And so did Marx. Didn't they?
Even rational action within a context where most individuals are irrational in Keynes's sense can't, he claims, employ anything like game theory.
I'm curious. Where exactly did Keynes explicitly make such categorical claims against game theory? If Keynes studied game theory, it must have been in a rush, in the busy last two years of his life. Von Neumman and Morgestern's book was out in 1944, before basic notions of modern game theory had been developed.
One reason is the limitation placed on the use of axiomatic (including mathematical) reasoning by "internal relations," a point Keynes makes in rejecting Edgeworth's attempt to elaborate economics as "mathematical psychics." Keynes's economics allows for such action in the form of rational "speculation" in financial markets.
IMHO, dynamic systems, statistics, and game theory provide the sharpest and most economical framework for people (e.g. young people) to grasp what Keynes' is really up to in chapter 12 of his General Theory. In human anatomy lies the key to understanding the anatomy of apes.
