am up against some very tight deadlines (and have not even had bank holiday time off). what better time to reread the "Critique of Pure Reason" and follow up with some references I promised to send people on philosophy of science in economics. An excerpt from the opening page follows.
"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of knowledge be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our power of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of sense impressions into a knowledge of objects which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it"
"But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that it all arises out of experience. ....... It, is therefore a question which requires close investigation whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sense impressions. Knowledge of this kind is called apriori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its source, a posteriori, that is, in experience".
A few people were asking for references to philosophy of science and economics. Standard references to Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, Feyerabend etc., can be found anywhere so i wont give biblio's.
Redman's book is below which is extremely well regarded and worth reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Philosophy-Science-Deborah-Redman/dp/0195082745
Arjo Klamer has written a number of works. A sample article from his site is below
http://www.klamer.nl/docs/making_sense_JEM.pdf
His book "Conversations with Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current Controversy in Macroeconomics" is really worth reading.
Deirdre McCloskey's work (including recent book) is well known and a google search will work for this. Similarly Mark Blaug's work on "how economists explain" should be read by everyone.
The Journal of Economic Methodology and the Journal of Economic Philosophy are two other outlets to scan.
Some nice references in the paper below
http://www.philoek.uni-muenchen.de/luetge/Luetge-Synthese.pdf
Societies like Heterodox Economics, Post-Austistic Economics etc., also include a lot of philosophy of science work on their programmes.
As usual for those annoyed at me for leaving lots of things out, that's what the comments are for!
6 comments:
Is there really something called "Post Autistic Economics"? I hope not since it trivializes a very serious and debilitating condition.And I don't mean being an economist.
http://www.paecon.net/
translated from french i would think and not referring to the actual condition.
actually, your point is mentioned in the pae wiki entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics
I had that Immanuel Kant in the back of the cab once.
And don't forget the Austrians:
http://mises.org/
An entire school of economics built on a priori thinking (and maybe getting it right in relation to explaining our current global financial shambles).
It is always pleasant to see a reference to earlier work. If you really want to see what it all led to I would like to refer you to my most recent book Speaking of economics. (see http://speakingofeconomics.com)
I argue here that some criticism of economics is the consequence of one's metaperspective. Change that perspective and economics will look differently to you. Then again, think of economics as a conversation, or a bunch of conversations and you may change your economics.
Arjo Klamer
Professor of cultural economics at the Erasmus university and dean of Academia vitae
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