Norman Kemp Smith in his article „The Naturalism of Hume“ formulated standard naturalistic interpretation David Hume’s philosophical project. According to Kemp Smith, the idea of ​​Hume as a skeptic is unsustainable. The first book of A Treatise of Human Nature should be understood as an introduction to the new naturalistic philosophy. However, such approach does not deny the presence of elements of skepticism and empiricism in Hume ‚s philosophy. Hume’s political theory can be viewed as either continuation or empirical confirmation (...) of his philosophy. His skepticism is expressed in his distrust of the rationalistic doctrines and by his unwillingness to adhere to political parties. Elements of empiricism are evident in his observation of human behavior in the present and also in the past. Skepticism and empiricism are an integral part of his naturalistic explanation in political philosophy. He introduced a political theory based upon the scientific methodology, which could be an inspiration for contemporary research in political science. (shrink)

Adam Smith rejected Mandeville's invisible-hand doctrine of 'private vices, publick benefits'. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments his model of the 'impartial spectator' is driven not by sympathy for other people, but by their approbation. The innate capacity for sympathy makes approbation credible. Approbation needs to be authenticated, and in Smith's model authentication relies on innate virtue, which is not realistic. An alternative model of 'regard' makes use of signalling and is more pragmatic. Modern versions of the invisible hand in (...) rational choice theory and neo- liberalism are shown to be radical departures from the ethical legacy of Enlightenment and utilitarian economics, and are not consistent with Adam Smith's own position. (shrink)

There is a substantial class of collective decision problems whose successful solution requires interdependence among decision makers at the agenda-setting stage and independence at the stage of choice. We define this class of problems and describe and apply a search-and-decision mechanism theoretically modeled in the context of honeybees and identified in earlier empirical work in biology. The honeybees’ mechanism has useful implications for mechanism design in human institutions, including courts, legislatures, executive appointments, research and development in firms, and basic research (...) in the sciences. Our paper offers a fresh perspective on the idea of “biomimicry” in institutional design and raises the possibility of comparative institutional analysis across species. (shrink)

More than a matter confined to Mandevillean thought, the discourse on the relationship between imagination and sensibility is a significant theoretical framework of eighteenth-century philosophical thought. Sensibility and imagination appear in Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees as antithetical concepts, because they are fully articulated according to a natural and deterministic criterion of the expression of passions. Such a materialist understanding of the passions places a premium upon the proximity of stimulus and accordingly problematizes the responsive role of imagination. (...) I intend to show in this paper that the primacy of expression takes place, at first instance, regarding the imagination, which, as we can detect in all Mandeville's oeuvre, is well exemplified by the mimetic function that art itself earns. (shrink)

The culture-economy dialectic (CED) – the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy – is one of the most important ideas in the modern history of ideas. Both disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. For that reason, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED is needed to improve understanding of the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural (...) influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This thesis is an attempt to do just that. The concepts of “culture” and “economy” (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relations therebetween are compared and analyzed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarized and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to verify (empirically). There appears to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such as individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot be falsified (or verified) by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this thesis, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in – and a more anarchist approach to – social science. (shrink)