This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

Social thinkers frequently remind us that people differ in their views on what constitutes personal well-being, but that even when they don't differ, they disagree over the extent to which one person's well-being can be permitted to be traded off against another's. In this paper I show, by offering an account of the development of development economics, that in professional debates on social policy, economists speak or write as though they agree on values but differ on their reading of facts. (...) A number of ethicists have concluded from this near-exclusive interest in facts that modern economics must be an ethical desert. It is shown here that the reason research economists analyze facts rather than values is that modern economics is built on broad ethical foundations, capable of being reduced as special cases to the various ethical theories that are currently on offer. Ethics has taken a back seat in modern economics not because contemporary economists are wedded to a “value-free” enterprise, but because the ethical foundations of the subject were constructed over five decades ago and are now regarded to be a settled matter. (shrink)

Social thinkers frequently remind us that people differ on what constitutes personal well-being, but that even when they don't differ, they disagree over the extent to which one person's well-being can be permitted to be traded off against another's. They tell us that political differences are to be traced to differences in people's conceptions of personal and social well-being. We are given to understand, in other words, that people's ethics differ.

(2013). The systemic failure of economic methodologists. Journal of Economic Methodology: Vol. 20, Methodology, Systemic Risk, and the Economics Profession, pp. 56-68. doi: 10.1080/1350178X.2013.774848.

This book brings together key players in the current debate on positive and normative science and philosophy and value judgements in economics. Both editors have engaged in these debates throughout their careers from its early foundations; Putnam as a doctorial student of Hans Reichenbach at UCLA and Walsh a junior member of Lord Robbinsâe(tm)s department at the London School of Economics, both in the early 1950s. This book collects recent contributions from Martha Nussbaum and Harvey Gram, as well as a (...) new chapter from the editors. (shrink)

Myrdal described this book as a discussion of three key notions in economic theory: the ideas of value, freedom, and collective house-keeping. It is through these concepts, he charged, that political ideology has been intro-duced into economic theory. This volume continues to be relevant in its emphasis on the problem of objectivity in the social sciences.

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

The present note will be concerned only with Sir Partha Dasgupta's recent article in this journal (Dasgupta 2005). What is more, it will concentrate on those parts of the article which contain a serious misreading of Hilary Putnam's position on the entanglement of facts, theories and values. These philosophical matters can perhaps be clarified for economist readers (they should require no clarification for philosophers) by considering, to begin with, Dasgupta's interpretation of the Bergson–Samuelson position. What (Bergson) Burk (1938) and Samuelson (...) (1947) were doing, according to Dasgupta, was to establish ‘the ethical foundations of the subject. . .over five decades ago’ (Dasgupta 2005: 221–2).2 Thus a major theme of the article is heard at once: economics is supposedly based on sound ethical foundations, and these can be traced (it is supposed) to specific work written long ago, and hence needing no augmentation. These ethical foundations, it is claimed, ‘are now regarded to be a settled matter’ (2005: 222). (shrink)

In Science as Social Knowledge, Helen Longino offers a contextual analysis of evidential relevance. She claims that this "contextual empiricism" reconciles the objectivity of science with the claim that science is socially constructed. I argue that while her account does offer key insights into the role that values play in science, her claim that science is nonetheless objective is problematic.

This book is an examination of the nature of economic explanation. The opening chapters introduce current thinking in the philosophy of science and review the literature on methodology. Professor Blaug then turns to the troublesome question of the logical status of welfare economics, giving the reader an understanding of the outstanding issues in the methodology of economics. This is followed by a series of case studies of leading economic controversies, which shows how controversies in economics may be illuminated by paying (...) attention to questions of methodology. A final chapter draws the strands together and gives the author's view of what is wrong with modern economics. This book is a revised and updated edition of a classic work on the methodology of economics, in which Professor Blaug develops his discussion of the latest developments in macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory and international trade theory. A new section on the rationality postulate is also added. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

Ethics and jurisprudence are liable to the remark in common with logic. Almost every writer having taken a different view of some of the particulars which ...

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the structure, strategy and methods of assessment of orthodox theoretical economics. In Part I Professor Hausman explains how economists theorise, emphasising the essential underlying commitment of economists to a vision of economics as a separate science. In Part II he defends the view that the basic axioms of economics are 'inexact' since they deal only with the 'major' causes; unlike most writers on economic methodology, the author argues that it is the rules that (...) economists espouse rather than their practice that is at fault. Part III links the conception of economics as a separate science to the fact that economic theories offer reasons and justifications for human actions, not just their causes. With its lengthy appendix introducing relevant issues in philosophy of science, this book is a major addition to philosophy of economics and of social science. (shrink)

The debate about the rational and the social in science has sometimes been developed in the context of a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values. Paying particular attention to two important discussion in the last decade, by Longino and by McMullin, I argue that a fuller understanding of values in science ultimately requires abandoning the distinction itself. This is argued directly in terms of an analysis of the lack of clarity concerning what epistemic values are. I also argue that the (...) philosophical import of much of the feminist work in philosophy of science is restricted by any kind of strict adherence to the distinction. (shrink)