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Post-Autistic Economics Network
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Student Essays on Post-Autistic Economics posted April 2003 Focusing on Methodology Abstract
If economics wants a secure basis — corresponding to its
relevance for human life — it must avoid the pitfalls of traditional
methodology, caused by the latter's unthinking conceptual self-limitation. A
non-compromised approach is proposed which offers the required features, and
one of its results is discussed: a natural law in economics — which moreover
is constitutive for any form of economy.
The Problem
Our 'mental spectacles' (categories of thinking) determine
how we perceive. Asking, for example, chemists about the mind, life, or the
economy, evokes answers in terms of chemistry, whose truth-value can't be
decided within chemistry alone. Whatever we approach requires clarifying
first the adequacy of our categories. We can distinguish things; hence there must be some order
in the universe. How do we grasp it?
Modern methodology covers appearances, but not the overall laws whereby things appear and disappear. 'Wars of
belief' (between paradigms) replaced 'wars of religion'. We must grasp completely our conceptual setup. Human life requires producing and consuming. Thinking
about it organizes the material means. We solve
problems when acknowledging that our 'mental background' determines the
material disposition. Today the majoritarian postulate is: be empirical! —
forgetting that the categorical criteria for handling empirical data can't be
found in data, because data are collected according
to them. The category for handling economic dynamics first was
'thing in exchange', associating 'value'; so flow appeared as aggregation of
valued things. Since value looks different depending on the perspective,
aggregating an nt's valuating decisions gradually replaced this approach. But
adding up aspects never yields the law of the whole — needed in times of
globalization. This corresponds to quantum theory and molecular biology
trying to predict big aggregates from laws of 'elements': a zealous but
categorically unwise procedure, attracting imaginations like 'emergent'
phenomena, ending up with 'measurement problem' and fuzzy paradoxes, but
never in unambiguous clarity. It enables only probabilistic formulations of the overall order. Fragmentized thinking is no exception today, but rather
the rule, and starts at its root. Mainstream philosophy follows the
'linguistic turn' ('thinking is structured linguistically'). It sees objects
'from outside' (believing exteriority warrants objectivity), debates their
properties and believes their real way of being is unknowable. Such attempts,
brought to their ultimate consequence, inevitably end up in aporia,
incompleteness, paradox, etc. They can't completely decide on their own
validity (see Finsler, Gödel, Church etc.) and can't allow to find a strictly universal law of nature (egg.
entropy or gravitation concern only matter). The methodological quest of economics (egg. Blaug [1980],
Lawson [1997], Backhouse [1994]) did not transcend this situation. "The
methodology of economics is to be understood simply as philosophy of science
applied to economics" (Blaug [1980:xi]). Even Bunge [1998], discussing
social science in general, remains in the mainstream, envisaging only a
"checking of propositions" [1998:11]. He realizes the self-limitation
of this procedure, but does not seek the decisive clarification. This is
today's state of the art. Results are egg. wanting to elevate context-dependent
connexes (e. g. Kondratieff cycles) to the status of laws, or worrying about
costs (of production, opportunity, transaction, etc.) incumbent upon agents,
but not whether overall cost outruns overall benefit (Daly [2001], Rees
[2002]). Today's theories can't grasp strictly the whole while growth in GNP
is equated with health of the economy, aggravating the problem. Models such
as supply and demand, or marginal benefit, or production function and
marginal productivity, are certainly correct in many situations. But not
every useful scientific idea is a universal
law of nature — while in economics it has not yet got about that strictly explaining phenomena means tracing them back to universal laws.
Even meticulous mathematical description is not explanation; mathematics is
only a (fully formalized) language. Moreover, merely describing 'what-is' is poor
science; it becomes complete only when understanding 'what-is' in the overall connex. We can formulate
any contradiction, from "straight is curved", "3+5=9" and
"I am lying" ('liar paradox') to voluntary deception, within languages — but impossibly think it in one coherent thought. Any supposition that entails antinomies
compels — for keeping opposites together — to remain in a set of elements (signs), intrinsically
interrelated according to the content of the basic inconsistency. Such
suppositions addict to the
principle of language, for surviving disunity. This dependency does not
concern only individuals, but also philosophical and scientific positions,
styles of writers, politicians, etc.: knowing it sheds new light on prolific
writers, 'publish or perish', methodology's disintegration into '-isms',
etc.. Fortunately thinking is not limited by other's habits. Our
query is: What categorical basis allows
a secure approach of connexes as a whole — including economic process
dynamics? Secure Holism
Recently a door-opening approach was presented (Schaerer
[2002]). Instead of setting out on a linguistic element (axiom, concept,
proposition, etc.), it relies on experiencing the law of nature which
regulates ultimately all mental processes: any query, pursued to the end of its content, polarizes the
conceptual space required for understanding fully the query's content. History offers countless examples: Aristotle querying the
principle of change, finding 'form' versus 'matter' as relevant categories ('what changes' versus 'what
allows change'); Kant querying cognition,
finding 'perception' versus 'thinking'; Saussure querying the
principle of signs, finding 'the signified' versus 'the signifier'; etc.. Such categories
are never appearances, but of heuristic
value, i.e. useful for guiding observation. While 'A' formally defines 'non-A', strictly covering totality,
knowing the content of A and non-A requires investigation. For considering the ultimate consequences of assumptions and
queries, everyday life is usually a hindrance, mixing up query vectors and
perspectives. And we are trained to analyze, decompose, dissect. So we 'see'
only specimens: flowers or seeds,
hens or eggs, mind or body, wave or particle, agent or
value, etc. — and are compelled to wonder how our bits and pieces can fit
together again. But if we view processes as
a whole, instead of 'objects' severed from their context, we can 'see'
the principle of structures in their complete
existential cycle. For processuality,
Aristotle's 'form' versus 'matter'
is useful. Investigating them is of the same type as querying processuality
itself: unfolding the conceptual space out of the content of the query. Equilibrated unfolding of content is
the principle of the proposed approach. In a first step the question is thus: What is the 'form' aspect of the 'form', and what is its 'matter'
aspect? The 'form' aspect is understandable in the polarity of the order in the process and what enforces this order: its 'law-of-the-thing-itself' aspect ('way
of being', 'complex of laws of nature') versus its 'force' aspect (what makes it evolve, concretely manifesting
itself). A second step queries the principle of 'matter' in its own intrinsic dynamism of being modifiable. It leads to a
polarity whereby any thing / process can be thrust into disequilibria,
exposing a disequilibriability of force
structures ('form' aspect of 'matter'), versus the basic equilibrium of all forces in the respective force structure ('matter'
aspect of 'matter', allowing all possible change by dint of this foundational
equilibrium). — In an illustration:
This approach makes perspectivity and universal grasp totally compatible. Mainstream
methodology can't achieve this since it attached itself to the principle of
language rather than fully non-compromised thinking. No 'scientifically'
objective approach (looking only 'from outside') can survive complete
self-reference. The proposed conceptualization is valid for all structures, from particles to
viruses to human identity to mathematical formulae; the distinction between
life and non-life requires additional
criteria. The law of nature for instance of poultry is then not being sought in hen or egg, but found in
hen and egg and rooster etc., including all their drives and moves — like a
particle is not wave or corpuscle,
but wave aspect and corpuscular
aspect, and the economic process is not defined by agent or value, skill or
capital, etc., but by agent and
value, skill and capital.
Situations of 'either-or' don't arise from reality, but from conceptual
discontinuities (egg. imposing quantification).
In economics the 'Hilbert-Bourbaki' branch (McCloskey [2002]) 'discovered'
complementarity, not noticing it is taken in by self-fulfilling prophecies. Our tetradic categorization reveals the 'enveloping' order
(complementary to science's 'segmental' laws), which is totally reliable because
it determines also the principle
of what is relevant (in processuality: laws and forces). Hence in
this case effects are not dependent
on the kind of forces associated
with the set of conjugated laws. In
this complete perspective there is thus no need to know empirically on which
path the content of the query (in processuality: the structures of laws and
forces) becomes manifest. If egg. an economic system forces nature and humans
into disequilibria, the complete view has no need to know whether effects
become manifest in conscious reactions
(theoretical and practical improvements in economics and the economy), half-conscious movements (innovations,
elusive moves of the firms or consumers, or strikes, revolts and
revolutions), or fully unconscious
events (diseases, nature dying away, etc.). The inevitability of a
counter-movement is accessible as
certainty. Merely the paths of
the effects will vary, depending on the participant's awareness. Such tetrads
are useful also for analyzing economic subsystems.
— In an illustration:
Other queries lead to other tetrads. Processuality shows
the precise role of equilibria in
neoclassic-neoliberal theory which it cannot secure in a systematically
complete way. The Law of
Nature Governing Economics
Most economists say their discipline can't be determined
by any law of nature, their topic being completely man-made and thus subject
to freedom. But this view is naive, because simultaneously the dependency on
nature follows laws of nature (whence economics takes its blackmail
potential) — and should thus be understood as such. For any economy to arise, nature must be taken up by
humans. Nature (resources) is one half; the human act of picking up and
setting into value is the other. Both
are required for getting going an economy. The initial act carries
materially the whole economic process
— but escaped adequate attention in economics because this embodies an
'essentialist' and fully processual sort of law that must fall through the
meshes of empiricist's expectations. Having an 'intuitive' hunch of this law suffices
for brachial initiatives, as 'Realpolitik'
shows. This strictly
necessary condition is an act
(no 'thing'), which humans must perform — and no 'physiocracy' (whereby
nature provides basic value). Theorists now declare proudly 'the age of
digging in the earth for setting up economies is over'. But even the most
enlightened and industrialized economy is totally
dependent: however efficient energy collectors, fertile greenhouses,
sophisticated manufacturing techniques / services etc. it may boast, everything
is materializable only once the necessary condition is fulfilled. The societal result
of the primal act can be considered a value
— a real value, preliminary to any
monetary system, and the fundamental
form of capital ('what allows future action'). Usual values — property,
capital, interest, labour, etc. — are secondary,
a juxtaposed layer of imaginary values. This condition is also strictly
sufficient: it allows any economy to operate fully — from feeding, clothing, and housing through production,
distribution (including monetary systems), use, communal services, to waste
disposal. Depending on their insight, economists induce conditions — tedious
toil or satisfying occupation. Concerning distribution and re-distribution,
understanding real value avoids initial
inappropriate allocation. Today's discourse reveals some awareness of the dependency
by discussing "scarce resources", but misses the point in the
problem of hierarchy, shifting the attention to secondary aspects. Resources being
'scarce' is not as primordial as resources being available within nature's organization. Imagine living on a
barren rock! Whether an economy is subsistence toil or high-tech,
involves money or not, is capitalist or socialist, is irrelevant: this law governs all economies. It is
valid even in a universe of purely mental matter, in mental economy: the necessity to produce first a set of mental
representations for future cognition, a language, is of the same order:
re-cognizing signs enables organizing the ever-new process of cognizing. All this is not in contradiction with today's notions of
egg. capital or labour. It merely posits such elements in a systematically
more coherent conceptual structure, offering a degree of completeness which
today's dominating theory cannot afford. Conclusions
Thinking within adequate categories enables a
transdisciplinary and completely
holistic approach, fulfilling the strictest
methodological requirements. Its 'enveloping' order complements today's theoretical positions and results and integrates the different scientific
points of view, from natural to social science and the humanities. Literature
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