The Fact/Value Dichotomy in Economics

Convenor: Catarina Tello de Castro and Julian Reiss

All inquiries about the panel should be sent to
catarinatellodecastro AT gmail.com and julian.reiss AT jku.at.

 

Participants in this panel will include Julian Reiss.

 

Website: https://12bragameetings.weebly.com

Panel link: https://12bragameetings.weebly.com/panel-15---the-factvalue-dichotomy-in-economics.html 

 

Much of modern economics follows the scientific method to have a grip on human conduct so that useful predictions are possible. This way, economics as a discipline distanced itself from moral philosophy as it was firstly thought by Adam Smith. Nevertheless, this presumption of objectiveness has been accused of being very little objective, separating economics into normative and positive economics as well as originating the fact-value dichotomy. These distinctions are now being disputed by the proposal of an entanglement of both facts and values (Putnam, 2002; Dasgupta, 2005; Kincaid, Dupré, & Wylie, 2007; Reiss, 2008; Putnam & Walsh, 2011; Hausman, McPherson & Satz, 2017, et al.). As so, it is possible to think about ways of doing economics with moral, ethical or any other normative criteria.

 

This panel seeks to promote an interesting debate between any scholar or student (undergraduates included). We welcome works on subjects such as value theory, normative economics, positive economics, economic transformations in contemporary times, rational choice and utility maximization, scientific method on economic theories, and others regarding the main areas and topics proposed.

 

If you want to apply, please submit an abstract, of 400-500 words along with five keywords, of your paper prepared for peer review by 5 April 2022. We will respond by 28 April 2022. All proposals must be submitted online through our website using the Abstract submission Form (please, click “Submit Abstract” and fill the form).

12th Braga Meetings on Ethics and Political Philosophy

Prof. Dr. Julian Reiss, lic. oec. HSG
Institute for Philosophy and Scientific Method

JOHANNES KEPLER
UNIVERSITY LINZ
Altenberger Straße 69
4040 Linz, Austria
Phone +43 732 2468-3681

julian.reiss AT jku.at
www.jreiss.org

Administrator: Evelin Stockinger
T +43 732 2468-3680
philo AT jku.at

My source and in liaison with the panel convenors:

Philos-L "The Liverpool List" - Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/

Sticking with 'nudge' - behaviour and economics ...

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psychological realism cognition

neoclassical model "The most well-known critique of behavioural economics comes from a psychologist, Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Gigerenzer argues that it is pointless to keep adding frills to a mathematical account of human behaviour that, in the end, has nothing to do with real cognitive processes. ... He [Laibson] concedes that Gigerenzer has a point but adds: 'Gerd's models of heuristic decision-making are great in the specific domains for which they are designed but they are not general models of behaviour.'" "There is a tendency to propose some new theory to explain each new fact. The world doesn't need a thousand different theories to explain a thousand different facts. At some point there needs to be a discipline of trying to explain many facts with one theory." [David K Levine, Is Behavioural Economics Doomed?, 2012]

social proof Source: Financial Times

behavioural  economics "The challenge for behavioural economics is to elaborate on the neoclassical model to deliver psychological realism without collapsing into a mess of special cases. Some say that the most successful special case comes from Harvard's David Laibson. It is a mathematical tweak designed to represent the particular brand of short-termism that leads us to sign up for the gym yet somehow never quite get around to exercising. It's called "hyperbolic discounting", a name that refers to a mathematical curve, and which says much about the way behavioural economists represent human psychology."

Harford, T. (2014) Nudge or fudge? Life&Arts, Financial Times, 22-23 March. pp.1-2.

Clearly indoors, clearing papers ...

Science and Critical Thinking: c/o New Scientist 2015*

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4. "That works for some, but all too often the reaction is: "I'll never need to use this once I've left school. That is being taken up by the Programme for International Student Assessment." "critical thinking toolkits"

3. "... the desired combination of scientific literacy and critical thinking remains rare in public discourse. Perhaps that is because we hope that children will learn to evaluate claims rationally if we teach them science. ... But mastery of the [scientific] facts alone is not enough for the internet age. Much of the copious online rhetoric is more viral than factual, so it is just as important that we know how to evaluate sources of information., and how to tell correlation from causation, and opinion from fact - in matters both obviously scientific and otherwise. "

1. "Here's a game to play next time you catch the news headlines. Count how many would dissolve away or be markedly different if the people writing them had evaluated the evidence more critically. Your count will probably be alarmingly high." 5. "But our societies still have a long way to go when it comes to reading between the headlines - or rewriting them."

2. "We have a long tradition of allowing civic affairs to be settled by persuasive rhetoric. That is inadequate for our modern society." "a reflective citizen" public understanding of  terrorism, vaccination, climate change, chemical pollution ..

PISA is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.

My source:
Leader, Critical thinking, New Scientist, 12 December. 2015, 228: 3051. p.5.

*Yes, still also sorting magazines, papers, notes...
Blue (paper) bin repeatedly quite full.

Happy New Year: Nostradamus c/o Al Stewart

"A Man for All Seasons" ...
"A Woman ... and other gender identities ..."
"A Child ..."
"A model ..."

"A model for Past, Present, Future"

A series of Frames - Janus-like view:

Pre-morbid, Diagnosis, Prognosis ...

Clinical and Case -
Assessment
Planning
Formulation
Evaluation
Engagement

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Nostradamus - Al Stewart
From the Album: Past, Present, Future

Critique Issue 6: The Wartime Quartet Special Issue, 2019

(Elizabeth Anscombe Iris Murdoch Mary Midgley Philippa Foot)

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Elizabeth Anscombe Iris Murdoch Mary Midgley Philippa Foot	Time
Voices -	Wartime

In June 2019, Durham University Philosophy Society’s journal, Critique, will publish a special edition on the Wartime Quartet – Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Philippa Foot – all of whom were peers and friends at Oxford during the Second World War, going on to become extraordinary philosophers in their own right. Midgley records in her memoir that when the men left for the war, the Quartet were free from the conventions of traditionally male-dominated philosophy. She attributed the Quartet members’ later success to this sudden amplification of their voices.

The members of the Quartet continued to associate, work, and live together long after their undergraduate years. In the thanks, dedications and references of each member’s work you are certain to find the other members too!

2019 will mark the centenary of the group and sees a series of lectures on the Quartet delivered at the Royal Institute of Philosophy – these can be viewed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEQRhXQwUe-1ZKIJmnBvHsw

In consideration of this, the theme for this edition of Critique is the Wartime Quartet. [Up to 26th of May 2019] submissions were sought based on a range of topics on the Quartet, including, but not limited to:

• The work of individual members of the Quartet (e.g. the relevance of Anscombe’s critiques of ‘modern moral philosophy’). 
• The relations between the Quartet’s work (e.g. their shared rejections of the separation between fact and value). 
• The ways in which the Quartet’s work manifests in contemporary moral philosophy, and lasting effects that the Quartet’s scholarship had on the discipline.

This edition of Critique is particularly poignant due to the recent passing of Mary Midgley and will be dedicated in her memory.

Durham is one of the institutional homes of the In Parenthesis project which has a vibrant community of student researchers and interns. For more information see www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk

If you have any questions about the submission process, please feel to get in touch by emailing us at du.critique AT gmail.com or its editor, Sebastián Sánchez-Schilling, at sebastian.a.sanchez-schilling AT durham.ac.uk

n.b. With some editing as submission closed. PJ

My source:
Philos-L "The Liverpool List"
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l
https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL
@PhilosL
@LiverpoolPhilos

Common Sense..? c/o Santayana

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"Santayana departs from the British school, however, in insisting that a common sense philosophy cannot itself be adequately defended by common sense." p.63.	common sense ?
common sense ?	common sense ?

O'Sullivan, N. (1992) Santayana. St Albans: The Claridge Press.

Conference: The Foundations of Conceptual Engineering

A conference on The Foundations of Conceptual Engineering at NYU, on Sept 14 and 15, 2018. To attend, please register by following this link no later than August 31, 2018.

One dimension of cognitive success is getting it right, i.e gaining knowledge of facts. Another dimension of cognitive success is using the right concept, i.e. framing a topic in the right way. This view, if correct, tasks inquirers with critically examining the concepts they are using and perhaps replacing those concepts with new and better ones. This task is often known as “conceptual engineering”.

The idea that conceptual engineering is an important task for inquirers in and outside philosophy has recently gained traction. Some philosophers think conceptual engineering is an important task for inquirers to pursue.  The conference is focused on foundational issues in connection with conceptual engineering. Topics to be addressed include the following:

• What are the semantic mechanisms that underlie conceptual engineering?
• What are concepts, and which role (if any) do they play in conceptual engineering?
• How can a theory of conceptual engineering be integrated with large-scale semantic theories? 
• Which precise changes does a language undergo when its speakers engineer concepts?
• Is conceptual engineering something that speakers can ever purposefully bring about?
• What is the relation between changing concepts and changing reality? 

The planned conference will focus especially on the semantic foundations of conceptual engineering and push towards a better understanding of the process.

The conference is organized collaboratively by members of NYU (Vera Flocke and David Chalmers) and members of the research project ConceptLab, located at the University of Oslo (Herman Cappelen and Andrew Peet).

 More...

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If this conference needs a workshop, a workbench, or conceptual engineering facility they might care to look at Hodges' model. Whether for conceptual brainstorming, requirements, prototyping, refactoring, combination ... Hodges' model can have a role. Some musings in this vein follow...

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One dimension of cognitive success is getting it right,
i.e gaining knowledge of facts.
Another dimension of cognitive success is using the right concept,
 i.e. framing a topic in the right way.

Acceptable to the patient (or advocate) and ethical? Achieving concordance - agreed  relevant to the context, issue, problem? Logical consistency, coherence and permanence? Holistic bandwidth is tested - semantic scope? Conceptual Engineering instantiated in software, argumentation? AI? Conceptual Spaces? Topic is person-centred  (patient, student, carer...) Testing: Concepts with positive :: negative are switched - re-framed?  Other dichotomies? Conceptual slide-rule? Known 'semantic drift' in vocabulary - concepts: disuse, archaic, new, re-purposed?

Assessment is comprehensive? Knowledge of 'conceptual engineering'  how to - rules, laws (mechanisms)? Concepts were measurable (as were previously defined) quantifiable? Flagged interdisciplinary use of concept? Transdisciplinary? Visual tools - representation, diagrams? Reversible quality: 'engineering' disassembly? Conceptual dependency on threshold(s)? Engineering concepts:  tolerance, project, professionalism, failure, risk, benefits, techne? 'Conceptual engineering' defined units & standards: word, words ... corpora? Research methodologies, methods? Literature

Available social sources were utilised, or at least pursued? Narrative derived from concepts references life history (story)? Tested and accepted by peers - multidisciplinary team? Inclusive? Quality criteria were met Cultural, ethnic due regard  met

legal? concepts used were appropriate  to outcome(s)? 'Space' for uncertainty, constraints, unwise decisions? Policy influence on language, examples found in health and social care 2008-2018 austerity? Accords with and assures the Sustainability Development Goals? 'Macro conceptual engineering' -  Level of required change in health systems:  new & existing

Inner model II: Hodges' model - helping to locate Social Sciences...

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A scheme for analysing assumptions about the nature of the social sciences, The subjective-objective dimension The Subjectivist The Objectivist Nominalism ontology Realism Anti-positivism epistemology Positivism Voluntarism human nature Determinism Ideographic methodology Nomothetic

Burrell, G., and Morgan, G. Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis. London: Heinemann, p.3.

My source: Table 1.1 A scheme for analysing assumptions about the nature of the social sciences, The subjective-objective dimension, Tudor, K. (1996). Mental Health Promotion, Paradigms and practice, London: Routledge, p.30.

Related link: http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/org_theory/Scott_articles/burrell_morgan.html

A Spin on Logic, Belief, Facts & Truth

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Doxastic Logic Individual Belief	Post-truth (time) Short : Long term Statistics Facts Proton Spin Mystery
The public The crowd The people The public - the politicians deserve	Post-truth (politics) Alternative-Facts Fake news False promises True Spin The politicians - the public deserve

My original source:
Simon Kuper, (2017). The age of broken promises, FT, Magazine, 28/29 January, p.5.

Hodges' model: Context in a Structure [Constructivism & Constructivists]

"First, we know that human memory for isolated facts is very limited. Knowledge is retained only when embedded in some organising structure. Thus, students who learn many separate facts are unlikely to retain their knowledge beyond the current period of test-taking - a much noticed, worrisome feature of the current educational system. Second, we now recognise that skills and knowledge are not independent of the contexts - mental, physical, and social - in which they are used. Instead, they are attuned to, even part of, the environments in which they are practised. A new challenge for instruction is to develop ways organising learning that permit skills to be practised in the environments in which they will be used (i.e. outside the classroom). Such contextualised practice is needed both to tune skills and knowledge to their environments of use and to provide motivation for practising abilities that in isolation might seem pointless or meaningless." p.22

Resnick, L. (ed.) (1989). Knowing, Learning and Instruction. Pittsburgh: Laurence Erlbaum Associates. p.3.

From: Abbott, J. and Ryan, T. (2000) The Unfinished Revolution: Learning, Human Behaviour, Community and Political Paradox. Stafford: Network. p.22.

Care for the ear - Svetlana Alexievich

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"Flaubert called himself a human pen;  I would say that I am a human ear." "I am drawn to that small space called  a human being . . . a single individual."
	"It always troubled me that the truth  doesn't fit into  one heart,  into one mind,  that truth is somehow splintered.  There's a lot of it, it is varied,  and it is  strewn about the world."

Alexievich, S. (2015) 'Speak with a human voice', Life & Arts, FT Weekend, December 19-20. pp.1-2.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015 Svetlana Alexievich

Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Big Utopia

Hodges' model: Across the Humanities and Sciences Respond - React

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...to respond   is to let relationship  predominate.	To react is to let the facts   predominate;

Source:
Tillmanns, Maria daVenza, (2015) The Need To Move Beyond Homo Faber, Philosophy Now, February/March. 106: p.14.