PEN-L message, Re: [Pen-l] economic supremacy [was: The Audacity of Data]

Greetings Economists,

On Mar 5, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Jim Devine wrote:

This
arrogance is part of the "queen of the social sciences" crap (the
ideology of economics supremacy) or economics imperialism.

Doyle,

Briefly, crap stands in for disgust. Which is defined by Nussbaum as a barrier feeling. One puts up a no go feeling toward things that have crap. I'm pointing this out in regard to how we use 'emotions' to define verbal or word concepts. I cite Nussbaum as a source because she says in terms of the legal system that 'disgust' should be outlawed from influence upon legal judgement.

Following that I sometimes spy 'disgust' in arguments to say unreachable boundary. So for example Julio and you have a boundary issue about disgusting types of theory.

Lets be a bit more in depth. Theory is word laden thinking. Where language connects people. So it's a particular cognitive mode of thinking, where I mean we are talking some specific brain areas interacting to produce thinking results like a theory. Math has been recently postulated or theorized to be a distinct cognitive pathway structure in thinking processes of humans. See - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_holt

If these areas, emotion, words, math are distinct paths of thinking, then I would caution against saying there is a definite boundary called disgust in words. This is a problem of historical guesses at what we do when we talk, and feel. The rationalists of course will say discourse ought not to be subjective. Which is not what I am getting at. Rather however much it makes sense to say you feel disgust about the crap in economics the rules of how feelings and word bind our actions is not realistically being met by that statement.

The left used the concept of dialectics to manage this problem. Or transformation from one state to another. Words don't realistically convey emotional boundaries, but we don't allow emotional boundaries to halt transformation either.

On Mar 5, 2008, at 9:48 AM, Julio Huato wrote:

I know where this argument leads. Nowhere. You can type faster than
I can think. I just wanted possible young readers to know that
there's a different way to look at these things. That's all.

Doyle;

You can't cite transformation then say this. The difficulty on lists is not appealing to young people but finding the way together. Jim and you don't propose how to resolve disconnect, or contradiction. Which while not realistic to expect on my part is where the tension lies. Not disagreement.

Thanks,

Doyle Saylor