reality and interpretation

["Alan G. Isaac" <AISAAC@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I find the line of thought Kevin is following here quite
promising, but it is still largely promises. Stated so
abstractly, it seems to favor the influence of our
interpretations over the realist constraints. This is
one place that I'd have to favor
attending the the biological constraints on the
feasible equilibria. (If I understand Greg Ransom, this
is one of the benefits he sees in a Hayekian perspective.)

Nevertheless, it seems true that i. interpretations as models
of reality are fundamentally underidentified and ii. they
influence our approach to and interactions with that
reality. This definitely suggests the possibility of
mulitple equilibria. (And not just in social science:
it is conceivable that alternative theories in
physical science could provide equally powerful
interpretations of the underlying reality.)

--Alan G. Isaac

On Tue, 25 Apr 1995 08:08:18 -0600 Kevin Quinn said:
>I've been thinking about the implications of a hermeneutical
>approach a la Charles Taylor for economics. In "Social Science as
>Practice" Taylor says social scientists *articulate our practices*. This is
>both a creation and a discovery; articulation partially shapes what it is
>an articulation of, but there is nevertheless something "out there" to be
>right or wrong about.  This seems to open the door to a sort of multiple
>equilibria account of the relationship between our interpretations of
>what we are doing--either the informal ones that guide our practical
>lives or the more formal ones we call "social science"--and the reality:
>Because articulations are constitutive to a certain degree of what they
>are about, there will be multiple ideology/reality equilibria.  E.g.,
>as things stand now, rational choice pictures of agency get an unearned
>descriptive accuracy (they partially constitute that  which they
>articulate): if we changed our view of agency, we would get, to
>some extent, a different reality. Then we need to evaluate the whole
>complex of ideas/reality that we get with rational choice theory or with
>alternatives to it. Taylor would say that rejecting instrumentalism--his
>term for rational choice pictures of agency--would make our practices "go
>better". So we may be "locked-in" to rational choice right now, but this may
>be a Pareto-dominated idea/reality!