Re: Utility Maximisation

[GBRansom@xxxxxxx by emout03.mail.aol.com (8.7.6/8.7.3/AOL-2.0.0) Mon, 6 Oct 1997 04:26:52 -0400 (EDT)]

In a message dated 97-10-02 17:11:44 EDT, you write:

<< Imagine the vitalist then went on to show that vitalism
 had been useful in improving the understanding and
 prediction of certain phenomena and
 that other methods for studying the phenomena
 had nothing similar to offer.  >>

They did claim to show this.  It was the philosophers of
science (with a now rejected view of science and explanation)
who brought them down.  (some of the vitalists were also
philosophers).


>> Vitalism could not do this, but utility theory has
 done it.  <<

Again, this begs the question with someone who disagrees.  In
part we are disagreeing about what economics has as a problem to
explain -- and about what it can explain.  Despite this, no doubt
there is a middle ground were we agree that utility theory provides
illumination and helps in the most important explanatory project
of economics.  But in the most important cases where you say it can
do the job, I say that it can't do the job, and misleads us to boot.
And were economics has its most important job, you think utility can
do what it can't do, and you miss some of the most important jobs
it can do.  That is my own view.  It would take some conversation to fully
articulate the overlap of our agreement and disagreement.

<< So again your rhetorical parallel is absurd. >>

_Any_ parallel can be taken in a direction that makes it 'absurd'.

 << Since we are doing so much imagining,
 imagine a physicist, a biologist,
 and a psychologist observing a rat in
 a maze. The psychologist (not a behaviorist)
 suggests that based on past
 observations the rat is reasonably intelligent,
 is motivated by its love of cheese,
 and will be able to run the maze in 5 minutes.
 The biologist suggests that it is impermissible to
 speak in terms of goals and motivations,
 and that years of research will be required before
 we know enough about the mechanisms
 underlying the control of perception to make
 a prediction. The physicist then objects to
 the introduction of such a non-reduced concept as
 perception . . . >>

The point is that people say silly things that are contradicted
by there own efforts and doings -- both in their scientific
work and in their lives?  It is hard to find a biologist or a physist
today who is so caught up the discredited positivism of the
past (or worried about a trivial confusion in language) that they would
say anything as silly as this.  In any case, I miss the point.


Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
gbransom@xxxxxxx