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Re: Is Keynes a Positivist

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stephen wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>For some
reason, which completely eludes me, Post keynesians have appeared sympathetic
to Bhaskar's transcendental/critical realism.</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>In
his General Theory, Keynes writes:</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>"The
outline of our theory can be expressed as follows. When employment increases,
aggregate real income is increased". (p. 27)</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>According
to Lawson, in his book Economics and Reality, positivism can be characterised
in terms of the belief that:</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>"If
science is to be at all possible, it must take the form of elaborating
regularities of the type 'whenever event x then event y'" (p. 19)</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>Hence
Keynes is a positivist - or am I missing something?</font></font>&nbsp;<font color="#000000"><font size=-1>Stephen
Parsons</font></font></blockquote>

<p><br>I think the appeal is not only to Post-Keynesians, but also to many
heterodox economists. It has been a while since I read Bhaskar, however,
I think the attraction is that at least some heterodox economists wish
to construct a model that is "realistic", and it has certainly been a tenet
of Post Keynesian/Neo-Ricardian thought that there are some properties
of&nbsp; reality that cannot be ignored by a model. An example is the long
debate over production functions between Cambridge UK and Cambridge US.
One reason I would not call Keynes a positivist is because of his emphasis
on disequilibrium adjustments and uncertainty. I think positivism depends
on the presence of simple, causal relationships.
<p>This affinity is not shared by all heterodox economists. A substantial
portion are influenced by post-modernism. I think you will also find heterodox
economists who unconsciously or consciously adopt a positivist position.
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