Re: PKT seminar starts today; introduction

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

Steve,

In ch. 3 you say:
``Two centuries after Bentham, mathematical Economists
established that the second leg of the Benthamite agenda
was, in general, impossible.
The obvious con clusion from this is that Bentham was wrong:
?Society? must exist as an entity in its own right, and
the selfish pursuit of individual welfare does not necessarily
maximise social welfare. That Economists, in general,
failed to draw this inference speaks volumes for the
unscientific nature of Economic theory.''

I do not understand this inference.

Most economists, I think, see the Benthamite calculus as
*making sense* of the notion of society.
Its failure then is a failure to make sense of the notion
of society.
Correspondingly, neoclassical economists are inclined
to abandon any notion of social welfare.
They favor letting competitive markets function only
because they can show that interference in (neoclassically)
competitive markets is *Pareto* inferior, and they tend
to be satisfied with potential (rather than actual)
compensation as adequate justification for policy.

Be that as it may, for me the term ``inference'' means
``derivable from the standard rules of logic'',
at least when invoking ``science'' as the context,
and I don't see an inference here.

fwiw,
Alan