Re: heterodoxers are crackpots AND logic

[Andrew Mearman <ajmearman@xxxxxxxxx>]

With regard to logical consistency, I'm quite sure
heterodoxy or whatever would not want to be thought of
as being "illogical."  However what does it mean to be
"logical?"  This is not merely a semantic question:
people who might be called heterodox or PK use all
kinds of types of logic, such as deduction, induction,
retroduction, etc.  Returning to the work of Sheila
Dow, she rejects what she refers to as "classical"
logic, which requires certainty, dualism, closed
systems, etc.  She even claims that Keynes rejected
such logic. Keynes' TP after all espoused a "logical"
theory of probability, but one that was very different
to its rivals.

Using deductive logic can of course be useful.  If
heterodoxers can show that orthodoxy is garbage by
using the logic most favored by it - for example in
Paul Davidson's work - that's powerful.  However,
Dow's argument is that the nature of the world itself
(or at least parts of it) might not lend itself to
classical deductive logic, thus rendering that logic
less powerful.  In that case, one would use logic that
has some basis in the nature of the world.  That's
what "horses for courses" means to me; and it's not
mere postmodern eclecticism, it's got a basis in some
vision of "open systems," which was put forward
recently in the JPKE by Stephen Dunn as the basis of
Post Keynesianism.

Andrew


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