Re: heterodoxers are crackpots AND logic

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> If you do not understand the role of exogenous factors in a logical
> model then there is no hope for communication between us!!

Your belief that the ideas I'm attributing to Keynes can be understood
in terms of "the role of exogenous factors in a logical model" shows
that you don't understand the ideas.

The change in "human nature" involved in Keynes's argument is not a
change in an exogenous factor; it is a change resulting from what
Whitehead calls "novel compositions" i.e. Keynes's "model" treats human
nature as the product of social relations, it treats these relations as
"internal" relations.  This is what limits the applicability of the kind
of "logic" you're advocating.  The reasons why this is so are spelled
out by Whitehead.

The difference between you and Keynes on this question is that you don't
treat "human nature" as the outcome of relations.  You assume that
agents are everywhere and always "sensible"    You aren't "abstracting"
from the internal social relations on which "human nature" depends;
you're implicitly assuming social relations are not internal.

When Keynes treats human nature as to some degree stable he is
consciously abstracting from the influence of changes in relations which
he knows will change it in ways relevant to his argument, but he's doing
so knowing that that this must be justified by evidence showing that the
relations from which he is "abstracting" are themselves sufficiently
stable to allow this to be done i,e, changes in human nature aren't
treated by him as "exogenous."

"the prejudice of investors and investing institutions in favour of
bonds as being 'safe' and against common stocks as having, even the best
of them, a 'speculative' flavour, has led to a relative over-valuation
of bonds and an under-valuation of common stocks.
	"It is dangerous, however, to apply to the future inductive
arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad
reasons why past experience was what it was.  Otherwise there is a
danger of expecting results in the future which could only follow from
the special conditions which have existed in the United States during
the past fifty years."  (XII, 247-8)

When, as he does in his argument re the future of the US balance of
payments, he believes these relations are changing in a way relevant to
his argument he doesn't abstract from them.

Ted