Re: Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "pdavidso" <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>
To: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 10:29 AM
Subject: RE: Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education


> >===== Original Message From Ian Murray <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx> =====
> >If we are fallibilists, what is the difference between intuition and guess?
> And if we can
> >have no scientific knowledge of first principles without engaging in circular
> reasoning or
> >question begging, what does it mean to say they are universal truths?
> Everyone thought the
> >axioms of Euclid were universally true until Gauss, Bolyai, Lobachevsky and
> Reimann came
> >along.
>
>
> Everyoner thought axioms of  classical economics were universal truths --
> which they were -- but Keynes pointed out [p.3 of GT] that some of the
> classical axioms were NOT applicable to the real world.
>

===================

Axioms are neither true nor false. They are the *starting* propositions, which, with the
aid of logic, grammar-rhetoric, enable us to make generalizations about the world and
societies. As Einstein put it, "they are free inventions of the human mind." Different
axioms, different takes on the world and society. It seems to me highly doubtful there can
be one true theory of political economy and the politics of economic theory, as evidenced
by the brouhaha at Notre Dame, points to an enormous problem that is not going to be
resolved any time soon. Pluralism and paraconsistency
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/
 are probably the best we can attain to in social life. It sounds like some economists need
to brush up on what is known as virtue epistemology:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/  because the adversarial mode of
discourse is clearly ruining some of the academic professions.

Ian