Re: PK epistemology

[Colin Danby <danbyc@xxxxxxx>]

Ted reminds me offlist that what he identified in Pauls work was
logical inconsistency or contradiction, not tautology. This is right.

What I do suggest is that the inconsistency is the result of a
tautologically functionalist way of treating money. This requires that
it be assumed a priori that the long run consequences of holding money
are knowable, in Teds phrase. But PK also, following Keynes, tends to
see human-made institutions as potentially unstable and indeed roots
fundamental uncertainty in this claim  uncertainty is not just random
behavior of systems that can be described in stable terms, but rather
the result of the possibility of system shifts including large political
changes, war, revolution etc. JMKs 1937 QJE article does not exempt
government or governmental institutions (which would include money!)
from the possibility of unpredictable change. So, my argument is that
the reason for this inconsistency in Davidson and similar PK work (the
inconsistency is not in JMK!) is the adoption of a functionalist
understanding of money by which this institutions effects are also
assumed to be what cause it to exist. This move *contains* uncertainty
and sets the analysis up to advocate a particular variety of policy.

Best, Colin