Part I Flashcards
What is general philosophy of science? How does it differ from philosophy of economics?
General philosophy of science deals with general features of all sciences, there is a pattern in them. PhilEcon deals with questions that are specific to economics.
In general, everything is controversial and there is no consensus.
What are the three main phases of economics?
- Classical Econ 18th-end of 19th
- Neoclassical Econ until mid 20th
- Neoclassical II Until today
Describe classical Economics and its fundamental theory
Discocery of non obvious laws governing production and exchanges of goods. Fundamental insight is that such laws have unintended consequences of intentional individual action (hence non-obvious).
Fundamental theoretical element is labour theory of value: exchange-value of a good is the socially necessary labour time to produce the good (2x longer = 2x price), as opposed to use-value one gets by consuming the good. Value is determined by factors of production, so exchange value is an objective property and use-value is subjective. Goods that are otherwise heterogenous are consummate in labour: their objective exchange value makes their exchange possible. When objects become complex, their exchange value is much more driven by supply than by factors of production, so the socially necessary amount of labour is no longer explanatory of price.
Describe Neoclassical Economics I
Transition is called marginalist revolution or subjectivist marginalist revolution. The law of diminishing marginal utility is in direct contradiction with classical theory. Utility is connected to psychological state of agents.
Describe Neoclassical Economics II
Stage in which only preference ranking is measured by choice; complete dissociation of economics from psychology. Transitive ranking, rational agents, desire for wealth.
Positive vs Normative economics
Normative economics is the articulation of goals, values for the economy.
Usually evaluative, for us in terms of welfare for example. The goals depend on your culture etc (moral philosophy). Values/norms that may be hard to implement. Subjective/political as opposed to scientific.
Positive economics analyse descriptively the economic process. Classified as microeconomics and macroeconomics and econometrics. Facts/theories.
Value-free postulate of positive sciene
Social values must not influence the empirical results of science, but values are always involved in science, examples are choice of research, procedure: We just don’t want it to influence the result of positive science.
Idealized relationship between positive and normative economics
Normative economics to articulate some desired goals and positive economics to supply causal regularities connecting means and goals and policy makers chose one.
Challenged with regards to racism etc.
Foundations of Micro
Covers concepts of choice, rationality. Micro uses many fundamental assumptions and these subjects and their interrelations are studied.
Social studies and science
Social studies (feminists etc) are skeptical of science saying there are underlying social factors and power relations that determine the content of science. They try to identify the context in which science is done to see potential biases.
