Harry quoted me:
me> It is, I think, even worse to start with ad hoc generalizations of the
me> emergent properties of the aggregate and then employ them as
me> hypotheses from which, with the application of scientific reasoning,
me> we hope to deduce a science of the good society.
And opined:
hp> Maybe you don't know what "ad hoc" means.
C'mon Harry. Lay off the condescension. "To this", to the purpose at
hand. In this case, to the purpose of creating suitable slogans for
an ideology.
No condescension, Mike. I was lightly kidding you. However, you did take the work of a century or two and call it ad hoc.
Meantime: ad hoc: "Often improvised or impromptu"
I guess the condescension came from your court.
hp> I am also not sure how "emergent properties of the aggregate" applies
hp> to an Assumption about individual action.
Your "Assumptions" are not about individual action. They are about
"Man" in the 19th century sense of generalizing to all of man- or
human-kind, as I think you were at pains to explain in an earlier
post. Many of the things we may say about Mankind allude to emergent
properties of complex interactions between multitudinous individuals,
no one of which alone *neccessarily* exhibits the properties to which
we allude.
When one uses "Man" one is referring to the species homo - not some of them, or most of them, but every single one of them.
But if that is confusing. Let me say it. The two Assumptions apply to every single person. The Classical Analysis seemed to be prejudice-free. Much more important than our differences are our similarities. But, we know that.
me> Harry has, IIRC, repeated several times his premises:
hp> I don't know what "IIRC" ...
If I recall correctly.
You are quite correct. As I've put it elsewhere, I've trailed my coat in your paths.
me> I don't see this as any less a religious dogma than "All have sinned
me> and come short of the glory of God." '
hp> You mean the two Assumptions are wrong. Well, you are a scientist.
hp> Show it. All you need is one exception. that shouldn't be hard to find.
hp>
zhp> A religious dogma is something that is proclaimed as true without proof.
hp>
hp> So, disprove it. Show everyone on Future Works that the two
hp> Assumptions are not true of human behavior.
No, I didn't *mean* they are wrong, although I think they're bogus --
generalities of the same quality as "Everybody loves a parade" or
"There's nothing like a good cigar"
I don't like parades and I don't smoke. Try another.
and constructed or chosen for
their propaganda value (ad hoc).
Propaganda for what?
I *meant* that they were offered as
zdogma and seemed to me to qualify as such.
Not at all. They were offered as scientific assumptions to precede a science. If they are true they jump start our economic thinking. Instead of assuming that people are simply too unpredictable to deal with, they offer an opportunity to think about people as predictable beings.
They describe why people work and how people work. And they are self-evident truths. Doesn't that make them useful?
Unfortunately we have rather forgotten rigor in our thinking processes. Look at Ray's contribution to this discussion. He's the best yet, yet he offered alternatives to the Basic Assumptions that softened them - made them easier to accept. That's fine but I will argue with him that the two Assumptions don't need to be softened. If you accept them, you are not somehow weakened. Indeed, you are strengthened.
(Of course, once past the self-evident truths, the Classicals immediately took us into the seven terms hat effectively cover everything on earth. Yet again the Classicals were rigorous in their thinking and they came up with seven terms that named tightly defined concepts that were mutually exclusive.)
Would that modern economists were as rigorous. I remember 30-40 years ago Economics text-book writer George Leland Bach finishing his chapter on profit with "for what profit is paid, and to whom, is very difficult to determine". I doubt that modern text-book writers are as candid as Bach.
But then, profit isn't an economic term.
What the Neo-Classicals seem to do when they have a word hanging around doing nothing, is to attach a meaning to it.
It makes modern economics a butt for jokes, saved perhaps only by the quality of the people who get trapped in it.
No, I'm not a scientist, although I've studied a bit of science and
make some effort to continue in that avocation.
No, a religious dogma, at least as I construe the word, is proclaimed
authoritatively as subject neither to proof nor disproof. It is the
nature of good propaganda technique to construct slogans that repel
and evade critique. A subsequent invitation to disprove the slogan is
part of the propaganda. Prove to me that there *is* somthing like a
good cigar!
There is no point to proclaiming with authority (whose authority?) something in a science because the proclamation will be torn to pieces.
So, tear it to pieces.
hp> Then start thinking again about your statement that: "Hard science
hp> is essentially statistical in nature."
Um, well, I've been thinking about it for close to 40 years, off an
on. I regret that my insights haven't been more brilliant.
So, scientists do go into the lab and say, "Let's , measure something today!" I would have thought that measurement would follow some soft science, which would involve thinking about something.
But, perhaps I'm wrong.
hp> You should understand that there are two kinds of knowledge. The
hp> knowledge of truths and the knowledge of things.
I don't think there are *any* absolute truths except tautologies and
the mathematical truths derived from explicit axioms which are
themselves essentially tautological. Of the non-absolute truths, I'm
inclined to think there are far more than two varieties, the very
notion of a "non-absolute truth" being as ambiguous as it is. But
lets move on...
hp> The two Assumptions are truths.
Now that sounds pretty much like an authoritative proclamation, subject
neither to proof nor disproof. If they are truths, was it not ingenuous
of you to have invited me to disprove them?
Mike, you mustn't take little bits of what I say and treat them as whole. I said"
"The knowledge of truths is the knowledge THAT things are so. While you must know things, they aren't much use without a knowledge of truths. A "truth" can be used across the gamut of the subject. A "thing" isn't transferable to another thing - except perhaps with a truth.
The two Assumptions are truths.
I told you what is meant by a "knowledge of truths" - a knowledge that something is so and as such can be used across a discipline - and I then said that the two Assumptions are examples of this.
Not quite a proclamation, or propaganda.
Come to think of it,you are pretty good with the ad hominems. Apart from the authoritative proclamations, there has been religious dogma, ideologue, propaganda slogans, bogus, propagation of the faith and, of course, improvised and impromptu.
Not bad considering all I did was to put forward the Assumptions that preceded the study of Classical Political Economy and say I thought they were good.
In his recent book, _On
Equilibrium_, John Ralston Saul refers to:
...the fear we all carry within us. It is there. If we give in to
it, we begin seeking not specific forces, but an all-encompassing
truth. An so we choose a single quality as our godhead, and then
gather all the rest of our existence beneath its umbrella. This is
ideology. (p. 13)
hp> These Assumptions apply to every person . . .
Another authoritative proclamation, the partial truth of which depends
on the ambiguity of "desire" and the domain within which "unlimited"
is to apply. Ray made that pretty clear in his post on Friday, q.v.
I actually said after a paragraph lead in to the statement, "These Assumptions apply to every person and people is what Classical Political Economy is all about."
It's good of you to call it authoritative. I thought it was explanatory.
But then you call it a partial truth. What part is true?
Why is desire ambiguous? The word was chosen carefully and it isn't difficult to check out. I like "The feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state". Desire is stronger than want, which is often used by economists.
I'll repeat. Why is desire ambiguous?
You may want to be film star, but if you go to acting school, haunt the studio casting offices and suchlike, we can say the want has become a desire. Intent is what makes "want" into desire".
But, at last you are actually looking at the subject of discussion, which is good.
The"domain" doesn't matter - although the point was well made by Ray. Whatever your circumstances, you will still desire. Though you ate yesterday, you will probably desire to eat today - and tomorrow, and the rest of the tomorrows. These desires will continue and change perhaps from hamburgers to gourmet delicacies.
On a different plain, your desire to get to the stars may get your feet out of the mud.
Wanting won't make you a great piano player - desire might.
All the first Assumption suggests is that we exert because of our ever changing desires. If we don't know about something we would love, how can we desire it? (Ray's point, perhaps). However, we have a whole lot of economic and political writings on the problems of unrealized expectations. Again the Assumption seems correct - but then it's a self evident - unless you deliberately refuse to recognize it.
I then said"
hp> The rest of what you wrote was interesting, but had nothing to do with
hp> our subject.
I hope that at least a few FW readers found it interesting. And
I guess it may have had too little to do with our subject. But I'm
reasonably sure that it had far too little to do with *your* subject,
too little to do with the propagation of the faith.
- Mike
As I said, I found it interesting, but cut the discussion at that point. In no way was it intended as some kind of a slur. In fact I wasn't even kidding. If you think I should have commented, I shall.
Harry
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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