From: Jim Devine Charles Brown: > Yet, this new behaviorism is > still, in Marx's term, a Robinsonade, > based in the fictional typical individual, > not in an analysis of _social_ > relations. It is a reductionist > explanation, reducing a social > phenomenon to a "collection > of individuals" with a type of > "psychology". The "rational man'/ > reasonable man " of classical > economics and law is replaced > with the "irrational/rational reasonable > unreasonable person". But the > error is not in attributing rationality, but in > in reducing the social market to > a collection of individual psyches, > bouncing off of each other like > Newtonian particles. It is an error of > the old type of thinking the whole is the > sum of its parts and particles.
right: the new behavioral economics (which isn't, strictly speaking, behaviorist) is individualistic. But it doesn't just look at the "typical" individual: some heterogeneity is allowed for in their view. ^^^ CB: I see what you mean. There is a sort of range of types in this model, or a flexibility in "the individual". In the past, psychology has had lots of personality typologies. The range is usually rather small compared to the total population. Like ten types for 300 million or something. Of course, "the typical individual" is an oxymoron anyway, in the sense that "individual" is mean to convey some sense that every individual is unique. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
