Claudio Gutierrez
The literalistic position is common to both apriorists and objectivists in
economic methodology. Therefore it is suitable to formulate that position in
the fashion of a dilemma, the
literalistic dilemma: "Either economic theory is abstract (the result of the
abstractive operation of the mind upon empirical information) or it is a priori
(the elaboration of something one finds in his own intellect); one cannot have
it both ways." This writer does not accept the validity of this dilemma; the
answer to its challenge, though, cannot be straightforward. The
prima facie force
of the dilemma is the product of an oversimplification of the problem of
knowledge and it is only through a complete examination of the epistemological
context of the question that one can be enabled to see that the exclusive
argument does not hold. This examination will appear in the first two parts of
this study.
I will begin by discussing a conception of scientific knowledge which makes
it ultimately dependent on intellectual passions and values to which scientists
are committed. I will also point to the fact that it is not possible to make a
sharp distinction between pure theory and pure empirical happening.
Furthermore, I will discuss the fact that values and theories are always
encountered in interrelation, forming systems, and that these systems, dwelt in
by different persons, are likely to conflict with one another. The upshot of
all this is a plea for an epistemology based on tolerance and a hope that
conflicting
bona fide views might eventually be reconciled by means of mutual respect
and heuristic discussion.
I will then examine the claim that there is an essential distinction between
commonsense and
science which is basic for the further distinction between the natural
sciences and the social sciences. I will conclude that the relevant distinction
is not that between commonsense and scientific knowledge, but rather the one
between formal and non formal, even unformalizable knowledge. I will conclude
that it is impossible to support objectivity and formalism in an objective and
formal way. The only reassurance we can expect to obtain in this field is the
one based on confidence in the responsibility of the scientist. That
responsibility, coupled with an efficient use of formalism, is what I want to
call the
professional sense.
The central idea of this essay will then be developed around the distinction
between two levels of subjectivity present in the social sciences:
subjectivity in the explanation and
subjectivity in the subject-matter. The latter aspect relates to the fact
that the objects of study in the social sciences do have purposes, knowledge,
desires, and the like. The former aspect relates to the fact that the scientist
himself has also purposes, beliefs, passions, and the like which are
determinants in the way in which he actually makes science. In connection with
this distinction I will construe
the temptation of the social scientist as the tendency to identify two
levels of analysis which should be kept separate. I will draw the conclusion
that all sciences are methodologically homogeneous in the twofold sense that
both social and physical sciences are ultimately dependent on subjectivity (that
of the scientist) and both use subjectivity-in-the-subject-matter or an
alternate to it, i.e., theoretical terms.
I will present in the second part of the study an analysis of the nature and
uses of abstraction. I will try to show that the abstractionist's "analytical
realism" is an insufficient account of the pluridimensionality of the real
world. In order to do this, I will present a philosophical examination of the
logical requirements of
completeness and
consistency. The conception that all theoretical thinking is totalizing
and systematic, and at the same time somehow limited or incomplete, will be the
reencounter in the strictly methodological realm of the fundamental truth of the
interrelatedness of values and the conflicting character of the relationships
between different systems of value. Ambiguity, I will conclude, is inherent to
all thinking bearing on reality. We cannot hope
to see through our theoretical framework to capture the
real world. Our way to truth must be related to the analysis of competing
comprehensive views –which taking inspiration from Thomas Kuhn I will call
paradigms– through the application of some internal criteria of coherence
and fullness of account capable of giving us the different aspects of reality.
Having taken sides with the coherence criterion of truth I will then move to
overcome the risk of relativism in such an outlook. The capacity to be coherent
is not unlimited for a paradigm. Its ability to make ultimate sense can and in
fact does become exhausted. This possibility of exhaustion or depletion of a
paradigm or set of paradigms may be regarded as a limiting psychological
property of the person asserting or entertaining the paradigm. At the empirical
end, the capability of the person for making changes in a paradigm in order to
save it from adverse evidence may become exhausted; the paradigm must then be
dropped as false. At the theoretical end, the ability of the person to imagine
alternative explanations can also become depleted, and the paradigm must be
asserted as necessarily true.
The two points of exhaustion of paradigms are only ideal points, never fully
attainable, only complementary poles asymptotically approached. In between
those two foci one finds real instances of knowledge, indefinite in gradation,
in a state of tension from (ideal) necessary theory to (ideal) pure empirical
fact. Of any concrete piece of information one can say that it is both
theoretical and empirical, according to the role it plays in relation to other,
higher or lower, pieces of knowledge. The concepts of
model and
assumption will then be introduced. A piece of information is a model, a
close enough representation of reality, if one works on it from a higher level
of knowledge; a piece of information is an assumption, a theoretical or paradigmatic
configuration, if one dwells in it in order to work from it on something
else (the models). Provided we are at a sufficient distance from both necessary
assumptions and overwhelming evidence, there is much leeway to alternative
organization of models and assumptions. Many approaches may prove equally
fruitful; several alternative laws may prove equally true. We will call this
view the
gradualistic interpretation of scientific knowledge.
With these epistemological weapons in hand, I will examine, in the third
chapter, the claim of the social scientist who defends
Verstehen as an independent, intuitive, way of knowledge. I will conclude
that the literalist's "knowledge-of-our-own-mind" is in fact a knowledge-of-our-own-language, of
paradigmatic sort. I will also examine, in the seventh
chapter, the claim of the economist who defends "praxeology" as a deductive,
purely a priori, way of constructing economic theory. I will conclude that the
literalist's "transcendental deduction" is in fact a dialectical process of
inference, of empirical sort. Finally, in the fourth part, I will try to build
a direct criticism of literalism by means of the construction of alternate
models for the basic elements of economic value theory. These models will also
serve as a disproof of the possibility of an a priori, literalistically formal,
definition of economics. As a result of all this, the formal-professional
conception of economic science will be arrived at, a conception totally
consistent with the gradualistic interpretation of scientific theory.
The present study is intended mainly as a criticism of a position in the
methodology of economics and a position in methodology in general which I want
to call
literalism. Now, by literalism I am
going to understand the property of a methodological system (most conspicuous in
aprioristic epistemological conceptions but not confined to them) which treats
language as something given and inert, not subject to essential revision or to
any dialectical change of its own. Literalism sees language either as a "filing
system" not affected by the content it harbors, or as "knowledge-of-our-own-
mind" which is not a result of its commerce and intercourse with the life of
experience.