From: Andrew Brown (A.Brown@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Mon Jan 24 2005 - 12:51:37 EST
I would say that the Sraffian system, if it is to have much positive to offer, in grasping the world, presupposes a concept of value. However, many 'Sraffians' [ill-defined term] take the Sraffian system to deny the concept and are accordingly modest in their claims for political economy in general (since the Sraffian system is still taken to be the best political economy has to offer). The reason is that without value there is no commensurability of different capitalist systems across space or through time, making general laws, so general science, impossible. There is a close connection with Hume. Hume was an epistemological sceptic who fully recognised that realism was inevitable in everyday life (he left his study by the stairs, not the window). In everyday life we all believe value exists - e.g. we don't stare bemused when we are told the GDP growth of a nation - but the Sraffian argument purports to refute this existence. Re. gravity: it is precisely the lack of underlying substance, structure or cause, that bothered Newton himself about gravity and that Cartesians quite rightly complained against. Seeing gravity as curved space removes this problem - and removes gravity as a backing for Paul C.'s argument, I think. Many thanks, Andy -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul Cockshott Sent: 21 January 2005 11:20 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Hume Replying to an old posting here by Ajit. The issue raised here is what the nature of causation in science and economics should be. I would argue that what science does is not so much uncover causes but uncover symmetries and constraints. To take a paradigmatic instance: the Newtonian laws of motion do not deal with causes, they uncover constraints on the feasible configurations of physical systems in time and space. They are constraints on 4 dimensional space. The structure of something like Sraffa's price system is similar. It establishes a set of constraints on what is feasible, given certain assumptions. In this sense it is not causal either. > Andy _____________________ Hi, Andy! Because economic theory does not have to be an empiricist philosophy of knowledge. Hume himself did not follow his empiricist philosophy in his other works because his philosophy ultimately leads to nihilism. But that does not mean that the philosophical problem he raised for empiricist knowledge, particularly for the implied relation of cause and effect, is all bunk. It shows us the limitation of what we claim to know. Now, we all know that all sciences are predictive, i.e. built on the relation of cause and effect. But science is not in a business of proving anything--it is neither philosophy nor mathematics. In some Kantian sense science simply takes the relation of cause and effect as a priori or its fundamental belief or axiom. On this basis it only tentatively suggests certain causal explanations for various phenomena. But these theories must always remain tentative and can never prove its correctness beyond doubt. The main role of science is to act as a medicine that sooths our mind by giving some sort of order to desperate phenomena--it keeps us from going crazy! That's an admirable job and economics can be part of it. But it is also good to know the limitations of what we claim to know. Cheers, ajit sinha __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
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