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Category Archives: Philosophy
The Mystery of Matter: A Response to Lord Keynes on Berkeley’s Idealism
There has been a bit of a debate between myself and Lord Keynes over at his blog. Most of the relevant debate can be found in the following blog and in the comments of this blog. In response to my … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
9 Comments
Hans Albert Expands Robinson’s Critique of Marginal Utility Theory to the Law of Demand
A few days ago I wrote a post outlining Joan Robinson’s criticisms of the logical structure of marginal utility theory. It got quite a good response. Robinson’s point was that the manner in which the theory was constructed rendered it … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
3 Comments
John Hicks’ Book on Non-Ergodicity: A Forgotten Post-Keynesian Classic
Lars Syll recently provided an interesting quote from John Hicks’ 1979 book Causality in Economics. I thought that what Hicks said made an awful lot of sense, so I got my hands on a copy of the book. I have … Continue reading
Some Personal Reflections on Contemporary Economic and Scientific Indoctrination
I thought that the discussion in this clip from about 7.40 on was extremely interesting. Watson discusses how introductory textbooks — particularly Greg Mankiw’s — ask students to suspend their disbelief in the models that they are being taught. The … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy, Psychology
3 Comments
An Interview With and Overview of the Work of Philip Mirowski
Some time ago I did an interview with Philip Mirowski but I never published it. The editor of the heterodox journal Filosophia de la Economia got in contact with me and asked me if they could run it. When I … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
4 Comments
But why on earth won’t they let us play?
The following essay was written for The Baffler’s website. It is a response to two essays that appeared in their last issue. Since The Baffler could only run an edited version I decided to run the full-length version here. You … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
13 Comments
Joan Robinson’s Critique of Marginal Utility Theory
In her excellent book Economic Philosophy (available as a PDF here) Joan Robinson undertakes an extensive discussion of marginal utility theory. Here I will be more so interested in her technical criticisms. But before going into these it should be noted … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy, Psychology
23 Comments
Abstraction, Language and Modelling in Economics
Alciphron is the title of the book by the philosopher George Berkeley that was most popular in his own time and is probably his least popular in ours. The reason for this is because the book deals with atheism and … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
5 Comments
A Tangential But Rather Interesting Interview With…
Amogh Sahu was kind enough to do an extended interview with me for his podcast. The aim was to try to tie in the work I have been doing on the philosophy of science with economic theory. I think that … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
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Berkeley’s ‘Master Argument’ Doesn’t Exist
In 1974 the philosopher Andre Gallois published an article in The Philosophical Review entitled Berkeley’s Master Argument. In the article Gallois picks one quote from Berkeley’s Three Dialogues that he then goes on to say constitutes Berkeley’s supposed ‘Master Argument’. … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
6 Comments
Fixing the Economists 