History of Western Philosophy eJournal最新文献

{"title":"John Maynard Keynes, H.G. Wells, and a Problematic Utopia","authors":"Phillip W. Magness, J. Harrigan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3418380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3418380","url":null,"abstract":"John Maynard Keynes’s 1930 essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ is celebrated today as both an important transitional work in his economic theory and for its famously optimistic prediction of a distant future age of leisure, made against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Despite the essay’s acclaim and subsequent scholarly analysis of its arguments, comparatively little attention has been given to the history and context of its composition. \u0000 \u0000In this paper we explore the intellectual origins of ‘Economic Possibilities’ by introducing evidence of its parallels to a similar utopian message in H.G. Wells’s obscure didactic novel, The World of William Clissold (1926). Drawing upon archival evidence from Keynes and Wells’s own contemporary exchanges, we bring to light a largely unnoticed intellectual dialogue between the two authors that took place from roughly 1926 to 1934 through their published works, letters, and public and private conversations. The context provided by this dialogue sheds light upon the authors’ shared interests in the “scientific” ordering of society, and in particular a vision of the future that relied heavily upon proactive eugenic planning. These findings point to an under-acknowledged eugenic dimension to Keynes’s essay that emerges more openly from his contemporary exchanges with Wells as well as in several unpublished works and letters by both men. In addition to contextualizing a number of the intentionally vague predictions and prescriptions in ‘Economic Possibilities,’ these findings establish deeper eugenic commitments in Keynes’s beliefs than previously thought and extend them into the mature phase of his economic writing.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114507745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"J M Keynes’s Mathematical Style: Very Concise, Precise , and Exact","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3304407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3304407","url":null,"abstract":"Keynes’s mathematical style, starting with his First Fellowship Dissertation in 1907 for Cambridge University, England, through his formulation of a linear, first order difference equation that incorporated the interaction of the Multiplier and Accelerator( called the Relation) for Harrod’s use in his August,1938 correspondence with Harrod, and ending with his exchanges over probability and statistics with J. Tinbergen, an advocate of the Limiting Frequency Interpretation of Probability in 1939-40,was always very concise, precise and exact. \u0000 \u0000Specifically, Keynes always provided the first steps in a mathematical analysis and the last step. However, he would rarely put in the intermediate steps. Keynes’s view was that he always provided a clear, literary, prose explanation of his analysis that would allow any reader of his work to grasp the same basic,fundamental points that were being made in the mathematical analysis. A reader concentrating on Keynes’s supplementary mathematical analysis would also grasp the basic fundamental point being made. The intermediate mathematical steps in a Keynesian analysis need to be formulated by working backwards from the final step by the reader. This is precisely what economists have failed to do. They have been unable to generate the intermediate steps that connect the first and last steps. For instance, the results that Keynes presented in the General Theory regarding his IS-LM(LP) and D-Z models were never correctly grasped by any mainstream economist in the 20th and 21st centuries because they were not able to reconstruct the mathematical analysis in chapters 20 and 21 of the General Theory. \u0000 \u0000This paper will concentrate on illustrating Keynes’s style by analyzing the mathematical connection between Keynes’s mathematical results in chapter 26 on page 315 in footnote one of the A Treatise on Probability and the identical type of result that appears on page 183 of Richard Kahn’s June, 1931 article in the Economic Journal. It will be demonstrated that, once the differences in mathematical notation are compared and taken into account, the results presented by Kahn are identical to those presented by Keynes in 1921 in the A Treatise on Probability and reflect a style of presentation that is identical to Keynes’s mathematical style. \u0000 \u0000We will also examine the belief among modern economists that Keynes’s General Theory does not use math except for defining or conceptualizing relationships, in the form of y =f(x) or z=g(q) type notation, like the D=ф(N) and Z=θ(N) specifications that appear in chapter 3 of the General Theory. Such economists will be completely lost when they reach chapters 20 and 21 of the General Theory, where Keynes derives and presents his actual mathematical models.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129059074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thomas Aquinas on Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Ignorance, and Risk: The Role of Keynes's Weight of the Evidence Concept in His Approach","authors":"M. E. Brady","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3140986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3140986","url":null,"abstract":"Eight centuries ago, Thomas Aquinas clearly differentiated between probability and uncertainty in decision making. He viewed probability eclectically as having elements that involved propositions about events, frequency of events, and single events. He found an important role in his approach for a view that is very close to Keynes’s weight of the evidence criterion from the A Treatise on Probability and confidence from Keynes’s General Theory, as well as Adam Smith’s views on uncertainty and confidence. \u0000Aquinas understood that there was much information, evidence, knowledge, or data that was missing or incomplete, so that an estimate of probability was likely to be inaccurate and unreliable in the same manner that an estimate of the just price was likely to be inaccurate, due to missing or incomplete information so that the best one could do in a market transaction was to calculate an upper (and possibly lower bounds) bound on the part of the seller and a lower (and possibly upper bounds) bound on the part of the buyer, where it was likely that the just price would lie, after a process of negotiation, between the upper bound of the seller and the lower bound of the buyer . There was not a precise, exact mathematical estimate of the just price, but an imprecise estimate that is an interval estimate. \u0000It is argued that Aquinas held a similar view with respect to the concept of probability based on his perception of the fact that “calculating probabilities” in an uncertain environment also led to imprecision in the estimate. Aquinas’s developed a concept that is very similar to Keynes’s weight of the evidence concept in Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability and confidence concept from Keynes’s General Theory.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124050959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vague Idea of Studium: Petitions and Bulls of the Portuguese University at the Beginning of the Great Schism (1377–1380)","authors":"A. Rusanov","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3048783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048783","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyzes argumentation that was used by the Papal curia and the University of Lisbon in the bulls and petitions during the short period when the kingdom of Portugal supported Anti-Pope Clement VII (1380–1381). Rhetoric of observed sources includes legal concepts and images borrowed from earlier theoretical texts and academic privileges. In the Curial practice the main legal conception of medieval university, the Studium generale, could be interpreted in the different ways, as it is demonstrated by the case of the Gregory XII’s bulls addressed to the Portuguese university in 1377. In 1380 the Portuguese academic corporation expected some grants and authorization of its status in exchange for support of the Avignon Pope. But controversial formulas and concepts of Clement VII’s bull In Superne dignitatis (that de jure founded a new Studium generale in Lisbon) rather strengthen his authority in Portugal than favoured realization of proclaimed university privileges","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"312 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122985243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Situational Analysis","authors":"K. Hoover","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2736927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2736927","url":null,"abstract":"Situational analysis (also known as situational logic) was popularized by Karl Popper as an appropriate method for the interpretation of history and as a basis for a scientific social science. It seeks an objective positive explanation of behavior through imputing a dominant goal or motive to individuals and then identifying the action that would be objectively appropriate to the situation as the action actually taken. Popper regarded situational analysis as a generalization to all of social science of the prototypical reasoning of economics. Applied to history, situational analysis is largely an interpretive strategy used to understand individual behavior. In social sciences, however, it is applied many to types of behavior or to group behavior (e.g., to markets) as is used to generate testable hypothesis. Popper’s account of situational analysis and some criticisms that have been levied against it are reviewed. The charge that situational analysis contradicts Popper’s view that falsification is the hallmark of sciences is examined and rejected: situational analysis is precisely how Popper believes social sciences are able to generate falsifiable, and, therefore, scientific hypotheses. Still, situational analysis is in tension with another of Popper’s central ideas: situational analysis as a method for generating testable conjectures amounts to a logic of scientific discovery, something that Popper argued elsewhere was not possible.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124990769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kinds of Scientific Rationalism: The Case for Methodological Liberalism","authors":"Scott Scheall","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2619311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2619311","url":null,"abstract":"The present paper considers the implications of the postulate that the activities of scientists constitute complex phenomena in the sense associated with the methodological writings of the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian economist, methodologist, and political philosopher, F.A. Hayek. Although Hayek wrote extensively on the methodology of sciences that investigate systems of complex phenomena, he never addressed the possibility that science itself is such a system. The application of Hayek’s method ology of sciences of complex phenomena to science itself implies some minimal criteria for explanations of scientific rationality. If science is complex in Hayek’s sense, then scientific belief may be rational in more than one way. It is argued that a failure to recognize the possibility of multiple kinds of scientific rationality contributes to an error theory of certain unsuccessful accounts of scientific belief in the history of philosophy of science. It is further argued that, where ecological rationality is operative, rational belief requires an element of methodological liberty. It is shown that acceptance of the possibility of ecologically-rational scientific outcomes–a view here dubbed methodological liberalism–is closely related to Hayek's denial of the possibility of a successful scientism, a denial crucial to his arguments against socialism and Keynesian macroeconomics.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116842132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Notions of Order and Process in Hayek: The Significance of Emergence","authors":"P. Lewis","doi":"10.1093/CJE/BEU043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CJE/BEU043","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the notions of order and process to which Friedrich Hayek subscribed. It is argued that a satisfactory understanding of Hayek’s conceptions of ‘order’ and ‘process’—and in particular a clear understanding of those how the two concepts relate to each other in his scheme of thought—requires an appreciation of the ontological categories of ‘emergence’ and ‘emergent properties’. Ultimately, for Hayek the capacity of liberal market economies to co-ordinate people’s actions in the face of tacit and dispersed knowledge is an emergent property that arises only when people’s interactions are governed by certain sets of rules. This static analysis of the co-ordinative powers of the market as an emergent property of a given system of rules must be supplemented by a dynamic account of the process through which the set of rules in question comes into being. Hayek provides such an account in his account of society as developing through a multi-level evolutionary process. Key implications of Hayek’s accounts of order and process for debates about the co-ordinative powers of free market economies are drawn out.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"213 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115562232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970: Epilogue","authors":"Herbert Hovenkamp","doi":"10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199331307.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199331307.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Two Victorian Era intellectual movements changed the course of American legal thought: Darwinian natural selection and marginalist economics. The two movements rested on fundamentally inconsistent premises. Darwinism emphasized instinct, random selection, and determinism. Marginalism emphasized rational choice. Legal theory managed to accommodate both, although to different degrees in different disciplines. The two movements also developed mutually exclusive scientific methodologies. Darwinism emphasizing external indicators of welfare such as productivity, education or health, while marginalists emphasized market choice. Historians have generally exaggerated the role of Darwinism in American legal thought, while understating the role of marginalist economics. This book explores these issues in several legal disciplines. One is Progressive Era movements for redistributive policies about taxation and public goods. Darwinian science also dominated the law of race relations, while criminal law reflected an inconsistent mixture of Darwinian and marginalist incentive-based theories. The common law, including family law, contract, property, and tort, moved from emphasis on correction of past harms to management of ongoing risk and relationship. A chapter on Legal Realism emphasizes the Realists' indebtedness to institutional economics, a movement that powerfully influenced American legal theory long after it fell out of favor with economists. Five chapters on the corporation, innovation and competition policy show how marginalist economics transformed business policy. The ironic exception was patent law, which developed in relative insulation from economic concerns about innovation policy. The book concludes with three chapters on public law, emphasizing the role of institutionalist economics in policy making during and after the New Deal. A lengthy epilogue then explores the variety of postwar attempts to reconstruct a defensible and more market-oriented rule of law after the decline of Legal Realism and the New Deal. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/law/9780199331307/toc.html","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129463915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A 19th Century French Observer Sheds Light on America's Unstable Politics","authors":"F. Manheim","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2390871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2390871","url":null,"abstract":"The French observer of the United States in the 1830s, Alexis De Tocqueville, is often celebrated for identifying “American exceptionalism,” i.e. a set of national characteristics not found in any of the nations from which immigrants came. Positive traits that De Tocqueville described are well known. However, De Tocqueville also described less well-known unflattering characteristics. Recent developments support the idea that these traits remain hard wired in American society and help account for political dysfunctions that are unique among advanced nations.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122128723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Logical Positivism and Islamic Economics","authors":"A. Zaman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2195043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2195043","url":null,"abstract":"We provide a detailed discussion of current methodology of economics and its emergence from secular roots in Europe. The foundational principles of this methodology, which is based on logical positivism, are in conflict with Islam. We then sketch some alternative methodologies which would be more suitable for Islamic economics. We first describe how logical positivism emerged as the dominant philosophy of science, and how it was adopted into the foundations of economics. We then show that the current economic methodology is based on logical positivism. This philosophy is anti-Islamic, and therefore cannot be used to construct Islamic Economics. There are two main points of opposition. Logical Positivism rejects the unseen, while Islam requires faith in the unseen. Logical Positivism rejects morality as unscientific, while morality is a central part of Islamic teachings. This means that a methodology for Islamic economics must be radically different from that currently in use in conventional economic theory. Some essential elements of an alternative methodology are sketched.","PeriodicalId":128035,"journal":{"name":"History of Western Philosophy eJournal","volume":"134 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124173644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}