What is wrong with the Left today? In my view, a big problem is the ideology called Postmodernism.
Chomsky in the video below gives us some fascinating insights into the origins of French Poststructuralism – and also into its modern offshoot Postmodernism.
Remember he is talking about the origin of French Poststructuralism in the early 1970s.
Chomsky understood the origins of Poststructuralism very well: many of the big French Poststructuralists – like Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and Michel Foucault (1920–1984) – had been Marxists, and some of them Stalinists and Maoists.
They become disillusioned with this cult-like ideology by the late 1960s and early 1970s, which had also been associated with Structuralism (the fashionable academic theory that replaced Existentialism in post-WWII France). The result? These frustrated Marxists turned to Poststructuralism, and to what they believed was a new “radical” critique of “bourgeois” society and civilisation. Unfortunately, this involved all sorts of unbelievably stupid nonsense such as truth relativism, the idea that texts don’t really have authors, and that texts can mean anything you like (no matter how insane your interpretation).
A crucial foundational text for the emerging Poststructuralist movement was Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” (Barthes 1967 = Barthes 1977). In this, Barthes essentially argued that critics should divorce their study of a text from its author, and that a text is not a product of its author with a definite and fixed meaning intended by the author (see Barthes 1977: 146).
The radical political agenda for this nonsense was expressed quite openly, explicitly and without any shame by Barthes in this article, as follows:
“Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’ – victory to the critic. …. literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases – reason, science, law” (Barthes 1977: 146).
In other words, let us ignore authors and pretend texts can mean anything. In the process, we can emancipate ourselves from “reason, science, [and] law.”
Any person who wants to be “liberated” from reason and science is simply unhinged. The Poststructuralist ideology and its Postmodernist offspring was nothing but the most outrageous betrayal of the Left, which, if anything, ought to be strongly defending reason and modern science.
Let us just probe one point in what follows. For example, what would being “liberated” from modern science even involve? Would you be “liberated” from modern science-based medicine? Liberated from scientific principles that ensure that our engineers built buildings, houses and other structures that don’t just collapse on people’s heads and kill people?
Liberated from vaccination programs or scientific principles of public health and sanitation that protect first-world countries from diseases that still plague the developing world? Liberated from the germ theory of disease? Liberated from the principles of internal combustion and science that make motor vehicles work?
The few people in our world today who seriously want to be “liberated” from modern science are mostly religious fundamentalists of the most extreme kind – people who don’t accept Darwinian evolution or even modern medicine. Is that who the progressive left wants to stand with these days?
If the left wants to reform and strengthen itself, a good place to start is simply for left-wing people to subject Postmodernism to the withering criticism and contempt it deserves, without any concern for offending fellow leftists. Postmodernism does very little except rot your brain – it is the enemy of reason, science, logic, progressive economics and rational discourse.
From the postmodernist Sandra G. Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism (1986):
“One phenomenon feminist historians have focused on is the rape and torture metaphors in the writings of Sir Francis Bacon and others (e.g., Machiavelli) enthusiastic about the new scientific method. Traditional historians and philosophers have said that these metaphors are irrelevant to the real meanings and referents of scientific concepts held by those who used them and by the public for whom they wrote. But when it comes to regarding nature as a machine, they have quite a different analysis: here, we are told, the metaphor provides the interpretations of Newton’s mathematical laws: it directs inquirers to fruitful ways to apply his theory and suggests the appropriate methods of inquiry and the kind of metaphysics the new theory supports. But if we are to believe that mechanistic metaphors were a fundamental component of the explanations the new science provided, why should we believe that the gender metaphors were not? A consistent analysis would lead to the conclusion that understanding nature as a woman indifferent to or even welcoming rape was equally fundamental to the interpretations of these new conceptions of nature and inquiry. Presumably these metaphors, too, had fruitful pragmatic, methodological, and metaphysical consequences for science. In that case, why is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton’ laws as ‘Newton’s rape manual’ as it is to call them ‘Newton’s mechanics’?” (Harding 1986: 113).
On the very next page of Harding’s book we are told that the heliocentric theory of the solar system was problematic in terms of its “gender symbolism” (Harding 1986: 114). Why? Because it displaced the older geocentric view that placed “mother earth” at the centre of the universe and put in its place the “masculine” sun (Harding 1986: 114). Make of that what you will.
Though many Postmodernists would tell us that basic standards of logic are just a “narrative” amongst other legitimate “narratives,” I would submit to you that the idea above is the logical culmination of a philosophy that says there is no objective truth, that texts cannot have a fixed meaning intended by the author, and that objective knowledge is impossible.
The result? We have a person telling us – apparently with a straight face – that it is just as meaningful and legitimate to refer to Newton’s Principia as “Newton’s rape manual.”
Is it even remotely convincing? No. There are apparently a few metaphors in Bacon about science taming nature that could be interpreted as rape metaphors (Soble 1998: 4). But why should Newton be tarred with the same brush as Bacon? As far as I am aware, there are no metaphors of rape in Newton’s Principia.
Even as some loose metaphor for “male” science taming or understanding “female” nature, the “Newton’s rape manual” comment insults the intelligence, and slanders the scientific method.
For those of you who would like a careful and rational expose of the Postmodernist abuse of science and the irrational hatred of science that can be found in modern Postmodernism, I direct you to these fine works:
Gross, Paul R. and Norman Levitt. 1994. Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont. 1998. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. Picador, New York.
Koertge, Noretta. 1998. A House built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science. Oxford University Press, New York.
Finally, here are some reviews of Sokal and Bricmont (1998), a celebrated work:
Richard Dawkins, “Postmodernism Disrobed,”
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html
Danny Yee. 1999. “Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science,”
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Intellectual_Impostures.html
John Sturrock. 1998. “Le pauvre Sokal,” London Review of Books 20.14 (16 July): 8–9.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n14/john-sturrock/le-pauvre-sokal
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Soble, Alan. 1998. “In Defense of Bacon,” in Noretta Koertge (ed.), A House built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science. Oxford University Press, New York. 195–215.
This is a post that delves into many non-economic subjects, so skip it if you find science and philosophy tedious!
I. Time and the Future in Economic Life
The future and the nature of time have a fundamental role to play in economics. I will briefly sketch the Post Keynesian view. In a highly complex system that is open like a human economic system, where specific variables are determined by possibly millions of decentralised decisions, where there is both endogenous and exogenous change, and complex negative and positive feedback, it is the case that fundamental uncertainty will be faced about some specific future values of relevant variables.
Fundamental uncertainty means that calculable, objective numeric probabilities are not possible about many specific future values of variables in the system subject to the processes described above (that is, you cannot calculate an objective probability like the a priori probability of rolling a 6 in a fair game of dice for future values of variables).
The future is seen as open and not predetermined (Dunn 2008: 106). Human agents have a role in inventing and creating the future by their actions and decisions (Dunn 2008: 106).
It is obvious that there are both stated concepts and unstated ontological assumptions here, which are as follows:
(1) a real thing called time that passes, or dynamic time; (2) a moving present and dynamic world; (3) a future that appears to be (but perhaps not necessarily is) not yet existent; (4) a future that is not predetermined in an unalterable way, but is created by contingent human action.
The notions of time and the future are fundamental. But what does science say about these things?
II. The Scientific Theories of Time
We have three main theories of the nature of time:
(1)Presentism
This is the view that only the present – that is, the present instantaneous world – exists. Only the present has real existence. The past and future are unreal. Reality is the three dimensional spatial world with its dynamic time element, or (depending on one’s view) the human perception of it.
(2) the Growing block Universe
The Growing block universe theory assumes that only the past and present are real. But the past is “lifeless and inactive” and consciousness and the “flow of time” are only active in the present. To some extent, the Growing block universe appears to be a variant of Presentism. It is also called the “Crystallizing Block Universe” or “Emergent Block Universe” theory.
(3)Eternalism
This is the view that all events, things and objects (including people and living things) in the past and future have real existence. Past, present and future are all equally real. For some reason, human beings have the perception of a “moving present.”
It is obvious that “Presentism” is what seems to be the intuitively correct and commonsensical view of time, although the “Growing block universe” is also compatible, even if somewhat counterintuitive in its belief that the past has a kind of real existence.
Certainly, the view of uncertainty in Post Keynesian economics and of the unknowable future seem consistent with, and perhaps necessitate, a “Presentist” or “Growing block universe” view of time: only the present (and possibly the past) exists, and the future does not. The future is created, as time passes. In economic life, human choice has a causal role in shaping one of many possible futures.
The trouble is that many mainstream physicists think that the Eternalist view is true.
And the issue goes much deeper than just interesting consequences of Einstein’s theories of relativity. Briefly, Einstein showed that the amount of time that elapses for an object is dependent on both its velocity and/or its interaction with gravitational fields. If, for example, one accelerates to close to the speed of light, time slows down (that is, “time dilation” occurs), and one is projected forwards in time relative to other objects travelling at a lower velocity, simply because physical and chemical processes slow down as velocity increases. From this, it follows that absolute Newtonian time is ultimately unreal. Or perhaps what Newton imagined as absolute time can only be strictly limited to spaces and objects with homogenous or near homogenous velocities or gravitational fields.
But the mainstream view of time is more radical than these findings from relativity theory, though certainly partly derived from them. What is asserted is this: the universe is thought to be a four-dimensional block or “block universe,” containing everything from the Big Bang to the end of the universe and all things that have ever existed or will ever exist. The forward direction or “arrow” of time is illusory because the whole universe is ultimately static, and if one could view it from “outside,” there is no point anywhere in the universe that can be objectively called the present.
Perhaps you think I exaggerate? Just observe the respected physicist Paul Davies proclaim that the flow of time is an illusion (Davies 2002). A strident statement of the same ideas can be found in Julian B. Barbour’s The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe (New York, 2000).
According to these ideas, the universe is ultimately timeless and static.
Pushed to its limit, a consequence of this theory is that the “block universe” is eternal and had no actual beginning in time, no subsequent development or growth, and no end, for that would require that there was in fact once a moving present, and would imply “Presentism” or the “Growing block universe” view.
If it is true that the universe is eternal, what sense is there in talking of the Big Bang as the causal origin of the universe or of subsequent causal developments and evolution of the universe? Or of an end? Such talk is inaccurate and actually appears unjustified and untrue, if the universe was eternal, timeless and not, strictly speaking, the creation of an unfolding present from a beginning at the Big Bang.
III. The Consequences of Eternalism
Under the Eternalist view, the “block universe” just is, always was, and always will be. Like the traditional god of Western theism, the “block universe” is just eternal and (possibly) uncreated.
What does the Eternalist “block universe” theory of reality entail about human consciousness, decision-making and existence?
First, it appears to deny free will. How is our vision of an economic future created by conscious human choice that is real and contingent and that could have been different consistent with the “block universe”? It seems utterly inconsistent. The perception of free will and real choice in action are illusions. The future is written already.
The second question is this: what is a conscious human mind under the Eternalist view? I digress at length on this point.
Our mind appears to be an entity extended in the “block universe.” But the “block universe” is normally thought of as a timeless, static and unchanging entity. How can humans have a conscious perception of a dynamic universe changing in a moving present?
One answer offered is that all moments of conscious life are equally real. The mathematician Rudolf von Bitter Rucker puts it this way:
“What I want to say is that each of us is a certain spacetime pattern in the block universe. Today, or the day of my birth, or the day of my death—all are equally real, all are different pieces of the block universe. I will never stop living this instant. This instant will never cease to exist; this instant has always existed.” (Rucker 1984: 145).
If this were so, then why don’t you have direct access to all past conscious experiences and all future conscious experiences simultaneously in the way you have direct access to the present conscious moment? Or alternatively, why no memories of the future?
Another equally strange interpretation of conscious life and the perception of the present in the Eternalist “block universe” theory is the “eternal return” theory: to put it in simple terms, it is the notion that after death you actually experience your life again, and also exactly as it was before, and yet again after another experience of death, and so on and on, ad infinitum.
To elaborate, there is an infinite “stream” of conscious “yous” following one upon the other, in every instant of the discrete conscious moments of life, and eternally.
As a rough analogy, if each discrete conscious moment of life can be conceived as a frame in a film running in a stream of 1 frames per second, then, if there are 1,000,000 frames to one’s life, it is as if there will always and eternally be 1,000,000 movies playing simultaneously, but each will be running one second out of sync with previous one, with a projection of each and every different frame appearing simultaneously on all screens at any second.
The experience we have now is but one of the movies being projected, and it exists simultaneously with all the other movies running at different points in the sequence of frames: that is, a vast number of conscious “yous” experience a moving present at different points.
That is to say,
(a) You (1) are now reading this sentence;
(b) You (1) have now moved on to reading this sentence, but there is another You (2) who is real and conscious right now reading sentence (a);
(c) You (1) are now reading this, but You (2) is reading (b), and another You (3) is reading (a), and so on ad infinitum.*
*Or are You (1), You (2) and You (3) all just the same person?
Did you read these three sentences? You will now have the conscious experience of reading those same three sentences at this point in your life again and again for eternity, if the “eternal return” theory is true. (Leave my blog immediately if you think you should be doing more important things whose conscious experience will recur cyclically to you in perpetuity!)
If science might confirm – in any sense – the idea of life after death, then this is the only plausible hypothesis ever put forward. If you have a happy and enjoyable life, then you might take solace in such a view. After all, you are eternal!
But if your life is not happy and indeed for anyone whose life is unhappy, unfair and involves suffering, most people will complain that it is a most distressing and disturbing theory of existence.
I have not seen any detailed treatment of the philosophical and ethical implications of the “eternal return” theory (although my reading is limited), because, if it were true, it seems to have extraordinary implications.
But to return to my main point. The problems I identified above do not seem to be resolved by the “eternal return” idea of the perception of one “moving present” amongst an infinitive set of such conscious “presents.” It still does not explain why no one can remember the future or have access to all conscious moments – past, present and future simultaneously. And, above all, how can a dynamic process like an experience of conscious life and moving time be derived from a universe that is timeless and static?
IV. Conclusion
An Eternalist “block universe” theory of time seems incompatible with many conceptions of time and the future assumed by economics, and even (curiously) explanations about the origins of physical and biological phenomena and the direction of causality assumed in science itself.
I return to the question of how the assumptions of economics and social sciences (and common sense), which appear to assume “Presentism,” are to be reconciled with the “Eternalism” of the natural sciences.
There are possible explanations, as follows:
(1) Eternalism is true, and an explanation of its difficulties does exist, but has not been found. This would necessitate radical rethinking of aspects of social sciences, philosophy and even causal explanations in science itself;
(2) the current Eternalist “block universe” theory is wrong. Empirical sciences only ever produce theories that are provisionally true, so perhaps with further future evidence it will emerge that “Presentism” or the “Growing block Universe” theory is true. I will just note that I personally suspect that the “Growing block Universe” theory is the true description of reality.
(3) there is of course another most curious escape hatch. If the static universe is unchanging (by definition) and there is no flow of time, then our mental life cannot be caused by evolving physical events in, or emergent properties of, the brain and its processes. In other words, a materialistic/physicalist explanation of the mind as dependent on changing brain states is impossible. Therefore the human mind – and all its mental life including the perception of a flow of time – is explained by some other process, possibly only explicable in terms of dualism or idealism. Matter and mind are separate. Whatever reality we exist in is all in the mind and not causally related to the material world. So all the findings of modern sciences on time are irrelevant.
I suppose this might appeal to you, if you are a theist or partial to idealism! Alternatively, if our mental life is caused by dynamic physical events in and emergent properties of the brain and its parts, this suggests that a static, timeless universe is not a true description of reality.
At this point, one might be tempted to throw up one’s arms, and admit that one needs a degree in physics and years of research to have anything worthwhile and informed to say about such problems.
If one wants to defend a “Growing block Universe” view, then perhaps a satisfactory resolution can be found in this theory, because it assumes a real flow of time and a future that does not yet exist.
Finally, I post a video below with a talk by the cosmologist George Ellis defending the “Crystallizing Block Universe” theory (his version of the “Growing block Universe” or “Emergent Block Universe” view of time).
I will just note how from 4.30 he describes something that strikes me as remarkably consistent with the Post Keynesian vision of the economic and social world.
George Ellis asserts that at the macro level of the universe with its complex systems (that is, neither quantum nor micro levels of reality) it is remarkable how limited precise scientific prediction is: even the natural sciences cannot precisely predict the past or future from present and past data for many complex macro level phenomena.
From 11.25 onwards, we get a most interesting example of this: the structure and disposition of current galaxies was causally dependent on quantum fluctuations after the Big Bang. But even if one knew everything about those quantum fluctuations, science could not predict the details of the current structure of the universe. See also Ellis and Rothman (2010) for a defense of the “Crystallizing Block Universe” theory.
Addendum
I add another video below by the Cambridge philosopher Huw Price on the block universe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barbour, Julian B. 2000. The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe. Oxford University Press, New York.
Callender, Craig. 2010. “Is Time an Illusion?,” Scientific American 302.6: 58–65.
Carroll, Sean. “Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time,” September 1, 2011
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/09/01/#.UWwecUpXuPA
Davies, Paul. 2002. “That Mysterious Flow,” Scientific American 287.3: 40–47.
Dunn, Stephen P. 2008. The ‘Uncertain’ Foundations of Post Keynesian economics: Essays in Exploration. Routledge, London and New York.
Ellis, George F. R. and Tony Rothman. 2010. “Time and Spacetime: The Crystallizing Block Universe,” International Journal of Theoretical Physics 49.5: 988-1003.
Lynds, P. 2003. “Subjective Perception of Time and a Progressive Present Moment: The Neurobiological Key to Unlocking Consciousness,” http://cogprints.org/3125/
Maudlin, Tim. 2009. The Metaphysics within Physics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Maudlin, Tim. 2012. Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Rucker, Rudy von Bitter. 1984. The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Ma.
Sukys, Paul. 1999. Lifting the Scientific Veil: Science Appreciation for the Nonscientist. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD.
John E. King’s new book The Microfoundations Delusion: Metaphor and Dogma in the History of Macroeconomics (Cheltenham, 2012) charges neoclassical economics with the delusion that macroeconomic processes must just be explained in terms of microeconomics, and indeed that microeconomics is the proper foundation for all macroeconomic phenomena.
These ideas can be called “strong reductionism” and, curiously enough, the neoclassical delusion is a perfect example of what philosophers call “greedy reductionism.” The philosopher Daniel Dennett usefully calls “strong reductionism” the error of “greedy reductionism”: the belief that higher-level principles and traits of complex systems of all sciences (including social sciences) should be abandoned or simply explained in terms of lower-level terms (Dennett 1995: 80–81).
So what is the influence of this idea in the natural sciences and social sciences?
I. Reductionism in the Natural Sciences
King, citing the work of others, charges certain scientists with the “strong reductionism” fallacy, such as Richard Dawkins.
The objection is described by Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin in the following terms:
“Broadly, reductionists try to explain the properties of complex wholes—molecules, say, or societies—in terms of the units of which those molecules or societies are composed. They would argue, for example, that the properties of a protein molecule could be uniquely determined and predicted in terms of the properties of the electrons, protons, etc., of which its atoms are composed. And they would also argue that the properties of a human society are similarly no more than the sums of the individual behaviors and tendencies of the individual humans of which that society is composed. Societies are ‘aggressive’ because the individuals who compose them are ‘aggressive,’ for instance. In formal language, reductionism is the claim that the compositional units of a whole are ontologically prior to the whole that the units comprise. That is, the units and their properties exist before the whole, and there is a chain of causation that runs from the units to the whole.” (Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin 1984: 5).
But in my view the scientists or philosophers who are sometimes accused of being guilty of crude reductionism do not in fact hold that “strong reductionist” viewpoint.
Dawkins, for example, repudiates the type of “strong reductionism” or “precipice reductionism” that seeks to “explain complicated things directly in terms of the smallest parts, even, in some extreme versions of the myth, as the sum of the parts!” (Dawkins 1991: 13; emphasis in original). Instead, Dawkins endorses a “hierarchical reductionism” which recognises that the type of explanations suitable at a lower level are not the same as at higher levels (Dawkins 1991: 13; see also Dawkins 1986; Weinberg 1994).
Steven Pinker elaborates:
“Reductionism, like cholesterol, comes in good and bad forms. Bad reductionism—also called ‘greedy reductionism’ or ‘destructive reductionism’—consists of trying to explain a phenomenon in terms of its smallest or simplest constituents. Greedy reductionism is not a straw man. I know several scientists who believe (or at least say to granting agencies) that we will make breakthroughs in education, conflict resolution, and other social concerns by studying the biophysics of neural membranes or the molecular structure of the synapse. But greedy reductionism is far from the majority view, and it is easy to show why it is wrong. As the philosopher Hilary Putnam has pointed out, even the simple fact that a square peg won’t fit into a round hole cannot be explained in terms of molecules and atoms but only at a higher level of analysis involving rigidity (regardless of what makes the peg rigid) and geometry. And if anyone really thought that sociology or literature or history could be replaced by biology, why stop there? Biology could in turn be ground up into chemistry, and chemistry into physics, leaving one struggling to explain the causes of World War I in terms of electrons and quarks. Even if World War I consisted of nothing but a very, very large number of quarks in a very, very complicated pattern of motion, no insight is gained by describing it that way.
Good reductionism (also called hierarchical reductionism) consists not of replacing one field of knowledge with another but of connecting or unifying them. The building blocks used by one field are put under a microscope by another.” (Pinker 2003: 70).
But the point is that roughly hierarchical processes at each higher level might be understood at different levels of analysis and the lowest one is not necessarily of any use outside its restricted domain, and the higher-level analysis may well be the most important one.
In general, I would argue that, when properly limited to its correct place, “hierarchical reductionism” is no threat to science, the social sciences, and certainly not economics.
In a nice discussion in Debunking Economics (2011), Steve Keen notes how “strong reductionists” in the natural sciences thought that all the sciences could ultimately be reduced to physics (Keen 2011: 206), but this project has failed.
As Keen says,
“Strong reductionism implies that the behaviour of any complex system can be entirely understood by considering the behavior of its constituents, and then summing their effects: ‘the whole is the sum of its parts.’” (Keen 2011: 206).
But when complex systems have multiple nonlinear relations between variables the reality is that properties at the aggregate level can emerge which cannot be found at the lower level of individual components (Keen 2011: 207). The aggregate level phenomena are called “emergent properties” (Keen 2011: 207). Each higher-level science is not just an applied version of the science below it. The rough hierarchy of sciences exists, but
“‘at each higher stage entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry’” (Keen 2011: 208).
II. Strong Reductionism in Economics
In economics, the same “strong reductionist” method manifests itself in the desire to directly derive the properties of the macroeconomy from microeconomics (Keen 2011: 206). Under the neoclassical view, the whole economy or macroeconomy is just the sum of individual behaviour.
But this is just another instance of the “strong reductionist” fallacy. Macroeconomics is not applied microeconomics.
A case in point:
“despite its adherence to strong reductionism, neoclassical economics provides one of the best examples of emergent phenomena ever: the ‘Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu conditions’ … . This research proved that a market demand curve derived from the preferences of individual consumers who in isolation obeyed the Law of Demand – i.e., they had ‘downward-sloping demand curves’ – will not obey the Law of Demand: a market demand curve can have any shape at all.” (Keen 2011: 208).
While I will leave the question of how Austrian economics commits the “strong reductionist” fallacy for another post, one can certainly see it in the patron saint of modern Austrian economics, Ludwig von Mises:
“Society is concerted action, cooperation. Society is the outcome of conscious and purposeful behavior. … The total complex of the mutual relations created by such concerted actions is called society. … But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak of a society’s autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors.” (Mises 1998: 143).
In other words, Mises is just a crude “strong reductionist,” and for him society is just the “sum of its parts”: the “total complex of the mutual relations created by ... concerted actions is called society.” He has no understanding of emergent properties or downward causation.
Curiously, some few Austrians might have grasped the unsoundness of “strong reductionism,” despite (sometimes) protestations to the contrary. Hayek’s “spontaneous order” captures some elements of why greedy reductionism is wrong and how “emergent properties” or “emergent order” can occur in human society.
III. Conclusion
I would conclude that moderate reductionism or “hierarchical reductionism” is not a threat to good social science, nor to heterodox economics. It is “strong reductionism” that is the fallacy and bad science.
Certain scientists accused of “bad reductionism” (as far as I can see) are probably not guilty of it.
And finally the neoclassical attempt to derive macro from microfoundations is bad science.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dawkins, Richard. 1986. “Sociobiology: The New Storm in a Teacup,” in S. Rose and L. Appignanesi (eds.), Science and Beyond. Blackwell, Oxford. 61–78.
Dawkins, Richard. 1991. The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books, London.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. Penguin Books, London.
Keen, S. 2011. Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences (rev edn.). Zed Books, New York and London.
King, J. E. 2012. The Microfoundations Delusion: Metaphor and Dogma in the History of Macroeconomics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
Lewontin, Richard C., Rose, Steven and Leon J. Kamin. 1984. Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. Pantheon Books, New York.
Mises, L. 1998. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar's Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.
Pinker, Steven 2003. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Penguin Books, London.
Weinberg, Steven. 1994. Dreams of a Final Theory. Vintage Books, New York.
I know many religious people hate Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and perhaps some of their opinions are over the top. Nevertheless, this talk on morality and science covers some difficult and fascinating problems that are relevant for any secular theory of ethics.
There is no doubt we have certain innate moral feelings, ideas and propensities: these are the result of evolution by natural selection. But trying to justify an ethical system by simply appealing to this nature is unsound. It commits the appeal to nature fallacy. One needs a rational justification for ethical ends and how to behave to achieve these ends.
I like the comments of Harris on how standard consequentialism needs to be revised and how notions of justice and fairness are not incompatible with a consequentialist theory of ethics.
