2 Responses to Ixerei

• tmaxPA says:

  4 June 2013 at 05:57:03

  Mainstream economists imagine themselves themselves not only as more rigorous but also as more scientific than “non-mathematical” economists, who rely upon verbal reasoning.

  Somehow I find myself here through an image link on Google (from your "batman origin" graphic.) I perused your piece and feel compelled to respond.

  Relying upon "verbal reasoning" is called having an opinion. It isn't even scientific enough that economics (or anything else) could even be considered as "more scientific", since verbal reasoning is not science at all, it is in fact the opposite of science. And while economics itself barely qualifies as a science, it is the fact that economists use mathematics which enables it to do so. Mathematics is, in fact, what makes science scientific, as repeatable results can be obtained only with measurable quantities of things, and without repeatable results there is no science.

  So basically, I have to say, you aren't just wrong, you're a whole handful of layers of wrong. Science is only what you can do with math, math is only what you can do with quantities, and economists are only at all scientific when they study real quantities, i.e., use math, i.e., do science. Otherwise, they're just very bad political philosophers who wished the numbers would back them up when they clearly don't. As I suspect you are, as well.

  Economics isn't really the kind of area where you can say there is such a thing as a "mainstream". I think I would call what you refer to as "mainstream economists" to be simply "good economists", and whatever type you believe is being 'marginalized' as something other than mainstream are what I would call "bad economists". Granted, that's just my opinion. But since you don't believe rigorous math is necessary for economics, then my opinion is every bit as good as yours, isn't it?

  Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

  Reply
  • Daniel says:

    4 June 2013 at 08:38:07

    I perused your piece

    Perhaps you mean the sense of peruse which refers to skimming rather than to scanning.

    The Karl [sic!] Menger cited in the first paragraph was an eminent mathematician of the 20th century. The fact that you're disagreeing with him on the natures and possibilities of verbal and symbolic reasoning ought to give you pause.

    As I noted in my essay,

    [A]lthough the non-mathematical economists are relying upon verbal reasoning, they are doing so where logic as such is to be brought into play; which, as it turns-out, is true of the mainstream economists as well.

    Now, I'm an economist who actually does use formal logic to get from my premises to my conclusions. (Do yourself a favor and skim the proofs in the Theorems subsection of my paper on incomplete preferences.) The fact is that most academic economists find that sort of thing difficult or impossible to follow (even with my using a whole lot more natural language in the exposition than comes naturally to me for such work). The superstructure used by mainstream economists is nothing but verbal reasoning. And this is true of the vast majority of scientists in most sciences.

    Let's accept, for the moment, the frequently made claim that science necessarily entails repeatable results; the repetition in question is actually in empirical observation, not to the reasoning that gets one to the proposition whose content is potentially observable; the objection is to reports of phenomena that are never seen again. Yes, the reasoning processes ought also to be repeatable, but scientists are typically not much concerned to repeat the reasoning process of the earlier researcher; indeed, part of the reproduction can be to get the same results with apparatus differently constructed and therefore entailing a somewhat different process of reasoning. And, no, the thing observed need not itself be quantifiable to be repeatedly observable. As to the sort of repetition that is possible for reasoning processes, most science engages in such repetition for verbal reasoning as a matter of routine.

    (The claim that science necessarily entails repeatable results is false, however. While repeatable results are virtually a sine qua non when science is conducted as a joint, social activity, science is possible to Robinson Crusoe, and is then a matter of relying upon empirical data whenever possible, deductive logic whenever possible, and a sound method for dealing with uncertainty. The last proves to be far more of a sticking point than most people imagine, but that would be a matter for another essay.)

    I didn't say that rigorous mathematics weren't necessary for economics. I said that rigor can be achieved without formal expression, and that arithmetic is only a part of mathematics, and often the wrong part for the task.

    An extended (and uncreditted!) riff off Pauli's quip, supplemented by unsubstantiated proclamations, has no hope of proving helpful, except perhaps as something to provide contrast for a more careful argument.

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