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Why Philosophers Hate Economists
I can’t be the first person on Ricochet to have noticed that philosophers and economists don’t always get along. The tension between the two bears some resemblance to the tension between conservatives and liberals. As the old trope goes, conservatives believe that liberalism is wrong, while liberals believe that conservatism is evil. Similarly, when economists and philosophers disagree, the economists believe it’s because the philosophers aren’t making sense, while the philosophers believe it’s because the economists are morally bankrupt.
Do you have a theory about this? I do. Here goes:
Perhaps the main reason philosophers hate economists is because philosophers and economists both use the same word to mean very different things. To be fair, philosophers used the word first (philosophers existed way before economists). But you’d think philosophers would have no problem understanding that some words are simply semantically overloaded, and this word is one of them.
If you haven’t guessed what the word is by now, it is “rational” (along with its sister word “rationality”). My understanding of philosophy is somewhat on the shaky side, but it seems to me that philosophers generally consider a rational actor to be one who is both self-aware and capable of discursive reasoning.
To an economist, being a rational actor requires neither self-awareness nor discursive reasoning. Rather, being rational in the economic sense simply means responding fairly predictably to incentives. By this logic, even trees could count as rational actors, as Milton Friedman hypothesized:
Let us turn now to another example, this time a constructed one designed to be an analogue of many hypotheses in the social sciences. Consider the density of leaves around a tree. I suggest the hypothesis that the leaves are positioned as if each leaf deliberately sought to maximize the amount of sunlight it receives, given the position of its neighbors, as if it knew the physical laws determining the amount of sunlight that would be received in various positions and could move rapidly or instantaneously from any one position to any other desired and unoccupied position.
Now some of the more obvious implications of this hypothesis are clearly consistent with experience: for example, leaves are in general denser on the south than on the north side of trees but, as the hypothesis implies, less so or not at all on the northern slope of a hill or when the south side of the trees is shaded in some other way. Is the hypothesis rendered unacceptable or invalid because, so far as we know, leaves do not “deliberate” or consciously “seek,” have not been to school and learned the relevant laws of science or the mathematics required to calculate the “optimum” position, and cannot move from position to position?
Clearly, none of these contradictions of the hypothesis is vitally relevant; the phenomena involved are not within the “class of phenomena the hypothesis is designed to explain”; the hypothesis does not assert that leaves do these things but only that their density is the same as if they did.
Despite the apparent falsity of the “assumptions” of the hypothesis, it has great plausibility because of the conformity of its implications with observation. We are inclined to “explain” its validity on the ground that sunlight contributes to the growth of leaves and that hence leaves will grow denser or more putative leaves survive where there is more sun, so the result achieved by purely passive adaptation to external circumstances is the same as the result that would be achieved by deliberate accommodation to them.
Most likely, a philosopher’s gut reaction is that calling a tree a rational actor debases the very concept of rationality.
Hopefully, his second reaction is that different disciplines may use the same word in different ways without debasing each others’ concepts, but I doubt many philosophers get that far. Not because philosophers are unusually obtuse, but because our own conception of rationality is so bound up in our self-identity that we instinctively want to defend “our” definition of the word in order to defend who we are:
Being human means being a motivated reasoner, even when you’re a philosopher.
Philosophers might find some consolation in the fact that good economists do indeed know how weak the economic notion of rationality is. As Ronald Coase (an economist so insightful that he won a Nobel prize for work that included no calculations beyond simple arithmetic) put it,
The rational utility maximizer of economic theory bears no resemblance to the man on the Clapham bus [the British equivalent of the man on the street] or, indeed, to any man (or woman) on any bus. There is no reason to suppose that most human beings are engaged in maximizing anything unless it be unhappiness, and even this with incomplete success…
[W]hatever makes men choose as they do, we must be content with the knowledge that for groups of human beings, in almost all circumstances, a higher (relative) price for anything will lead to a reduction in the amount demanded. This does not only refer to a money price but to price in its widest sense.
Whether men are rational or not in deciding to walk across a dangerous thoroughfare to reach a certain restaurant, we can be sure that fewer will do so the more dangerous it becomes. And we need not doubt that the availability of a less dangerous alternative, say, a pedestrian bridge, will normally reduce the number of those crossing the thoroughfare, nor that, as what is gained by crossing becomes more attractive, the number of people crossing will increase.
It’s unfortunate, in retrospect, that “rationality” should be the economic shorthand for “responding fairly predictably to prices in their widest sense”. If economists had simply used a different word, I think they’d get a lot less hate from philosophers. Moreover, us ordinary folk would have one less overloaded term to deal with. It’s difficult to carry on a conversation when people use the same cluster of letters to refer to such wildly different concepts, especially when both concepts are intimately tied to human identity.
Published in General
This is what I like about the form of negative theology that I graduated with in my head (I make no claims for its heritage). Essentially:
1. We do not, and can not, know much (I disagree with Descartes’ claim to know math).
2. That said, God has given us to know quite a lot. Fire is hot, Mrs. of England is lovely, Jesus died for us.
3. We are to approach God/ Truth as little children, and accept the truths he has given us.
In other words, we know that, eg., God is not good (in that our concept of good is radically insufficient/ inaccurate), but we should ignore the apparent flaws in the model we are given, and wholeheartedly believe that God is good, embracing the guidance of the model, even where our reason tells us otherwise, reason being pretty far down the list of things likely to guide us to the truth (although it is on the list).
To me acting rationally means that a person acts and makes decisions according to his or her environment. It doesn’t mean that the person makes the correct or optimal decision.
Given what Scruton is writing about (aesthetics, sex), the “quibbles” I have with him are fairly foundational.
If he claims that human sex is different from animal sex because “humans have certain ‘rational’ cognitive faculties that animals utterly lack”, but it turns out that animals don’t lack those faculties (though they may only have them in diminished form), then his argument has more than a minor problem.
If he writes about aesthetics and sex, two subjects intimately tied to visceral sensation, and he makes generalizations about humans’ visceral sensation (such as “we always know when we’re in pain”) that I know firsthand are false, that could be a huge problem. How can we understand how visceral sensations inform human reason if we’re unwilling to acknowledge how humans really perceive those sensations?
Naturally, I notice flaws most when the subject matter holds personal interest for me. But all knowledge is personal, and we’re all interested reasoners.
Your reasoning seemed to go: philosophers seem to think they have some particular understanding of “foundational assumptions” that people in other disciplines don’t get, but here’s a philosopher who makes claims that I regard as ill-grounded so what’s the difference? I’m explaining that the philosopher’s sense of superiority in this regard is rooted in an objective hierarchy of knowledge. Particular instances of philosophers saying things you find questionable don’t address this general area of asymmetry, however central your quibbles may be to the particular argument in question.
Well, the “obvious” obvious is that we exist. I wish I had an exhaustive list.
It’s obvious that I exist. I can’t say the same about the rest of y’all.
;-)
Which is why economics, at it’s best and fullest extent, is useful for determining how to maximize utility. How to define utility or even whether utility should trump other considerations are questions that philosophy is better equipped to address.
And as good as philosophy is at doing this, and for all of the millennia of philosophizing, there is still something that philosophy can’t definitively provide: a first cause. Which is why theology (either as normally understood or as encompassing materialism) ultimately governs philosophy. Logic ultimately needs a starting point that is itself not supported by logic.
But what objective hierarchy of knowledge? Why should it be obvious that there is a hierarchy of knowledge?
Comparing JS Bach’s knowledge of music to Gauss’s knowledge of math and science, how would we decide who has the superior knowledge? Is math a better form of knowing than music, or music a better form of knowing than math? Or are they simply… different ways of knowing?
If there is to be a hierarchy of knowledge, then there must be at least a partial ordering of forms of knowledge, and I would really like to know how such a partial ordering would be justified.
Just restricting ourselves to philosophical terms, why should ontology be superior to, say, aesthetics or epistemology? How can you even reason about being without knowing how to know about it (epistemology), or appreciating and loving beings for what they are (aesthetics)?
An objective hierarchy of knowledge is a philosopher’s way of saying a model.
More than one of Ricochetian has observed that people should include moral goods as well as material goods in their “personal utility function”, for whatever that’s worth.
Huh. Well you could’ve fooled me. But then, this whole thread started because of semantic confusion.
Oddly enough, when I google “objective hierarchy of knowledge model”, I mostly get hits related to education, not, as far as I can tell, philosophy.
I was being a bit facetious. That said, claims of an objective hierarchy of knowledge do seem to boil down to being philosophical models.
“Personal” is the key word in that formulation. Personally, I find the usefulness and objectivity of economics to diminish as it approaches the macro and leaves the micro behind.
If you start your hierarchy of knowledge with ontology, you can have a glorious discussion of all that is (like the Greeks and Medievals). If you start it with epistemology you end up navel-gazing for a few centuries, as the early moderns did. I know which I’d rather do. But either way you’re consulting a philosopher. Philosophy is the study of first principles, or the parameters under which all further discussion can take place.
Sounds to me like your preference for ontology is an aesthetic preference, then. I mean, if you justify its superiority by calling it “glorious”.
If the choice of which branch of knowledge is superior is an aesthetic one, then doesn’t aesthetics underpin the whole shebang?
Also, if epistemology is inferior to ontology, how do you account for people who are much more fascinated by the question, “How do we know what we know?” than by the question, “What is being?” Are they disordered people? Do their tastes simply differ from yours? Or what?
And you’re still presupposing that knowledge follows a hierarchy. That various forms of knowledge probably can and should follow an organized relationship, sure. But why is the organization a hierarchical one?
By the way, I don’t think philosophers *hate* economists, but insofar as they, umm, have issues with people from other disciplines, the reason usually relates to this issue that I mention: philosophy just is by its nature the study of “first principles” (whatever you take those to be) so it has a kind of logical priority to other disciplines. But because it’s not the most prestigious discipline nowadays, other scholars (most especially scientists in my experience, but economists are sometimes guilty too) act as though these more abstract questions just don’t need to be worked out, or as though the answers to them are obvious. Or, worst of all, they think because they know a heck of a lot about, you know, earthworms, or emerging markets, or whatever, they must be completely competent to discourse on ontology or epistemology without bothering with that whole formal-study business.
It doesn’t always go well. Abstract, foundational questions sometimes do merit sustained attention, and that’s what philosophers are for.
I actually think the existence of a hierarchy of knowledge is pretty intuitive. That’s precisely why “prestigious” disciplines don’t want to relinquish it to their lowlier colleagues.
Heh. Maybe if I thought philosophers made more sense, I wouldn’t be so easy to fool. Yes, the hierarchy is a model. And why *that* model as opposed to another one?
Because there are certain questions that don’t make sense until others are answered. The question “Who should our elected leader be?” doesn’t make sense until we’ve agreed on a model of government. The question “which building material should we use?” is unanswerable to people who haven’t agreed that they want to erect something.
The hierarchy of knowledge puts questions in their proper order. More abstract questions need to be answered before we can set parameters for making sense of concrete data.
I don’t actually think it’s a question of interest per se. I’m actually more arrested by moral philosophy than ontology, but I still think ontology is higher in the hierarchy of knowledge.
Ontology is the highest science if the object of our broader interest is the universe. We end up falling back on epistemology if we have a crisis of confidence about whether there is an ordered universe or whether we’re in a position to have any contact with it. Experience would suggest that this doesn’t get us far, and we end up in solipsistic navel-gazing.
I don’t think it’s really a question of what people prefer. It’s about what their “available tools” equip them to do. If you want to be a scientist but don’t trust your tools, you might spend a lifetime tinkering with microscopes.
No, you become a mathematician ;-)
If more abstract questions need to be answered before we can set parameters for making sense of concrete data, how is that children almost universally learn “backwards” according to your hierarchy?
Why is it that teaching children set theory before arithmetic usually fails? (Set theory is both more abstract and elementary than arithmetic.) Why is mathematical logic, which underpins everything mathematicians do, not a course that every freshman math major is required to take, but is instead geared towards upperclassmen?
Why is it that category theory, which is sort of like the abstraction of all mathematics, is something many mathematicians prefer not to mess with, and indeed derogate as “general abstract nonsense”?
To learn, we usually start on the “surface”, it seems. Then we go “deeper”. Maybe going “deeper” in different branches of knowledge takes us in different directions. That ultimately, we should all end in the same place is non-obvious.
I believe all knowledge ultimately rests in God, but that’s a religious belief, not a philosophical justification.
I resemble that remark….
Phenomenal point.
I wish I could remember the citation, but…. There is a model of learning that suggests we go concrete-abstract-concrete. I.e., we learn to manipulate the physical (e.g. countable things); then abstract them (natural numbers) ; then, through abstraction, refine the theory (integers); and finally, return with the upgraded theory to the physical once again (add negative numbers to the number line). And then the cycle continues.
Pedagogy doesn’t always follow the hierarchy of knowledge, temporally speaking. That doesn’t tell against its existence. As you say, we usually begin to learn about things on a fairly experiential level, and then sometimes we go “deeper” (but I might say “higher”) so we can understand them better. That can work in no small part because in pedagogy we often trust the authority of teachers to stand as a fill-in for individual understanding. If and when we reach a point where experience isn’t telling us what we want to know, that’s when we want to move up the hierarchy.
Children generally get their first experiences of politics from the hubbub of electoral campaigning, and they work back from that to an understanding of representative government. That doesn’t change the fact that the question “what kind of government should we have” is logically prior to “who should I vote for”. As individuals we step into the middle of a world where many of those “first principle” questions have already been answered, but the sense of the more particular questions still depends on the prior answer to the more abstract. (cont)
And if things start to break down, we may need to consult the people who have studied the first principles. If those people happen to be “low status” citizens in our particular society, the lower-order specialists may just want to go it alone, and they are liable to make a mess of things. That’s what frequently happens with philosophy and the other social sciences.
If so, then I think you’ll enjoy this somewhat cheeky piece about macro vs microeconomics. Midge, it’s called “Why Economics Gets a Bad Rap“, so you might find it of interest too.
Yes, that addresses my outlook pretty much, though some of those examples of micro fileds are in danger of not being micro enough to escape my skepticism.
Midge, one part in particular might have some bearing on one of our recent conversations; apparently some economists worked out a model to better match organ donors to organ recipients – I wonder if the model involves price points or legalization of organ selling.
I have, somewhat cheekily, occasionally asked my husband, “So is there really such a thing as macroeconomics?” Now, unlike me, he’s a real economist. His answer is yes, but he also completely sympathizes with my question.