If you’re still here, then I have to thank you for your patience. Even if the previous posts didn’t enlighten you any, there were still important for me to write, so, here we are. But the previous four posts did have a point: in spelling out the trajectory that got me started, I hope to make the direction I’m headed more clear and precise.
Economists clearly do not have a grasp on what’s at the bottom of economics. Now, this is amply demonstrated, I think, by the fact that both Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman have Nobel prizes. A friend of mine once told me this joke: If you ask 12 economists a question, you’ll get 12 different answers, or 13 if one of them went to Harvard. The South Park episode “Margaritaville” has a brilliant commentary on fiscal policy, comparing it to alectryomancy.
Clearly, economics is a mess; yet in a sense, this is not economists’ fault. Their job is economics, not meta-economics or the philosophy of economics. Yet as a philosopher, I have to look in shame at my own discipline: we haven’t exactly been doing our job, either. To my great embarrassment, my observation of the state of philosophy of economics is more or less precisely analogous to that of political philosophy. Rather than doing what philosophy does best, namely questioning assumptions, digging deeper, looking for roots, philosophers have merely taken the content already in common currency among the practitioners of the field, and tried to pretty it up for them.
There is so much fertile ground in politics for exploring the relationships between governments and populations, cultures and societies; to say nothing of providing a framework for a true political science from which to evaluate the effectiveness of political systems on honest metrics. I suppose that before that can happen, sociology needs to get its house in order, and I’m working on that, too. But, one huge project at a time, I always say.
Likewise, what philosophy of economics there is, is just the prettifying of messy and inherently inconsistent economic concepts. That’s not what we philosophers are supposed to be doing! But, our professions lingering shame is my great big opportunity, one which I am grabbing with both hands right now.
Economics is in dire need of a robust, well-established, and agreed-upon ontology, and that is what I am attempting to devise.
For those not familiar with philosophical terms: ontology is just the study of what there is. It’s what used to be called metaphysics before wiccans and ghost-hunters stole the term for their own idiotic ends. (One reason I HATE Borders and will shop at Barnes and Noble till I die is that in the former, the Metaphysics section is populated by Silver Ravenwolf, and in the latter, by Aristotle.) Basically what I’m saying is, nobody, especially the economists, have any clue what economics is actually about; and what I am attempting to do, is actually figure that out.
Or rather, what I actually have done. I’m pretty sure I’m on to “the truth” as it were, about economics. Here, the fundamental naturalistic stance has been vital: by assuming that economic activity is continuous with human activity in the evolutionary past, one is forced into looking at the most basic features of economics, in biological and physical terms. By abstracting away from anything that requires the complex sociological and linguistic frameworks that current economic activity requires, a much clearer picture of what economics is emerges…
…with the caveat that this assumes some fairly non-standard biology and psychology, looked at from the standpoint of an unusual application of physics. And by nonstandard I don’t mean “inaccurate,” but rather interpretations that are not generally regarded is useful or common in their respective fields, yet which are to be found in the available literature. Just because it’s not how biology and psychology are normally taught doesn’t mean that it’s incorrect to look at them that way….
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