At a certain age you look back on your life, your work, and ask, what has it all been about? Perhaps you reassess the fundamental assumptions in your life (the things you held to be true without questioning them), the way you look at life, or what you think is important. I don't know. Maybe a lot of people don't- or can't: the sheer weight of the past incapacitates us. Creatures of habit, it takes a tremendous effort to stay open to the world as we grow older.
It's interesting to note the economists who, after working for their whole professional lives as bread and butter economists, suddenly and almost miraculously pontificate about how economics is brilliant and useful and rigorous but... And that 'but' usually means; it needs to become a more humanistic discipline, incorporate ethics or the insights of other disciplines. It needs to be more historically informed, less abstract, more mathematical and complex, less certain, more contextualized (add what you will). The point is; these 'moves' are rarely ever made during their professional careers.
Tirole, a Nobel-prize winning economist, writes in the FT (Jan. 10th, 2019) about how economics needs to become more "multi-disciplinary". One hears that kind of language quite a lot in academia but I'm not sure what it actually means. Here are some examples (from Tirole's article):
"Researchers there publish papers on issues such as the ethics of self-driving cars, age-related diseases, biases in judges’ decision-making and co-operation in indigenous communities in the Amazon. "
Well, yes. I suppose that gives us some indication of how seriously Toulouse takes "multi-disciplinarity" !
How can economics enter into a dialogue with other subjects when it is some committed to methodological individualism? It would have to jettison its whole outlook. That is simply not possible as long as it sits firmly embedded within liberalism and capitalism. A radical critique of economics would require a fundamental metaphysical reconstruction of the individual; it would need to understand our relation to other people and nature and objects of beauty in a different way; it would have to understand time and desire in a different way; and it would have to reconsider what is meant by 'science'.
I don't think Tirole or others like him are really being that reflective. At a certain age there's a tendency to try and justify-perhaps against your better instincts- all that you've sowed. Economists are in a bind and it's one they've sleepwalked into. In fact, they've helped perpetuate delusions, distortions to the idea of what it is to truly be a human being. And those false ideas have had, and continue to have, profound implications for the way in which we live. At a certain age, I suggest, one has to be honest with oneself and take responsibility.
It's interesting to note the economists who, after working for their whole professional lives as bread and butter economists, suddenly and almost miraculously pontificate about how economics is brilliant and useful and rigorous but... And that 'but' usually means; it needs to become a more humanistic discipline, incorporate ethics or the insights of other disciplines. It needs to be more historically informed, less abstract, more mathematical and complex, less certain, more contextualized (add what you will). The point is; these 'moves' are rarely ever made during their professional careers.
Tirole, a Nobel-prize winning economist, writes in the FT (Jan. 10th, 2019) about how economics needs to become more "multi-disciplinary". One hears that kind of language quite a lot in academia but I'm not sure what it actually means. Here are some examples (from Tirole's article):
"Researchers there publish papers on issues such as the ethics of self-driving cars, age-related diseases, biases in judges’ decision-making and co-operation in indigenous communities in the Amazon. "
Well, yes. I suppose that gives us some indication of how seriously Toulouse takes "multi-disciplinarity" !
How can economics enter into a dialogue with other subjects when it is some committed to methodological individualism? It would have to jettison its whole outlook. That is simply not possible as long as it sits firmly embedded within liberalism and capitalism. A radical critique of economics would require a fundamental metaphysical reconstruction of the individual; it would need to understand our relation to other people and nature and objects of beauty in a different way; it would have to understand time and desire in a different way; and it would have to reconsider what is meant by 'science'.
I don't think Tirole or others like him are really being that reflective. At a certain age there's a tendency to try and justify-perhaps against your better instincts- all that you've sowed. Economists are in a bind and it's one they've sleepwalked into. In fact, they've helped perpetuate delusions, distortions to the idea of what it is to truly be a human being. And those false ideas have had, and continue to have, profound implications for the way in which we live. At a certain age, I suggest, one has to be honest with oneself and take responsibility.
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