How Normative Should Economics Be?

I take the position that economics should be normative only when the objective function is externally provided; that is, if government says “we want economic growth,” economics should tell government what to do. If on the other hand government says “we want to balance growth and stability,” economics should only tell government what to do once the relative weights have been decided by the government. The same logic would apply to guiding individual decisions: it can help individuals maximize expected utility given a list of inputs and functional form, but it can’t provide any meaningful ideas about what a sensible utility function looks like. So if government says “we want to maximize consumer utility,” I’d say economics can’t be normative, and shouldn’t try.

Not sure where such a conditional position falls on your scale.

Is it fair to argue that an economist making normative judgments regarding whether certain ends are appropriate isnt really engaging in economic theory at all? Its analogous to an engineer criticizing a bridge not because of its design, but because (s)he believes the bridge would be better utilized in a different location. (I am out of my league here. I am not familiar with the arguments regarding normative economics and what it means to be taking part in “economic debate.” This is just an intuitive response.)

Economics is value-free. Economics can inform normative arguments, but when economists engage in normative debate they are doing so outside of their capacity as economists.

Norman:

“if you want x, then you should do y” is not normative analysis. Normative economics would be “y is a goal we should pursue, and we will use means x to attain it”

Your position properly understood lies in the first category.

I think of economics as the philosophy of the real. Its value is in its ability to explain to the philosophers of the unreal why their utopian visions will not work. And yes, many who now call themselves “economists” are actually in the latter group.

I think economists should always be neutral when speaking as experts and promote advocacy as individuals only.

Bryan often oversteps this and weakens his expertise when he argues about e.g.: child-rearing, religion, and immigration as if they flow naturally from economics, when in fact they require many beliefs and values others/most don’t share.

The fact that most economists act like Bryan while also benefiting from the mantle of “scientific expertise” is a sad fact of the human condition.

Hence I’m caught in normatively indicating to Bryan that he should speak more “positively,” but realize such advocacy is futile.

I also acknowledge that there’s a prisoner’s dilemma where if those you disagree with insist on speaking normatively it seems foolish to hold back as well.

@zefreak

Economics isn’t value free, even in that manner, sadly: you still have to make judgment calls on which models approximate reality the best, and that invariably entails dismissing certain phenomena as unimportant.

(Take, for instance, the standard assumption that mutually-agreed upon trade is mutually beneficial. We know already that people can be influenced – advertising is a very big industry! Nonetheless, it is mathematically much simpler to just assume equivalence).

Caplan provides another example by asserting that optimizing behavior is material self-interest. Which immediately attaches normative implications.

Mathematical modeling also predisposes us towards certain conclusions. Pareto optimality is very attractive because it is simple, despite the absence of another, presumably non-zero-desirable, goal of equality of opportunity (the sadist torturing a victim is Pareto). General equilibrium effects are known to be indeterminate, so we focus on the partial equilibrium. Network effects, strategic behavior, and imperfect information are difficult to model intuitively, so in a pinch we flee back towards well-known models. You may have noticed this back when the financial crisis started: many bloggers reverted back to prewar Say’s law classicism while others reverted back to old Keynesianism, with everybody forgetting all the progress made since 1950.

I agree with Merlin, I don’t think there is a distinction between normative and positive economics. Economics is fundamentally about man and that’s what also makes it a moral science.

The comparison with engineering is an invalid one. Physicist, engineers and chemist do not impose their values on society for they’re not describing society. Their object of study, how relevant to society it may be, has nothing to do with society.

The only thing economics can do is show you what the likely or possible outcome of your actions/decisions might be. This then can give you feedback on the goals you’d want to achieve.
In other words it can tell you the price, but not whether or not you should buy it.

Doesn’t this make it a solely positive science then? I’d say no, asking the question is in my opinion a normative act. Seperating the normative from the positive would be seperating the question from the answer. That would reduce both to gibberish.

I mean look at all the economists from Adam Smith, including Karl Marx, to the present day, haven’t they all been motivated by a better tommorow? For instance both Keynes and Hayek were both motivated in their study to preserve liberty in the face of an economic downturn. The former to fix it and the latter to prevent it. Their research question were fundamentally normative, ie. how to preserve liberty?

This also brings me back to the natural sciences, physicists have not divided their science in ideological cleavages. There is no saltwater school or freshwater school of physics, they might disagree but their truth is an objective one, it doesn’t tell you how to run society.

Actually, come to think of – that contingency is more important than the primary distinction: “so long as he has done so with intellectual honesty”

There is not much difference between an economist that says “If you want growth, this policy is no good” and one that says “this policy is no good, it will destroy growth” – but there is a world of difference between a good and a bad economist.

The wise man expunges “positive v. normative” from his vocabulary. Ises and oughts are easily and naturally translated into one another, based on the purposes of the interlocutors and the discourse situation.

The words “positive” and “normative” do not mean nothing, but what they mean can always be expressed in better terms. “Normative” often means outspoken, unconventional, strident, etc. It can also mean loose, vague, and indeterminate.

Tell me “positive” or “normative” for each of the following:

(1) The minimum wage ought to be repealed.

(2) I think the minimum wage ought to be repealed.

(3) The minimum wage reduces social welfare.

(4) Wise people oppose the minimum wage.

The primary verb of (1) is an ought, while the primary verbs of (2), (3), and (4) are ises. But all four statements are really the same.

Coase used the term “affectation” for posing as “positive” and not “normative.”

Daniel: “Many people who talk like this look a lot like utopians themselves to the rest of us.”

Liberty is worth fighting for. Society is not.

I think it must be normative: without at least some value system, one cannot distinguish important from irrelevant.

“If you want growth, this policy is no good” and one that says “this policy is no good, it will destroy growth”

What? There’s an enormous difference. The former allows for evaluation of the policy on the basis of other considerations. The latter states that the only acceptable metric for evaluation of policy is how it affects growth.

“the sadist torturing a victim is Pareto”

No it isn’t. A Pareto improvement is where you can move from one state to another state while making at least one person better off without making any other person worse off. Moving from a state without torture to a state with torture makes at least one person worse off and so is not a Pareto improvement. You are confusing Pareto efficiency with some kind of utilitarianism.

I’m puzzled by the way Bryan phrases the three positions on his list. The first sentence of each position is normative (“Economics should be …”), the second positive (“Economics is …”). So when he asks me which position is mine, I don’t know whether he’s asking me for my normative position (on how economics ought to be practiced) or my positive position. And if the latter, is it for my position on what the term “economics” denotes, or instead on how economists actually behave?

In making these distinctions I agree with Mario Rizzo’s comment above, and with Lionel Robbins. There are propositions of positive economics, of economic theory and economic history that are uncolored by the researcher’s ethical judgments. (Alternative test: they are accepted by economists across the spectrum of ethical positions.) And there are propositions of normative economics, of political economy (advice to policy-makers) and of home economics (advice to consumers) that combine positive economics with value judgments. The value judgments come from “outside” in that they (obviously) do not derive from the propositions of positive economics.

Dan Klein has a point: an economist who makes an affectation out of avoiding “ought” statements, while still wanting to get across his policy judgments, will often end up using awkward circumlocutions. Or he will smuggle norms into his language under sheep’s clothing, for example talk about “social welfare” as if that were a concept of positive economic theory. Still, as Robbins taught us, a wise man recognizes and judiciously applies the distinction between positive and normative. He does not abstain from normative statements, but he recognizes them for what they are.

Thanks Larry.

I don’t think “uncolored by the researcher’s ethical judgments” makes much sense. Aren’t judgments (presumably “ethical judgments”) — and the purposes they serve– involved in deciding the terms, interpretations, formulations one practices? The problems taken up? The alternatives considered? The arguments put on the table? The audiences to address? The literature to relate to?

We may identify a kind of scholarly discourse practiced by ethicists, such as Peter Singer. Nonetheless, something much broader, ethical judgment, is not some specialist area of science. It is inherent in being human. And every economist is a human. “Economist” is a subset of “human.”

You write: A wise man “does not abstain from normative statements, but he recognizes them for what they are.”

Well, all statements involve ethical judgments, so all statements are “normative.” Once we recognize that, what’s the point of saying a statement is “normative”?

Again, the term does mean something to people. Better terms are available, so junk “normative.”

Practicing “pos/norm” ways, you imply that “social welfare” is not “a concept of positive economic theory.” Why not? Because it is loose and vague? Because there is much disagreement about how to express or characterize it? If so, will these qualities hold up as definition of “normative”? Is a thing’s being vague a necessary condition for its being “normative”? A sufficient condition? Is a thing’s being controversial or outside the 40-yard lines a necessary condition for its being “normative”? A sufficient condition?

Again, I say scrap “normative” and just say “vague,” “controversial,” “libertarian,” etc.

Tell me “positive” or “normative” for each of the following:

(1) The minimum wage ought to be repealed.

(2) I think the minimum wage ought to be repealed.

(3) The minimum wage reduces social welfare.

(4) Wise people oppose the minimum wage.

The primary verb of (1) is an ought, while the primary verbs of (2), (3), and (4) are ises. But all four statements are really the same.”

Daniel, I think you are confused.
1. Normative
2. Positive (if it is indeed a fact that you believe so)
3. Positive (if it is indeed a fact that minimum wage reduces welfare)
4. Positive (although its truth value can be debated.

The 4 are not the same. The first is universally prescriptive and from a non-cognitivist standpoint is meaningless. The other three are statements of fact (whether valid or not) and thus have truth values.

I think your confusion stems from the colloquial usage of the word ‘should’, as most people equivocate between position 1 and 2, or the universally prescriptive and ‘I feel that’ uses of ‘should’.

“Ises and oughts are easily and naturally translated into one another, based on the purposes of the interlocutors and the discourse situation.”

If you mean that by using an ‘if-then’ framework you can translate an ought to an is, then yes. But such an analysis is still not normative, as you are assuming the truth of the ought to derive further oughts, not asserting the truth of the ought.

As an example, if I were to say “for the sake of argument, IF Yahweh exists THEN praying to him would be a good idea” does not assert that Yahweh exists nor does it assert that anyone should pray to him. It is a positive analysis contingent on the validity of its assumptions. This is what economics does.

David: “(Take, for instance, the standard assumption that mutually-agreed upon trade is mutually beneficial. We know already that people can be influenced – advertising is a very big industry! Nonetheless, it is mathematically much simpler to just assume equivalence).”

The assumption that voluntary trade is an example of slipping value statements into a positive science. Sure, most people do believe that such trade is mutually beneficial, but they are applying economic theory to their value system in order to derive such a conclusion. Such a conclusion (or any conclusion of value) cannot be derived from economic theory alone, but must be applied to a system of values or teleological end.

I will give you that certain epistemological values such as Occam’s Razor apply, so it is not strictly value free. But that is a long way from asserting objective value or moral realism, which normative economists seem to assume.

Dan Klein writes:

I don’t think “uncolored by the researcher’s ethical judgments” makes much sense.

How about this statement: Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BC. The statement is positive. It as true to those who admire Caesar as to those who despise him.

Dan continues:

Aren’t judgments (presumably “ethical judgments”) — and the purposes they serve– involved in deciding the terms, interpretations, formulations one practices? The problems taken up? The alternatives considered? The arguments put on the table? The audiences to address? The literature to relate to?

Granted. But it doesn’t mean that every particular statement the researcher makes is normative.

Dan:

Well, all statements involve ethical judgments, so all statements are “normative.” Once we recognize that, what’s the point of saying a statement is “normative”?

I can’t agree. “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” isn’t normative. “1+1=2” isn’t normative. “The demand curve for bananas slopes downward” is not normative.

Practicing “pos/norm” ways, you imply that “social welfare” is not “a concept of positive economic theory.” Why not? Because it is loose and vague?

No, because a “social welfare function” has no analytical use, as a demand curve does, but only an ethical use.

zefreak: Economics can inform normative arguments, but when economists engage in normative debate they are doing so outside of their capacity as economists.

I don’t see the distinction. If I engage in normative debate that is, at least on my side, informed by economics, how am I doing outside of my capacity as an economist?
Of course I might be incompetent at applying the economics, but that is also possible if I engage in purely descriptive economics.

Robert: Few people would argue that engineers are seeking to impose their values on society while physicists are merely describing the natural world.

I don’t know about “few”. But many people have been opposed to inventions like trains, cars, radios, cellphones, because they change societies’ values. And obviously many people were opposed to nuclear weapons (which required physicists as well as engineers to build).

ajb: I think economists should always be neutral when speaking as experts and promote advocacy as individuals only.

But how can you separate expertise from advocacy? An economist can’t switch off all the bits of their brain that know about economics when they decide to promote advocacy, nor can I think of any reason why they should. (And when were experts not individuals?)

Tobi: Physicist, engineers and chemist do not impose their values on society for they’re not describing society. Their object of study, how relevant to society it may be, has nothing to do with society.

This is false. Things like cellphones or the Internet have changed society, and the engineers and scientists who introduced the Internet were expecting it to change society. In my engineering course we were advised to think about the impact of our work on society (a pointless bit of advice, as they provided no training in working out what the impact would be, but it was there).

This also brings me back to the natural sciences, physicists have not divided their science in ideological cleavages.

Again, this is wrong. Consider the debate about to what extent physicists should engage in weapons research.

Liberty: If an economist goes on television and says “Heath care bill 3200 is the wrong direction for America. It spends too much, it will put our children in debt, and it will restrict our freedom…” then he is no longer acting as an economist.

He might well be acting as an economist. Whether he is acting as an economist or not depends on whether he has done the economic work behind his statements. Eg is he making up statements like “it will restrict our freedom” out of thin air, then he is not an economist.

…not analyzing the means that have been chosen in order to achieve agreed-upon ends.

What agreed-on ends? What country/planet are you living in that has agreed-on ends? And, even if these ends have been agreed on, why shouldn’t an economist (or anyone else) try to change them? Our view of what ends are desirable depend in part on what ends are achievable and at what cost. I don’t see any reason why we should ignore economics expertise in setting the ends. (Which is not to say that economics is the only relevant expertise).

Tracy: “I don’t see the distinction. If I engage in normative debate that is, at least on my side, informed by economics, how am I doing outside of my capacity as an economist?”

I’m sorry if you don’t see the distinction between policy informed by economics and policy ‘being’ economics.

Economics deals with how humans act and what institutions help or prohibit coordination between participants’ varying ends. Which ends ought to be pursued belongs to a very different field of study.

Notice I am not stating that Economists cannot make policy advice or express normative positions. However, they do so as human beings and not in their capacity as economists (just as I express preference in music and film but do not do so in my capacity as a computer technician).

“What agreed-on ends? What country/planet are you living in that has agreed-on ends? And, even if these ends have been agreed on, why shouldn’t an economist (or anyone else) try to change them?”

You misunderstood me. I did not imply universal ends nor did I state that economists shouldn’t try to change them.

“Our view of what ends are desirable depend in part on what ends are achievable and at what cost. I don’t see any reason why we should ignore economics expertise in setting the ends.”

This is false, as economic expertise cannot help in deciding ends. Perhaps you do not understand the means/ends dichotomy. Ends are not chosen, means are chosen to satisfy given ends.

@ Neal W.

“(1) Economics should not be normative.

Economics just tells us what is, and when an economist gets normative, (s)he puts on the hat of an ethicist.”

Economics has its roots in the moral ethicists of the Scottish enlightenment. I think its pretty impossible to separate the ethics from the behavioral description.

And Daniel Klein says my thoughts here very clearly.
Imo: The normative/positive distinction is the result of us trying to be more like physics, a field where the distinction makes sense. In the social sciences it doesn’t make sense, its just one of wording.

I choose (1).

This understands economics as how people react to forces.

Option (2) creates forces for people to react to.
Option (3) is naked force.

“Shortages” are people substituting time (standing in line) for money. The market still clears though not necessarily due to money transactions.

You could say well not everybody with the willingness to pay gets what he or she actually wants, but that’s merely looking at the money at their disposition, but not their time. Money is the common means of exchange, it is not the sole means of exchange.

Yes the gains from trade are lower, because you cannot pay somebody through standing in line (unless the particular shopkeeper derives some gain from it). However the mechanism does affect the allocation/distribution of goods and this trade-off (lower gains of trade vs allocation) is a normative choice.

Calling that “shortages” does seem to be a normative judgement prefering one form of allocation over another based on future gains that benefit society at large. Or would you say that calling something “shortages” is valuefree?

Don’t forget corporations (Apple or fashion designers) create artificial shortages just to create advertisiment through the people standing in line. We however only condemn institutionaly created shortages (by government) as ‘inefficient’ based on the fact that it is not voluntary on the part of ‘the producers’ in the alternative.

That however is an implicit value judgement in favour of liberty on utilitarian grounds as providing the greatest benefit to the most people by putting an equal value on each persons gain.

You could however also say that you value the gain of those that have the least higher, because you believe that narrowing the gap creates the greatest happiness for society.

@Daniel Klein

Vagueness, controversialness, and libertarianess are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for normative statements.

A vague positive statement:
“Someone did something on some day”

There is nothing immediately normative about this statement. It is purely positive. Like most positive statements it can be used as the hypothetical of a normative statement and so can have normative implications when combined with a normative statement, but by itself it is positive albeit vague.

How it could lead to normative implications:

(1) Someone did something on some day
(2) If “Someone did something on some day” is true, then I should vote for Pat Buchanan
(3) I should vote for Pat Buchanan by (1) and (2)

Strictly speaking, the normative statement (2) is independent of the truth value of the positive (but vague) statement (1). The normative implication (3) is not independent of that the truth value of (3).

For a second, more serious example, see Amartya Sen’s paper on the ambiguity of revealed preferences (the title escapes me and google is not being helpful, does anyone remember this?).

The gist is that just because we see someone choose something it is ambiguous what they are not choosing and so specifying some sort of robust preference function is difficult. There’re no implications of this–alone–on people’s choices.

In short, we need to look at our purposes in separating out the causal claims and fact claims from the goals and values –otherwise you are doing 5th wheel “philosophy” of the kind that good philosophers have no use for (but the journals editors love).

‘Here, the speaker is using the word “should” in a normative sense, so it is making a normative statement. And this statement is about economics. So he is doing a normative statement about economics, the very thing it is arguing against.’

This argument fails because it confuses making a statement *about* economics with making a statement *within* economics. (That doesn’t mean the conclusion is (necessarily] wrong — just that it is a bad a[gument.)

@Greg, I doubt that anyone disagrees with you on that it is helpful. There is however a world of difference between what is helpful, what is possible and what is.

@Mario, that the law of demand is not normative in itself does not mean that economics is not inherently normative. That is generalizing from one example.
A more interesting question though what meaning does the law of demand have outside of reality? What meaning does it have outside of its context?

Economics qua economics is a science and must be devoid of normativity. As a science, economics attempts to understand the the manifold mechanisms for the rationing of resources and their related trade-offs.

This does not mean that economists (or any other scientist for that matter) must refrain from discussing the moral implications of their field of study. However, economists should be clear about distinguishing their science from their value judgements when they engage in ideological debate.

By objectively and clearly portraying the trade-offs and consequences of economic actions, economists can assist decision makers, whether they be centralized or decentralized.

How normative should economics be?

Besides begging to know what’s now normatively organized as apposed to positively mechanized-mathematized in the vast field and various disciplines about Economics, L believe the answer to the question depends on the purpose of any science done in economics.

In principle: positively, facts are better uncovered about Right; normatively; values are better revealed about Good.

To clarify a bit, there need not be any sort of metaphysical dichotomy discovered in order to make the distinctions, because it’s sensible enough to say that some statements are instrumentally useful but still normative, while others are merely normative. And while there is normativity present throughout our discourse, some statements are merely positive.

“There is an external world” is merely positive (in spite of the normative course we take to build a language) because of what it aims at, even if it turns out to be unwarranted (I won’t hold my breath).

“Murder is wrong” is merely normative because it’s not instrumentally loaded at all unlike a statement like “all other things equal, the most parsimonious theory ought to be accepted.”

I don’t pretend to have highlighted all the relevant ways to make the distinction, or the most important, I’m just sayin’, right off the top of my head, it seems like there’s good reason not to throw the baby (the positive/normative distinction) out with the bathwater (our forgetfulness of-obliviousness to the normative structure of our web of discourse).

Tobi: You focused too much on the incompleteness and poor wording of my example (which I simplified for good reason) and missed my point. Replace ‘shortage’ with ‘decrease supply relative to demand’ if you think shortage is a value-laden term.

Gene, Mario and Larry are right on.

Daniel Klein,

Thank you for the reply. I think this is a fruitful discussion.

OK, I didn’t say what the distinction is, true enough. So as you know, a positive statement is a statement used to express a state of the world, regardless of whether anyone likes it. I personally do not like how cold it is right now, but that’s too bad for me.

A normative statement, on the other hand, is a statement about how the world ought to be. I know I’m not telling you anything new, but I say this to illustrate the point that we can already tell the difference between a statement about the way the world is and one about the way the world ought to be. The fact that our ways of telling how the world is involves a value-laden process does not necessarily make our venture less likely to grasp the real world.

It’s true that our whole web of discourse (and maybe even our “field of discursivity” 😉 is normatively policed, but it still is used to express different things. Some of those different things are statements about the way the world is on the one hand, and the way it ought to be, on the other.

When I say it’s such and such temperature outside, part of what allows me to do that is that we’ve already done the normative work, and we can get to describing the world (almost like a basketball team makes the lessons learned in practice manifest in the real game, this doesn’t make the game any less real). As for how understanding the environment via science if concerned, any normative struggles we have in deciding how to proceed scientifically are instrumental, as opposed to arguing over intrinsic goods (say, equality versus efficiency).

In your earlier post, when you say,

“The words ‘positive’ and ‘normative’ do not mean nothing, but what they mean can always be expressed in better terms. ‘Normative’ often means outspoken, unconventional, strident, etc. It can also mean loose, vague, and indeterminate.”

I haven’t seen any better way to distinguish between the way the world is and the way the world ought to be. Something could be unconventional, controversial, etc and still be either positive or normative. Now if we have no confidence that we can apprehend the world except through a normatively colored lens, that’s fine, so long as we believe the image isn’t very distorted. But if we have no confidence about how distorted our image is, then there’s no reason not to toss epistemological standards out the window and start using pure rhetoric and forms of emotional pressure that are currently frowned upon (even if sometimes employed) in the academy.

An important kind of rhetorical pressure we aim at in the contemporary academy (ideally) is showing our colleagues and interlocutors how the world actually is. True enough, the fact that they’re supposed to care about that sets the stage for a form of normative discourse, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve distorted the world. For example, peer review, and the justification behind it, is value-laden, but there’s no reason to think that processes which serve to weed out bias and error make our ventures less objective.

it’s important to us that we’re apprehending the world the way it is. I’m not trying to say that you dispute that, rather, I’m trying to appeal to your sense of realism, to express that I have heard no other way to insure that we’re talking about apprehending the world the way it is, other than through the word “positive.”

On the other hand if a person says that equality is the best state of affairs for humanity, and someone else contradicts that, and asserts that it’s better to make the pie bigger so everyone has a bigger piece, even if that means more inequality, we’re really just at a loss to adjudicate this dispute. The word “normative” seems like a good way to describe the field in which disputes like this take place. So fighting over the axioms that undergird our systems of thought seems like a normative process.

Now I know there’s an obvious middle ground, and that’s the instrumental way we use normative thinking to asses (or perhaps, normative policing to enforce) the proper ways of speaking and using concepts, both moral and ostensibly non-moral ones. But I think paying attention to the difference between moral arguments that involve disputes over instrumental means on the one hand, and those over intrinsic goods (if such a thing can be argued over) on the other, can keep us in line. Aside from the poles, and the middle, I feel I should stress that I imagine you’re aware of all this already, but I make a point to express it the way I did, because I don’t think any of the stand-in terms you’ve offered do the important work the the pos/norm distinction does (even if it is an overused weapon).

if there’s a better way to signal to people that we’re talking in some contexts about the way the world is, and in others about how a speaker would like the world to be, then I’m open to it.

As for learning to disentangle “the cluster of connotations of ‘pos/norm'” I’m with ya 100%; I think this is great stuff. I had, however, thought you were saying something more radical than that earlier in the thread.

(sorry for the long post)

Daniel writes:

“We are enmeshed within webs of discourse, and there is no getting outside of valuations.”

Isn’t it actually the case that those who usually emphasize this point do so to throw sand in the practice of good science — i.e. they invent “ambiguity” purposely in order to delegitimitize knowledge and scientific achievement itself, for political purposes?

This is the legacy of Marx and historicism and “Western Marxism” and “Post Modernism” and all the rest isn’t it?

Daniel writes:

“We should be more candid about where we are coming from and where we mean to go.”

Exactly. And the folks who make a hash of the human purposes / good causal explanation distinction need to be nailed for where they are coming from and where they want to take us — most of them are coming from a politically motivated leftist political starting point and they want to take us in the direction of delegitimizing sound knowledge, to be replaced by a fully politicized “science” or “knowledge”.

Think of the same effort in jurisprudence, where leftists (e.g. legal realists or critical legal theorists, etc.) aim to advance the idea that all legal interpretation is merely an act of power politics — it’s all non-shared normativity untied to any shared factual reality of any sort.

They come from a desire to overturn the current order and they aim to get to a completely politicized leftist legal regime, the facts of the matter be damned.

The analogy is less than perfect — and you can intentionally misunderstand the point if you wish — but the leftist agenda and its aim at a political war on achieved knowledge and shared understanding is made plain.

Hi Jay Jeffers,

Thanks for your latest. Yes, fruitful stuff. However, I will need to leave the conversation. This will be my last entry, I expect.

Your distinction doesn’t wow me.

Are the following not descriptions of “a state of the world”?:

(1) The world is such that if min wage were repealed, social welfare would increase.

(2) I think we should abolish the min wage.

(3) Wise men think we should abolish the min wage.

As for your characterization of “normative,” isn’t it the case that saying “1 + 1 = 2” can be read as “You should believe that 1 + 1 = 2”?

My view is not to deny the moral realm, but to see it in every utterance. With better practice we may better discriminate between the moral judgments people make.

Kind regards,

/Dan

zefreak: Economics deals with how humans act and what institutions help or prohibit coordination between participants’ varying ends. Which ends ought to be pursued belongs to a very different field of study.

I don’t think the two are neatly separable. For example take a fully centrally planned economy in which all decisions are made democratically. Some people might favour this as an end in itself, say they place a high value on democracy and think all decisions, including decisions about which resources to utilise and how, should be made democratically. Now, if it’s not possible for there to be a centrally planned economy (democratic or otherwise) then doesn’t that make that end less desirable? (At least to people who found central-planning a good idea, anyone who values market economies for non-economic reasons is clearly not affected by increased economic evidence in favour of market economies).

Or take the end of eliminating all deaths due to accidents. An economist would say that “all” is only achievable at too high a cost, this can change opinions about the desirability of the end. I’ve managed to convince people of this in arguments, at least briefly.

Notice I am not stating that Economists cannot make policy advice or express normative positions. However, they do so as human beings and not in their capacity as economists … (just as I express preference in music and film but do not do so in my capacity as a computer technician).

But this is different. A computer technician doesn’t have any expertise relevant to music and film in their role as a computer technician (of course there is nothing stopping someone being simultaneously a computer technician and an impressive musician). But an economist can have expertise relevant to making policy advice and expressing normative positions, for example the desirability of making decisions democratically versus making them via a market.

This is is false, as economic expertise cannot help in deciding ends.

This statement would be rather more convincing if you gave reasons for this assertion.

I did not imply universal ends nor did I state that economists shouldn’t try to change them.

So what did you mean to imply when you said “agreed-upon ends”?

Perhaps you do not understand the means/ends dichotomy. Ends are not chosen, means are chosen to satisfy given ends.

Perhaps I do not understand the means/ends dichotomy, perhaps you are wrong to think that there is dichotomy at all. I think this assertion “ends are not chosen” is only true if you define ends very broadly, eg utility, or for particular definitions of “chosen”. Take for example that one might feel a conflict between the ends of happiness, and of valuing autonomy for its own sake. Now if it turns out as an empirical matter that increased autonomy increases happiness, no need for any such conflict. (This is admittedly a matter for psychologists more than economists, but let’s say that an economist applies their econometric skills to this question).

Tobi: Society however looks quite a bit different when you’re a socialist than when you’re a capitalist, to put it crudely. Take child labour for example.

But on the other hand, empirical evidence can and has moved people away from being socialists. Socialism, in the sense of centrally-planned markets is a lot less respectable since the collapse of the Soviet Union and in particular the differing experiences of West Germany and East Germany. People can fool themselves more about living standards than about molecules and atoms, but in the end the difference in wealth became undeniable.

Tobi:

“It is in your description of something that you’re passing normative judgement. Saying that you’re objective simply means that you don’t know your bias yet.”

So if I describe my cat as having two ears and three legs am I being normative? How do you define normative (serious question)?

I will concede that the epistemological framework from which I draw conclusions and judge truth and falsity are normative, in that they delineate what should or shouldn’t be believed. However, I am not a universal prescriptivist and don’t pretend that everyone should share it. If this is what you mean by everything being normative, you might want to rethink your position.

Regardless, epistemic normativity is a far cry from the sort of normative statements that find their way into economics and science.

I do not think much progress can be made in this discussion without getting into meta-ethics and epistemology, which the comments section might not be the best place to do so. So I’ll leave with this:

Tracy: I was using ‘end’ in the broadest sense.
Tracy, Dan and Toby: I disagree with you because I am a moral non-cognitivist and anti-realist. I think all values should be stated as such, and perhaps if I had stated my own epistemological values at the beginning this would have been less confusing.

Tracy: “In which case it is fine for an economist to argue that values should be something in particular, as they are merely expressing a (possibly informed) opinion about what values are best for achieving the very broadly defined end, of something like “utility” or “happiness”.”

Expressing opinions is fine, but opinions and normative assertions are very different beasts. ‘x is bad’ and ‘I don’t like x’ are not the same; the first is meaningless (except to the extent that it is cultural shorthand for ‘I don’t like x’, the emotivist argument), while the second can actually be considered true or false.

There are no universal valued ends (other than happiness/utility, which is by necessity valued) and there are no universally valid means to achieve happiness. I recommend reading behavioral economic research regarding values and frames which supports the Austrian thesis of radical value subjectivity.

“I don’t think so, as it would take too long and no one would read/listen to the statement of all the values anyway.”

Fair enough. Of course, when I come across an unjustified value statement, or non-contextual normative statement I automatically stop reading so perhaps its a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. (This is not always true, if it is something I think is worth reading ahead of time, but it is always in the back of my mind)