Economic Theory Stalled

Both Hausman and Rosenberg reject McCloskey's contention that economics is no more than rhetoric, and do so with cogent reasons drawn from old-fashioned views about truth and objectivity ( R , pp. 30–55; H , pp. 266–67). (Hausman's treatment of McCloskey is more nuanced, but neither of them, I think, make enough allowance for McCloskey's playfulness or for the power, on his less provocative side, of his intermittent argument for a reasonably respectable pragmatism.) Rosenberg holds, very plausibly, that the ambitions of economists run higher than rhetoric in any of its current received senses ( R , pp. 51–52; H , pp. 81–82) and run closer to affiliation with natural science, though economists may, in their conception of natural science, be persisting in positivist views. (McCloskey does not deny this; on the contrary, he attributes the same ambitions to economists, but he wants them to abandon the ambitions, unless—as if this were the only way of advancing beyond positivist views—they advance to a rhetorical view of natural science [ McC , pp. 16–19, 32–35, 54–57].)

Argument (complex analysis) · Economics · Epistemology · Institutionalism · Objectivity (philosophy) · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Positivism · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Theology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

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