Piero Sraffa and Counterfactuals
A View from Sraffa's Unpublished Papers in the Late 1920s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4298231 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Heinz D Kurz (0000-0003-4042-6682), Neri Salvadori (0000-0002-3334-3507, University of Pisa and Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei ([email protected])), Rodolfo Signorino (0000-0002-7122-1762) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 477-520 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182702-11773468 |
| OpenAlex | W4407417435 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 30 |
This article reconstructs Sraffa's position with regard to counterfactual reasoning in the second half of the 1920s as documented by his up until now unpublished papers. While Sraffa did not use the term "counterfactual," it is precisely this concept he had in mind when examining certain non-purely-observational propositions and discussing responses to "what if?" questions. He did so with respect to different contexts, but his attention focused primarily on the marginal theory of value and distribution. At an early time he showed with regard to the latter that any simple analysis of single causation in terms of counterfactuals is difficult to sustain. Sraffa's method of inquiry can be interpreted as an instance of abductive reasoning. The article confirms Sen's interpretation that Sraffa met counterfactual reasoning with suspicion, since it might easily lead to highly misleading propositions. But Sraffa's manuscripts do not support the extreme view (not entertained by Sen) that any counterfactual reasoning ought to be rejected
Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Economics · Epistemology · Neoclassical economics · Art History and Market Analysis · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Art, Technology, and Culture · Philosophy
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| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |