Weekend read – Enlightenment epistemology and the climate crisis
from Asad Zaman
Introduction
At first glance, it appears that industrialization, with its rampant overproduction and overconsumption, stands as the primary antagonist in our climate crisis narrative. However, this surface-level perception overlooks a more profound shift that lies beneath: an epistemological revolution birthed in the European Enlightenment. This era marked a pivotal transition in our relationship with the planet, from Mother Earth to a dead machine. Turbayne (1962) explores the significance in the change of metaphor in depth. This essay seeks to unravel this transformation in thought and its subsequent paving of the road to our current environmental challenges. Our solution lies not in mere technological or policy changes but in a fundamental revolution in thought—a revolution that reclaims the roles of heart, soul, and lived experience in shaping our knowledge. By embracing these often-neglected dimensions, we can forge a path towards a more harmonious interaction with our world, addressing the root causes of the climate crisis.
Historical Context of the Enlightenment
The genesis of the European Enlightenment can be traced back to the religious wars that ravaged Europe, a turbulent period that starkly illuminated the limitations of theology as the sole foundation for social and political theory. This era of conflict laid bare the urgent need for a new basis upon which to construct societal norms and governance—one that could transcend sectarian divides and offer a stable, peaceful coexistence. This necessity birthed an intellectual revolution, a move away from the scholastic tradition which had long intertwined social theory with biblical teachings. In this historical crucible, the Enlightenment emerged as a bold response, a movement that endeavored to redefine the very foundations of knowledge. Scholasticism, with its deep roots in religious doctrine, was set aside in favor of a new approach that sought to build knowledge from ground up, free from theological underpinnings. This marked a radical shift from a world view deeply imbued with religious interpretations to one anchored in secularism. Faced with the challenge of constructing a body of knowledge devoid of these traditional foundations, Enlightenment thinkers turned to observable facts and logic as their new cornerstones. This was a decisive step, an attempt to create a universal framework of understanding that relied solely on empirical evidence and rational deduction (see Zalta (2017) for an overview). It was a move towards a world view that prized objective reality, measurable and quantifiable, over the subjective realms of intuition, emotion, and lived experience.
The Crisis of Knowledge and Enlightenment’s Limitations
Our current environmental predicament is fundamentally a crisis of knowledge, rooted in the Enlightenment’s narrow conceptualization of epistemology. This shift fostered an illusion of objectivity that has since permeated our understanding of the world, particularly in the context of societal dynamics. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on objective knowledge marginalized the subjective realms of emotional intelligence, moral intuition, and diverse lived experiences. This exclusion led to a worldview that erroneously equates scientific rationality with absolute truth, consequently overlooking the multifaceted and nuanced nature of human experience and its interaction with the environment. See Zaman (2015) for a detailed discussion of the deification of science.
To truly integrate heart, soul, and lived experiences into our understanding of the world, we must challenge the very notion of objective knowledge as the sole arbiter of truth, especially in the realm of social sciences. For example, Berger and Luckmann (1966) have argued that truth is a social construct. Society, when viewed as a collective of lived experiences, presents a spectrum of realities, all equally valid yet inherently diverse. This perspective acknowledges that what is considered ‘objective’ often reflects dominant narratives, sidelining alternative ways of experiencing and understanding the world. By embracing this multiplicity of truths, we open ourselves to a richer, more inclusive understanding of our environment and our place within it. Such a shift in perspective is crucial for addressing the environmental challenges we face, as it fosters a deeper, empathetic connection with the planet and its diverse inhabitants, moving beyond the exploitation and detachment engendered by the Enlightenment’s limited view.
Integrating a Multifaceted Understanding of Knowledge
The challenge of rectifying our strained relationship with the environment calls for a nuanced and multifaceted understanding of knowledge. Moving beyond the Enlightenment’s legacy of objective empiricism, we must embrace an epistemological approach that values the subjective, the intuitive, and the emotional as legitimate sources of wisdom. This broader view of knowledge transcends the simplistic binary of right and wrong, opening up space for a spectrum of experiences and perspectives that reflect the complex reality of human existence.
In practical terms, this means recognizing and valuing diverse cultural narratives and indigenous wisdoms that have long maintained a harmonious relationship with nature. These perspectives offer invaluable insights into sustainable living and environmental stewardship, having evolved through centuries of deep, lived interaction with the natural world. By integrating these varied sources of knowledge, we can develop more effective and context-sensitive environmental policies and practices. Senturk et. al. (2020) provide a multiplex epistemological framework, suitable for exploring multiple layers of validity and diversity.
Moreover, this expanded understanding of knowledge encourages the cultivation of empathy and a sense of interconnectedness with all forms of life. It promotes a worldview where environmental responsibility is not just a scientific or economic consideration, but a moral imperative rooted in a deep appreciation of our shared existence on this planet. This shift is crucial for building a future where human activities are in balance with the Earth’s ecosystems, ensuring the well-being of both current and future generations.
Redefining Environmental Engagement and Education
The imperative to reconstruct our knowledge for environmental harmony necessitates a radical rethinking of how we engage with and educate about the environment. This new approach calls for a synergistic integration of scientific understanding with philosophical, ethical, and emotional insights, breaking away from the confines of Enlightenment’s rigid objectivity. This interdisciplinary blend is key to developing a comprehensive view of environmental issues, one that recognizes the complexity and interdependence of natural systems. Spash (2024) provides a detailed discussion.
In this context, environmental education transcends traditional scientific curricula, encompassing a broader spectrum that includes ethical considerations, cultural narratives, and emotional connections to the natural world. Such an inclusive educational approach equips individuals with a deeper, more empathetic understanding of environmental issues, fostering a sense of responsibility and stewardship.
Policy-making too must reflect this shift in perspective. Instead of purely utilitarian approaches, policies need to account for the diverse experiences and needs of different communities, ensuring that environmental solutions are equitable and culturally sensitive. This means prioritizing long-term ecological balance over short-term economic gains and acknowledging the intrinsic value of the natural world beyond its utilitarian benefits. Zaman (2021) provides more extensive discussion.
By embracing this expanded framework of knowledge, we pave the way for more holistic and sustainable environmental practices. It’s about nurturing a global community that not only understands the scientific aspects of climate change but also feels a deep, emotional connection to our planet, inspiring collective action towards preserving and cherishing our shared home.
Conclusion
In summary, the climate crisis extends beyond the realms of industrialization and technological advancements; it is fundamentally an epistemological crisis born from the Enlightenment’s limited perspective on knowledge. Our challenge is to shift from a purely empirical and rational understanding of the world to one that richly integrates the emotional, the spiritual, and the subjective. This holistic approach, recognizing multiple truths and diverse perspectives, draws on both Enlightenment rationality and post-modern insights. See Zaman (2019) for one approach.
The practical implications of this paradigm shift are profound and far-reaching. It calls for an approach to environmental activism and education that combines scientific knowledge with emotional resonance, as exemplified by figures like Greta Thunberg. Her ability to connect with the public on an emotional level, while underscoring the scientific realities of climate change, embodies the synthesis of heart and science that is crucial for effective environmental advocacy.
As we reconceptualize our place in the natural world, our goal is not to conquer, but to steward. It’s about creating a future where our actions are informed by a deep understanding of and connection to the planet, fostering a global community motivated by a shared responsibility for its well-being. This epistemological shift promises a future where the health of our planet and its inhabitants is woven into the very fabric of our knowledge and existence, inspiring collective actions toward a sustainable and harmonious coexistence.
References
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Şentürk, Recep et. al. (2020). Comparative theories and methods: between uniplexity and multiplexity. İstanbul: İbn Haldun University Press.
Spash, Clive L. (2024) Foundations of social ecological economics: The fight for revolutionary change in economic thought. Manchester University Press.
Turbayne, C. M. (1962). The myth of metaphor. Yale Univer. Press.
Zalta, E. N. (Ed.). (2017). “Enlightenment.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/
Zaman, A. (2015) “Deification of science and its disastrous consequences.” International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education 6.2: 181-197.
Zaman, A. (2019) “Islam’s gift: An economy of spiritual development.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 78.2: 443-491.
Zaman, A. (2021). ‘Reclaiming our lives and our planet’. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 12(2), 102–113.
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
The triumph of the Neomalthusian ideology… The so called «climate crisis» is a shrewd fabrication to snare people into believing that CO2 is the culprit of environment problems… Or «How the demonization of the CO2 molecule (the molecule of Life) turned into a gigantic business opportunity and a scientific fraud of historic dimensions»… That «business oportunity» is the equivalent of 130 times de GDP of a country such as Portugal…
As a first comment, I was completely unaware of Turbayne until I read this Weekend Read. This is poignant to me for a couple of reasons. Berkeley’s “Principles of Human Knowledge” is the philosophical treatise I admire most, even though my position is somewhat different from Berkeley’s. It turns out that Turbayne was a fellow countryman of mine and indeed from my local region, albeit from an earlier generation. We went to the same university. However, there all similarity of early development ends. I was in a science stream where philosophy and ethics were never broached.
Science without philosophy, including moral philosophy, is certainly a dead-end. We end up in a kind of scientific fundamentalism. There are also any number of religious and ideological fundamentalisms, we ought to note here. My upbringing and institutional education were certainly Newtonian, mechanical and reductionist at the intellectual level. Even the life sciences were largely treated like that. My personal intellectual life since has been a battle of throwing off that world view and yet never finding another. I am so suspicious of subjectivism and fundamentalism that I can adopt no new, firm views or stance other than those tending to Pyrrhonism and nihilism.
I am considering a longer reply, in which I will talk of the search for possibilities NOT mired in Pyrrhonism and nihilism. This seems consistent to and for me. If one is still electively alive then one has not fully succumbed to nihilism. Certainly, I agree with Asad Zaman’s implicit framing (as I interpret it) that science, politics and economics, as currently practiced, are leading to complete disaster. Without a philosophical revolution which reconditions and completely renovates our “rational” mind constructs and our practices of science and politics (and completely abolishes the current economics in its entirety) we are most certainly doomed.
PS
I should have written “our pseudo-rational mental constructs” and not “our “rational” mind constructs”. That would have made the meaning of my summing up sentence clearer. Conventional economics is a pseudo-rational and pseudo-scientific belief system. I will await other comments on the original post rather than flood the thread at this point.
This is clearly something of huge importance. On the other hand, mathematical modelling is vitally important if much hoped for progress is going to continue to be made in medicine, for example. So the challenge is to understand the proper role for mathematical modelling as part of reformed economic and scientific practice.
(I am not myself clear that the original enlightenment thinkers would have agreed with current pseudo-science based on pseudo-mathematics and would suggest a light edit of the article making use of the term pseudo-enlightenment. What we need is ‘the real deal’ for enlightenment, science, mathematics and logic, which leaves plenty of room for the ‘heart’ issues.)
My academic career since the mid-80s was focused on the relationship between Theology and Science. While I have a lot to say on this subject I’ll make only two points.
1. Aside from the social construction of reality there’s also the radical construction of reality. Ernst von Glasersfeld is a good source.
2. Scientists are able to do science by pretending to be external to the system or thing they are investigating. Many unfortunately keep up this pretence. Good scientists stand back from time to time and reflect on this back and forth between pretence and the fact that they are composed of the very thing they are regarding. And many of these scientists write extra-scientific papers and books on their philosophy.
https://www.vonglasersfeld.com/ is interesting. Apparently the ideas in Hertz’s Mechanics | djmarsay (wordpress.com) are ‘radical’. No wonder there is so much confusion about. Economics 101 would seem to need a straightforward set text which addresses legitimate concerns about epistemology and climate change without so much confusing baggage.
For example, Zalta, E. N. (Ed.). (2017) has this: “Though neither for Locke nor for Descartes do all of our ideas represent their objects by way of resembling them (e.g., our idea of God does not represent God by virtue of resembling God), our alleged knowledge of our environment through the senses does depend largely on ideas that allegedly resemble external material objects.” This surely needs some explanation, lest it confuse. As a mathematical modeller I would never claim that my models actually resembled some ‘objective reality’ beyond being my ‘best effort’ interpretation of someone’s current conception based on their (inevitably limited) experience, imagination and (socially constructed) ‘paradigm’.
Am I missing something?
Without premising a correspondence theory of truth, we are lost entirely. We ought to ask, why did the human brain evolve to form images and have ideas? Do images and ideas perform functions or are images and ideas totally useless appendages to human existence? The answer is that ideas can be variously, useful, useless or worse than useless. It depends on the idea and its truth correspondence to external reality (for pragmatically useful ideas) OR its power as a falsehood in a social context where falsehoods are used for gain to the detriment of others. When we talk of the uses of truth, we should not fail to talk of the uses of falsehoods. Humans make free use of both as it suits them.
“That truth is the correspondence of a representation to its object is, as Kant says, merely the nominal definition of it. Truth belongs exclusively to propositions. A proposition has a subject (or set of subjects) and a predicate. The subject is a sign; the predicate is a sign; and the proposition is a sign that the predicate is a sign of that which the subject is a sign. If it be so, it is true. But what does this correspondence or reference of the sign, to its object, consist in?” – Charles Sanders Peirce.
“A truth is permitted only a brief victory celebration between the two long periods where it is first condemned as paradoxical and later disparaged as trivial.” – Arthur Schopenhauer.
A “Theory of Truth” means a theory of how formal signs are related to real, objective existents. This incorporates the idea that language statements and mathematical equations, which function as compounded formal sign statements, may be related in some way to the signified real objects, forces, processes or systems to which they refer and model. This correspondence theory of truth must hold that there can be true representations and false representations of real existents and real systems. This must be so, even if unavoidably in practice, a “true” representation is always an approach to truth rather than a complete, final or absolute truth. This correspondence of signs, as word statements, equations or models (real or virtual), to the real is to be conceived of as a homomorphic correspondence when modelling is expressly or implicitly occurring. This is as opposed to mere formal or customary naming as in “That man is Bill Jones.” Aside from such formal or customary naming, there must be something in the structure and relations in a compounded modelling sign statement (be it a language statement, maths equation, real model or virtual model) as a formal system, which homomorphically matches one or more essential structures, relations or processes in the real objects/real systems being referred to.
As Bertrand Russell wrote, “we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth”. Homomorphism, as a concept, is the most suitable way in which to conceive of this correspondence. Homomorphism as employed in active modelling practice may be considered as the procedure of generating a structure-preserving statement, equation, map or model of a real object or real system, or rather, of a part thereof. For a dynamic model this will also entail a process-preserving or process-mapping component. In algebra, a “homomorphism is a structure-preserving map between two algebraic structures of the same type”. The preservation of essential aspects in structure, relation and dynamism in the model, in relation to the real object or system, is critical to any claim that it be an accurate or true model in some sense; that it corresponds with (at least some) real, empirical facts.
Without making a full survey of theories of truth, we can observe that some philosophers argue that there cannot be a “General Theory of Truth”. This seems to be a post-modern mode of denying any possibility of objective truth and asserting that all “truths” are relative, or worse, somehow self-referential. This view, that there cannot be a general “Theory of Truth”, is held by adherents to the Deflationary Theory of Truth. “According to the deflationary theory of truth, to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself.” This seems to assert that a sign can never have a genuinely signified object or existent and that the sign and signified can never be linked (conceptually) in the signed direction and yet still obviously be two different things, qualitatively and/or quantitatively. This seems to be suggesting, for example, that a road-sign pointing to a side road and naming it by its customary or official name, is not pointing to anything real. Such a denial of even the possibility of simple sign-to-object reference would seem to contradict those most basic and practical demonstrations which exist at every signed road junction in the world.
The correspondence theory of truth, as a theory and as an analytical tool, can and must encompass the operations of ordinary language and mathematics; of any formal system which uses signs. An analogy is a comparison. The Greek root analogos means “proportionate.” Mathematical operators, many derived from, and/or rendered back into, plain language words and then combined in phrases like “equal to”, “greater than” and “less than”, compare proportions. Language, everyday and poetic, uses metaphors and similes (among other figures of speech) as comparators. Just as physics abstracts a shared characteristic, like mass, from real world existents and then uses comparators to compare quantities of mass, so do language “figures”, meaning figures of speech, abstract a characteristic, a “quality”, from reality (or imaginatively impute it) and then compare it to qualities in other existents; these qualities again being real or imputed. Expressions like similes or metaphors use analogies or refer to them. Comparisons like “She crept like a mouse.” or “I was a pig at dinner” are analogical. An imputed essential quality or characteristic of the mouse or pig, as the case may be, is implicitly or explicitly extracted (or imputed) and likened or equated to a quality or characteristic in, or imputed to be in, the subject of the expression.
The relationship between mathematical language and standard language (e.g. modern English) is thus closer than might first appear. They each operate via the same logic of abstraction of an essential quality, quantity, existent or imputed existent from diverse objects and then apply comparators in quasi-logical or logical operations. The metaphorical analogues of language, we may argue, preceded the more abstract and precise analogues of mathematics. The linguistic descent of mathematics from general language should thus be clear on any proper analysis. Why does language itself exist and why does it work? Answer this question and we also answer why mathematics and logic, as direct descendants of general or ordinary language and as specialist languages in themselves, exist and work; meaning they work operatively for everyday, practical tasks and for the theoretical and applied sciences.
Language exists (for humans) as a transmission of information-containing patterns via the carrier mediums of light or sound (usually). This is how it exists in form. How it exists in content is a more complex issue and that investigation may be deferred. Why human language exists and works is open to an evolutionary explanation. A survival advantage for humans in terms of competition and natural selection was and is conferred by the development and continued use of language. This must be the basic hypothesis for the real-world development and use of language.
In turn, language components as signifiers – as subjects, predicates and operators – must themselves undergo a kind of natural selection. Useful concepts forming categorisations (creating basic logical sets in the observed physis (like “birds” or “fish”) or in the nomos (like kin groups) and useful operators (the latter developing as logical operators like “and”, “or”, “not”, “if” etc.) must confer competitive, natural selection advantages from their uses. These advantages can only be conceived of as functioning at natural, real system levels as social/eusocial species members interact as groups with external nature and also at the intra-species level. Language logic operators must themselves tend to be “naturally selected”, in a sense, over the combined and complexly integrated course of human brain evolution, mind evolution and social evolution. This occurs through their usefulness in conferring real natural selection advantage to the populations (kin groups, clan groups and wider groups) using such operators: and by conferring natural selection advantages to individuals with brains adept at using such operators.
That is to say, the logical operators combined with subjects and predicates to create a language statement (each language statement) and formal systems capable of such statements must, in this system form, refer to and be homomorphically congruent (correspondent), to some extent, with real systems or parts of real systems. This is if any language statement manages to be pragmatically useful and applicable in any sense. The possibility of fanciful, speculative, mythical and lying language is not excluded by this theory. Such forms of language have social uses and can be used to obtain individual rewards and gains in many ways from harmless entertainments to dogmatic authority claims, to justifying ideologies and outright deceptions. These gains also can lead to natural selection advantages (but sometimes to punishments too) for individuals in human societies.
To reprise, key language operators and operations must be naturally selected at the cultural level to some extent. They possess an analogical congruence, homomorphism or correspondence with some aspect(s) of external reality (reality external to mind and language) which renders them useful in survival terms. This congruence or correspondence confers higher probabilities of success upon some or all members of a social species, initially at familial or tribal group levels, in various survival endeavours while using these logical operators and logical systems.
Reality is here understood, and must be understood, as comprised completely of interacting real systems. All “parts” of reality are here seen as comprised of interacting sub-systems of a monistic, all-existent real system, the world or cosmos. A mind, or collectively a set of communicating minds, as a sub-system or as a system of sub-systems respectively, of the larger natural, monistic real system is/are always and only connected to other sub-systems of the monistic system (such as other mind systems and then the biosphere subsystems and then the universe monistic system) by matter transfers, energy transfers, information transfers and field influences (like gravitational and electromagnetic fields) and these only.
Those who want to introduce theology will cavil at the materialism of the above. But all I have insisted on is a strict monistic system, just as Berkeley did. Berkeley’s monistic system is immaterial, mine is material. However in both cases the label is nominal. Once we collapse dualism into monism, the terms “material” and “immaterial” lose meaning. We can only speak of “existents” (usually as objects and processes) without knowing or imputing what the essential nature of the existents is. We can only observe the relations or observable existents.
The above is preamble in a sense. The issue is ontology. The issue within ontology is the search for fundamental objects to found a discipline. Every discipline requires fundamental objects. Here, “objects” means objects and processes. This “fundamental-ness” is discipline relative which statement does NOT imply relativism.
It appears that the fundamentals may be empirically derived (from experience and investigation) or they may be posited a priori. In practice, we find a priori assumptions and empirical investigations are both indispensable for science. They dialectically inform each other in a continuous interplay of the formal and the real. Euclidean geometry is the perfect early exemplar of this process. It proceeds from axioms which were no doubt inspired by real observations. The edges of a straight road of a constant width never meet in our experience. From this the axiom of straight, parallel lines never meeting is derived.
Thence the axiomatic system is applied to the real world (to real geography, to real plans of human made objects). It turns out that the Euclidean axioms apply only to one, idealized topography, the flat plane. Where real conditions approximate or approach this idealized topography, Euclidean geometry is practically and pragmatically useful for real enterprises, building roads or building houses for example. Where the legal law deems it, Euclidean geometry is applied to other matters too. I and the person down the road may be each deemed to own 1 acre of land as per the standard survey. However, if my land is flat and his land is basically a steep rounded hill, then the true surface area of his land is considerably greater than that of my land. This illustrates an interesting general case where the axioms of Euclidean geometry are conformed more with the legally deemed reality (and vice versa) than to what we may call topographically objective reality.
There is a kind of ontological confusion here. Physics, ideally, is attempting to conform its laws to posited objective reality, especially to the fundamentals of reality when they are explored in a reductionist manner. Economics, of the conventional varieties, essentially melds physis realities and nomos realities with no idea of which should be regarded as more fundamental (if via reductionist methods we are seeking a taxonomy of fundamental objects to explain the construction or growth (or the destruction or decay) of complex real objects and real processes. I would go further and say that conventional economics, at least in its pedagogical Economics 101 approach and in its now neoliberal market fundemantalist practice, is a confused mishmash of physis objects and processes and nomos objects and processes. Its classical chess equivalent would be “a queen equals two wyverns”. Its crash report equivalent would be “I crashed my car into a unicorn.”
Footnote: As chess is a formal system, we could rewrite its axioms (rules) and create a game where wyverns exist and a queen equals two wyverns or where a wyvern equals two queens (which would seem more fitting). In the real world of real systems where I can crash my car, I can crash into a kangaroo but I cannot crash into unicorn; unless it is a large model of a mythical unicorn. Conventional economics and its arguments are so frustrating, pointless and evidence impervious, one has to amuse oneself sometimes with derisory analogies.
Deep and Useful comments. You might try reading Things As They Are by Hassan Spiker for additional depth: https://www.amazon.com/Things-They-are-Metaphysical-Classification/dp/9948860748
Asad Zaman, thank you. I have added “Things As They Are” and some of Turbayne’s works to my intended reading list. I formed and developed my thinking using ideas from the works of Francis Bacon, Berkeley, Hume and C. S. Peirce. Added to that I employ insights I feel I have gained from a generalist knowledge of the medical sciences, computer theory, computer game modelling and evolutionary theory.
I am aware that Bacon and Berkeley, at least, drew insights from some of the great Islamic philosophers: Bacon in developing the empirical method and the break from syllogistic reasoning and Berkeley in his study of optics and perhaps even in his critique of the absolute frame of reference for Newtonian mechanics.
The above is an eclectic set of interests and one could validly ask, “What is the overall theme? What is the connecting thread?” I worked out, via an exploratory essay in computer game design theory, of all things, that the overall theme was ontology and the connecting thread was modelling. It became clear to me that the basic issue in and for any discipline was ontology: what exists fundamentally, or at least as fundamentally as we can go or need to go for the discipline in question. Then the issue is how we model it and what correspondence relationship(s) the model has with the modeled reality external to the model.
Economics (and economic debates) had become a great source of frustration to me as a layperson having to live in a world dominated and being wrecked by the views and programs of conventional economics. There are strong indicators, from a great volume of empirical evidence, that conventional economics has gone entirely wrong. It became clear that it did not have a consistent and supportable fundamental ontology. It mixes and confuses physis objects and nomos objects without any founding ontological method or discipline. It does not analyze how physis objects and nomos objects exist and complexly interact in the one (monistic) system.
When I read the word ontology I have a well-developed fear that we are about to disappear into a thicket of words from which nothing of use is likely to emerge. Any system of thought or any area of empirical study has to take something for granted. You cannot answer all questions at once. Even Descartes’ cogito ergo sum’ was assuming an entity called ego, which actually cannot be inferred from the fact that thoughts are occurring.
There is much wrong with economics; indeed it is a partially failed subject that should be subsumed into a broader discipline of social studies. What that does not require is to worry about ontology, Let us acknowledge that human beings exist as sentient objects in four-dimensional space. That they congregate in groups and establish complex relations among themselves and that quite a lot of those relations are concerned with the business of getting material sustenance for the individual and the group. To get any further I need to ask concrete questions about those relationships and to study them to find answers. Answers specific to a particular situation are easier to find than general propositions that can be applied accurately to many relations in different times and places. That is especially true in complex adaptive systems like the subset of social relations we refer to as “the economy” – where quite possibly no “laws” or equilibria exist. What people do will depend on what they know, believe and want. It is also constrained by the facts of their biology and the laws and properties of the physical world they inhabit. How can one avoid therefore discussing the interaction of physis objects and nomos objects, to use Ikonoclast’s terms?
Every advance in human knowledge was achieved by people taking some things for granted and asking and tackling concrete questions, Nothing was ever achieved by trying to start with tabula rasa or setting limits on enquiry by insisting that it had to start from a set of defined entities that are pre-determined to be primary. There are theories in many disciplines that help us to order and predict, occasionally even control, observable phenomena by appealing to concepts that may well have no counterpart in reality, i.e. by positing entities that may well not exist. Does mass “really” distort space-time? In what sense to quarks exist? Perhaps God knows but meanwhile GPS works. Perhaps the relevant theory is immature or incomplete. Nonetheless it can be useful and an improvement on preceding thought. Science offers useful knowledge not “truth”. Asking what things “really” are – essentialism – seldom gets you anywhere. Spare me from fretting about “ontology”. The failings of economics are less abstruse: scholasticism, ignoring empirical data, clinging to exploded notions, all adequately explained by academic status envy and restrictive practices and by ideology that serves dominant interests in society.
I love metaphysics. It is great fun but you have to park it to do anything useful. Hume understood that better than anyone.