Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T20:00:56.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A RESPONSE TO DASGUPTA1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2007

HILARY PUTNAM  and
VIVIAN WALSH
HILARY PUTNAM
Affiliation:
Harvard University
VIVIAN WALSH
Affiliation:
Muhlenberg College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The present note will be concerned only with Sir Partha Dasgupta's recent article in this journal (Dasgupta 2005). What is more, it will concentrate on those parts of the article which contain a serious misreading of Hilary Putnam's position on the entanglement of facts, theories and values. These philosophical matters can perhaps be clarified for economist readers (they should require no clarification for philosophers) by considering, to begin with, Dasgupta's interpretation of the Bergson–Samuelson position. What (Bergson) Burk (1938) and Samuelson (1947) were doing, according to Dasgupta, was to establish ‘the ethical foundations of the subject. . .over five decades ago’ (Dasgupta 2005: 221–2).2 Thus a major theme of the article is heard at once: economics is supposedly based on sound ethical foundations, and these can be traced (it is supposed) to specific work written long ago, and hence needing no augmentation. These ethical foundations, it is claimed, ‘are now regarded to be a settled matter’ (2005: 222).

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 359 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bergson, A.Burk, A. 1938. A reformulation of certain aspects of welfare economics. Quarterly Journal of Economics 52:310–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conant, J. 1994. Introduction to Words and Life, by Putnam, H..Google Scholar
Dasgupta, P. 2005. What do economists analyze and why: values or facts? Economics and Philosophy 21:221–78.Google Scholar
Little, I. M. D. [1950] 1957. A Critique of Welfare Economics. Oxford, Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. [1975] 1979. Mind, Language and Reality, Philosophical Papers Vol. 2. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1994. Words and Life. Conant, J., ed. Harvard, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. 2002. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy. Harvard, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. [1951] 1953. From a Logical Point of View. Harvard, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O. 1963. Carnap and logical truth. In The Philosophy of Rudolph Carnap. Schilpp, P. A., ed. Open Court.Google Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. [1947] 1983. Foundations of Economic Analysis. Harvard, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. K. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. Harvard, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walsh, V. C. 2007. Freedom, Values and Sen: towards a morally enriched classical economic theory. Review of Political Economy 19 (forthcoming).Google Scholar