"We can't do with philosophical definition a job that needs to be done with factual inquiry."

|Peter Boettke|

That quote comes from Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues and expresses in my mind the critical importance for political and social philosophy to be grounded in economics and economic history.   McCloskey reiterates this point in her contribution to the symposium on John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness at BHL.  Abstract discussions of "just" worlds, must be constrained by an institutional analysis of how we imperfect humans living in an imperfect world can nevertheless find ways to live better together. As McCloskey points out in her contribution at BHL as well as more fully in Bouregois Virtues, the meta-narrative of high liberalism is a false narrative.  In fact, countering this meta-narrative was the point of my own first post over at BHL.

McCloskey is always a joy to read, and this contribution to the symposium is no exception.  Put simply, the meta-narrative of high liberalism is wrong because the factual background assumed in the narrative is factually inaccurate.  But you would only know that if you bothered to study seriously economics and economic history.  Thus, perhaps the best remedy to the intellectual ills of high liberalism is to insist on the point made in the quote from McCloskey -- "We can't do with philosophical definition a job that needs to be done with factual inquiry."

Comments

[Troy Camplin]

Seems to me we still have to do both, especially in the social sciences. Do we not need to have a clear definition of, say, "value" in order to know what it is we are even researching?

[Greg Ransom]

What's a "philosophical definition"?

[Doug Watt]

I agree with Troy. The example given of high liberalism and the premise being false is interesting as any arguement based on a false premise in true in logic. This is because it takes the form of a promise: "if the premise true then these outcomes will occur". I think such statements are really useful (maybe even necessary) to set the empirical research agenda that McCloskey and Pete are talking about.

[Daniel Kuehn]

Troy has a good point, and it seems to me the trouble also is that this archetype of "High Liberalism" may be hard to work with as well. I don't know of any economists that fit this description, so what we might be left with is philosophers who don't know economics. I've read some Nussbaum, but don't know her or Dworkin in any detail. I'd be willing to trust McCloskey, though, on the fact that they could use more economics.

But it seems to me the people who talk about the stuff she mentioned already know that (with reference to externalities, for example) the opportunity for intervention doesn't imply the competence or capacity for intervention. This may be due to the fact that I move more amongst economists than philosophers. Perhaps philosophers do both talk about this regularly and talk about it badly. My reaction to her essay was "well you're exactly right, but who actually thinks that?".

There are also stronger and weaker versions of the argument, and McCloskey only criticizes the very strongest (and least defensible) version. Take the non-governmental emergence of property rights or the non-governmental provision of externalities. It's one thing to say these things won't ever be provided without government. That's quite clearly wrong (and no version of the externality argument would lead you to say that). It's another thing to say that provision would be anemic without government, and that it's not unreasonable to expect cautious government provision to be welfare improving. That's a very different proposition from saying "property rights can never emerge on their own" or "roads will never be built without government".

[addicting flash games]

Seems to me we still have to do both, especially in the social sciences. Do we not need to have a clear definition of, say, "value" in order to know what it is we are even researching?
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