The field of economics proves to be a matter of metaphor and storytelling - its mathematics is metaphoric and its policy-making is narrative. Economists have begun to realize this and to rethink how they speak. This volume is the result of a conference held at Wellesley College, involving both theoretical and applied economists, that explored the consequences of the rhetoric and the conversation of the field of economics.

Making sense of economists and their world in a persuasive and entertaining style, Arjo Klamer, the author of a number of influential books including _Conversation with Economists_ and _The Consequences of Economic Rhetoric_, shows that economics is as much about how people interact as it is about the models, the mathematics, the econometrics, the theories and the ideas that come from the enormous aggregate of economics literature. Knowing and understanding economics requires both bookwork and mingling with other economists. (...) Viewing the subject as a collection of conversations, Klamer examines fundamental disagreements over the nature and purpose of the discipline, addressing how it is that a discipline that so permeates daily life is at once ‘soft’ and scientific, powerful and ignored, noble and disdained and in a reader-friendly style – without eschewing academic methodology demonstrates economics to be a living, breathing discipline rooted in the real world. Whether you are a student, academician, journalist, practising economist or interested outsider, _Speaking of Economics_ will get you interested in a conversation about economics. (shrink)

Bryan Caplan’s bold and challenging argument is weak on evidence and uses questionable assumptions. He does not prove that politicians go along with voters’ biases, nor that these biases make voters feel good, nor that they cling to these biases tenaciously. And he assumes that the public’s disagreements with professional American economists are “biases” in the sense of being incorrect, even though economists often disagree with each other, and economists in other countries may disagree even with the consensus views of (...) American economists. (shrink)

Ethics Introduced: Readings in Moral Philosophy in an anthology that provides students with foundational knowledge in moral philosophy by exposing them to a variety of classical and contemporary readings in ethical theory and application. The anthology is divided into four parts. In Part 1, students learn about meta-ethics and question the status of moral truths through selections by Nietzsche, Ruth Benedict, and Smith. In Part 2, the question of what we should value most is addressed through readings on hedonism, Aristotelian (...) Virtue Ethics, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Part 3 focuses on normative ethics, diving into theories such as egoism, divine command theory, utilitarianism, Kantianism, care ethics, and more. Part 4 rounds out the anthology by helping students think through moral problems and contemporary controversies. Readings in this section address death and dying, abortion, war, treatment of animals and the environment, and the nature of moral obligations to people in need. Throughout the text, each reading is supported by an introduction, study questions, and suggestions for further reading and exploration to inspire critical thinking and additional analysis. Ethics Introduced is ideal for introductory ethics courses and can also be used in comparative religion, philosophy, and humanities courses. Dennis Arjo earned his B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, M.A. in philosophy from University of Colorado, and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a professor of philosophy at Johnson County Community College, where he teaches introduction to philosophy, ethics, ancient philosophy, and Asian philosophy. Omar Conrad earned his B.A. in sociology, his M.A. in sociology, and his M.A. in philosophy from the University of Kansas. He is a professor of philosophy at Johnson County Community College, where he teaches introduction to philosophy, ethics, logic and critical thinking, and philosophy of religion. Dawn Gale earned her B.A. in philosophy and psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, her graduate certificate in women and gender studies, and her M.A. in philosophy from the University of Kansas. She is a professor of philosophy at Johnson County Community College, where she teaches introduction to philosophy, ethics, environmental ethics, and logic and critical thinking. (shrink)

In The Elm and the Expert, Jerry Fodor tries to reconcile three philosophical positions he is presently committed to: a computational theory of mind, intentional realism and a denotational theory of meaning. One problem he faces is this: a denotational semantics, according to which the meaning of a singular term like a name is exhausted by its referent, seems to rule out there being true intentional generalizations, or generalizations which advert to the contents of a subject's mental states. That there (...) are such true generalizations is a major element in Fodor's intentional realism. Accordingly, Fodor is forced to find a way of dissolving this apparent incompatibility. This paper looks at his attempts to do so and concludes that they fail. (shrink)

This book examines recent attempts by liberal theorists to defend parental authority and the paradoxes that it poses. Dennis Arjo explores various topics within the philosophy of parenting such as education, discipline, and the right of parents to teach their own religious beliefs to their children.

The ways in we raise and educate children can appear to be at odds with basic liberal values. Relationships between parents and children are unequal, parents routinely control children's behaviour in various ways, and they use their authority to shape children's beliefs and values. Whether and how such practices can be made to accord with liberal values presents a significant puzzle. In what follows I will look at a recent and sophisticated attempt to resolve these tensions offered by Matthew Clayton (...) in his book Justice m Child Rearing in the context of general account of the proper limits of parental authority. I argue that Clayton is unsuccessful in ways that point to fundamental and pervasive questions about the place of liberal values in child rearing and education that remain unanswered. (shrink)

The tone of this paper is largely critical. Therefore, I would like to begin by praising Donald McCloskey and Arjo Klamer for their exciting and provocative initiative in the metatheory of economics. They have done us a great favor by opening our eyes to some hidden aspects in the intellectual practices of economists. They have shown that economics is rhetoric; it is persuasion, discourse, conversation, and negotiation, to use their favorite phrases. They have provided plausible arguments and illuminating (...) examples to convince us of the literary character of economic reasoning, notwithstanding the formal languages used by economists and the positivist pretensions typical of the self-image of the discipline. However, McCloskey and Klamer have been less successful in trying to convince us of what economics is not. In particular, it concerns me that they have opened up a gap between rhetoric and realism. They seem to think that because economics has a rhetorical character, it cannot be understood in realist terms. I will argue that this view is mistaken: rhetoric and realism do not exclude each other, but rather they are capable of being combined in a coherent methodology of economics. It is a valuable contribution to import the insights of the newly rehabilitated rhetoric to the metatheory of economics; but it is unnecessary to marry them with enthusiasm about the fashionable anti-realism of Richard Rorty and others. While this is my overall thesis, it is clear that only initial steps towards its substantiation can be taken in this paper. I intend to proceed as follows. I will first make an attempt to locate the problem at hand in the history of the metatheory of economics. Then I will point out those elements in rhetorical metatheory as practiced and defended by Klamer and McCloskey that apparently have anti-realist or non-realist assumptions or implications, either directly or via considerations of scientific rationality. Next I will formulate a few concepts of realism, the differences between which have been ignored in the methodology of economics to this day. Then I will make preliminary attempts to inquire into the mutual compatibility of the rhetorical insights provided by McCloskey and Klamer and realism in this context. I will show that, in principle, there should be no insurmountable obstacles to combining the two; in some of its senses, realism will even turn out to be presupposed by the rhetorical approach. I do not primarily intend to argue for realism as such in this paper. Instead, I will argue for the compatibility of realism and rhetoric. The argument is based on Klamer's and McCloskey's own commitments; in this sense, the argument is immanent to their rhetorical approach. As a final point, I will argue that one should not be indifferent about realism: it does make a difference in economics and in the methodology of economics whether rhetoric is accepted with or without realism. (shrink)

This ground-breaking volume brings together the essays of top theorists including Arjo Klamer, Deirdre McCloskey, Julie Nelson, Shuan Hargreaves-Heap and Philip Mirowski on a diverse range of topics such as gender, post-colonial theory, rationality, and modernism.

The existence and unity of a discipline called economics reside in the eye and mind of the beholder. The perception of economics's unity and disciplinarity itself arises in some, but not all, of the different schools of thought that we would loosely categorize as economic. Indeed, as we hope to show, the presumption of unity and disciplinarity—the idea that there is a center or “core” of propositions, procedures, and conclusions or a shared historical “object” of theory and practice—is suggested in (...) the concepts and methods of some schools of economic thought, but is opposed by others. Further, we argue that the portrayal of economics as a discipline with distinct boundaries is often a discursive strategy by one school or another to hegemonize the field of economic discourse. In this way, the issue of the existence of an economics discipline and its principles of unity or dispersion is in part a political question. Its effects are felt in the hiring and firing of economics professors and practitioners, the determination of what comprises an economics curriculum, the determination of what is a legitimate economic argument and what is not, the dispensation of public and private grant monies, and the differential entry into or exclusion from ideological, political, and economic centers of power and decision making.Our view is that no discipline of economics exists. Or, rather, no unified discipline exists. The “discipline” of economics is actually an agonistic and shifting field of fundamentally different and often conflicting discourses. The dispersion and divisions that exist between the schools of thought we discuss here as “economic” may have some regularities. But we do not see closer contiguity of these economic schools when placed on a horizontal scale than, to take just one example, among all of the many different "disciplinary" forms of Marxian thought. That is, in our view, Marxian economic thought shares more concepts, approaches, and methods—may have more discursive regularity—with Marxian literary theory than do Marxian economic thought and neoclassical economic theory. Jack Amariglio is associate professor of economics at Merrimack College and the editor of Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society. He is working on a book entitled Modernism and Postmodernism in Economics with Arjo Klamer. Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff are professors of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their recent coauthored books are Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy and Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less ...

"This book contains ideas to develop interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views on economy and society. It aims to disseminate heterodox ideas on various subjects related to economics and global society. The book is organised in six parts. Part 1 contains the key lectures of Backhaus on the concept of state sciences and of Klamer on the importance of culture for economics. Parts 2- 6 contain successively contributions in the areas of economic paradigms and theories, population and society, corporate issues, environment, (...) and international relations. Examples of the content are: - the changes of family life cycles due to the rise of non-traditional households; - subjective and objective inflation rates after the introduction of the Euro; - the economics of genetic engineering; - the contribution of foreign direct investment to the economic development of host countries; - the inaccuracy of economic models applied in places characterized by extreme income disparities; - the improvement of political and corporate governance; - evolutionary thinking and emission trading; - freedom and order in the European Union; - the reform of social policy in Europe. The book provides interesting creative multi-disciplinary ideas with respect to various topical issues concerning the contemporary global society. It is highly recommended for economists and social scientists in search of broad views on social science and society.". (shrink)