Abstract
This paper returns to a perennial controversy I examined in a previous paper in the Journal of Business Ethics (Vol. 2, 1983). Is economic theory an ethically neutral discipline or do its statements presuppose a commitment to moral values? Once again this issue is addressed via a case study of the neo-classical theory of rational choice. In the present paper I focus on behaviourist forms of “operationalist” attempts to short-circuit any argument that would seek to infer moral presuppositions from the use of evaluative discourse. In particular, I examine strategies that have sought to excise from economic theory the “mentalistic” vocabulary required to describe valuations per se. And I argue that such tactics are deficient since they i) impoverish the explanatory power of economic theory, (ii) fail to recover the normative usefulness of the theory of choice, and (iii) camouflage the continued presupposition of moral commitments within neo-classical theory.
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Bernard Hodgson is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario. He was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University in 1979–80, and again in 1985. His primary research has been on the philosophical foundations of the human sciences, particularly economics.
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Hodgson, B. Economic science and ethical neutrality II: The intransigence of evaluative concepts. J Bus Ethics 7, 321–335 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382533
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382533