Thick Concepts in Economics: The Case of Becker and Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 51 (4):371-399 (2021)
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Abstract

In this paper, we examine the viability of avoiding value judgments encoded in thick concepts when these concepts are used in economic theories. We focus on what implications the use of such thick concepts might have for the tenability of the fact/value dichotomy in economics. Thick concepts have an evaluative and a descriptive component. Our suggestion is that despite attempts to rid thick concepts of their evaluative component, economists are often not successful. We focus on the strategy of explication to remove the evaluative component of thick concepts and argue that often economists either have to make value judgments or are unable to individuate out the phenomenon under analysis. We support our claim with a case study, namely the concept of addiction in Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction (1988). One consequence of our analysis is that theories containing thick concepts could commit economists to making value judgments and as such undermine the fact/value dichotomy.

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Catherine Herfeld
Universität Hannover

Citations of this work

Democratising Measurement: or Why Thick Concepts Call for Coproduction.Anna Alexandrova & Mark Fabian - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-23.

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References found in this work

Logical foundations of probability.Rudolf Carnap - 1950 - Chicago]: Chicago University of Chicago Press.
The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays.Hilary Putnam - 2002 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being.Anna Alexandrova - 2017 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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