...Against Rigid Rules - Keynes' economic theory
By Elke Muchlinski
'There is no controversy about this point: the term uncertainty is the hard core of Keynes' economic analysis.'
(...)
'Hume's view that experience is the accumulation of subjective experience caused the problem of justifying objective knowledge.
This was the starting point for Kant's epistemology, a transcendental perspective. Knowledge is a result of an interaction of intuition and concept. In all of this, uncertainty still remains since intuition is just a prerequisite of knowledge, not a final point in justifying knowledge. An important conclusion of the Kantian philosophy is a different understanding of experience. Scientific methods do incorporate a non-observable systemic order independently of its supposed empiricist real order. That is to say, that any observation is to be seen as impregnated by theories. Consequently, the dualism of observation and theory broke down. The transcendental philosophy, say Kant's philosophy, works out the superior function of theory and a priori principle. Nevertheless all theories must lead back to experience, otherwise they would be called 'empty' or blind concepts. This transcedental approach emphasises experience without neglecting its limitations (Parsons 1992). The quintessence of it all is that any object is given by perception. It excludes the possibility of identifying the percieved object with this object itself, since there is no such correspondence. At this point, for Kant, language is not only a medium of communication, but also a constituent element of knowledge. Wittgenstein picked up on these ideas more precisely.
Is there any link to Keynes work? His economic theory does not build upon empiricism. Keynes' theory of knowledge implies uncertainty and the unsurmountable fragility of knowledge. He objected to Empiricism in The Treatise on Probability. Moreover, he explained probability from epistemological point of view. A probabilistic proposition represents both the percieved fact or event by an individual and a priori principle. Let us turn briefly back to Kant's philosophy: ' We are in possession of certain modes of a priori knowledge. (...) In what follow therefore, we shall understand by a priori knowledge, not knowledge independent of all experience. (...) Thus we would say of a man who undermined the foundationsof his house, that he might have known a priorithat it would fall, that is, that he need not have waited for the experience of its actual falling' (Critique of Pure Reason, B3). Kant emphasised: 'though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience' (CPR, B1). Analogues to Kant, Keynes pointed out the limits of experience as a guide to decision, because 'experience can tell us what happened, but not what will happen' (1936). This provided Keynes' criticism addressed to the British empirical school: 'If our experience and our knowledge were complete, we should be beyond the need of the calculus of probability. And where our experience incomplete, we cannot hope to derive from it judgments of probability without the aid either of intuition or of some further a priori principle. Experience, as opposed to intuition, cannot possibly afford us a criterion by which to judge whether on given evidence the probabilities of two propositions are or are not equal' (1921, p. 94).
Post je objavljen 10.02.2011. u 22:41 sati.