Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-nr592 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-01T06:53:02.442Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Relativist Fallacy of the Impossibility of Value Neutral Inquiry in Political Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Mark Tomass
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies dramatic incomparability (Davidson, 1984, p. 184).

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 279 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Brown, D. 1991. “An Institutional Look at Postmodernism,” Journal of Economic Issues, 25, December, 1089–1104.Google Scholar
Burczak, Theodore. 1994. “The Postmodern Moments of F. A. Hayek's Economics,” Economics and Philosophy, 10, 31–58.Google Scholar
Burtt, Edwin A. 1946. Right Thinking, New York.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1974. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” reprinted in Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984.Google Scholar
Dobb, Maurice. 1973. Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith: Ideology and Economic Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul. 1965. “Problems of Empiricism,” in Colodny, R. G., ed., Beyond the Edge of Certainty, Colodny, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friederich A. 1976. Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friederich A. 1979. Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 3: The Political Order of a Free People, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friederich A. 1989. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, Bartley III, W. W., ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, Robert L. 1988. Behind the Veil of Economics, W. W. Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Hoksbergen, Ronald. 1994. “Postmodernism and Institutionalism: Toward a Resolution of the Debate on Relativism,” Journal of Economic Issues, 28, no. 3, September, 679–713.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1968. “Idelogy and the Sociology of Knowledge,” in Broadbeck, May, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Macmillan, New York, 114–23.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest. 1994. “The Value-Oriented Bias of Social Inquiry,” in Michael, Martin and Lee, McIntyre, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, 571–84.Google Scholar
Neale, Walter C. 1957. “The Market in Theory and History,” in Polyami, K.et al., ed., Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, The Free Press, New York.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation, Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Harper and Row Publishers, New York.Google Scholar
Samuels, Warren J. 1993. “In Limited but Affirmative Defence of Nihilism,” Review of Political Economy, 52, 236–44.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis, Allen and Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Strauss, Leo. 1951. “The Social Science of Max Weber,” Measure, 2, 211–14.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1994. “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in Michael, Martin and Lee, McIntyre, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, 535–45.Google Scholar