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Sometime ago, Patrick Gunning wrote: 
  
> Specifically, I ask Wade: what do you mean by a "social factor?" The 
> examples you give are (1) the "social interest served," (2) "observed 
> rate of unemployment or the rate of growth in the money supply" and (3) 
> the rate of inflation. I have great difficulty trying to grasp the 
> meaning of "social interest." And it is not clear to me how an observed 
> rate of unemployment, money supply growth, or inflation are social 
> factors. Wade, could you define social factor in greater detail and/or 
> give some more examples? 
 
 
My purpose in asking these questions was to try to pin down SSK. One 
reason I wanted to pin it down was to find out how it differs from 
relativism, which has been discussed earlier on this list. Another 
reason is to find out how it differs from methodological individualism. 
The two reasons are not unrelated. Let me begin by discussion 
methodological individualism. 
 
Presumably, the aim of SSK is to help us explain why a particular author 
held a particular economic idea (thought). One way to accomplish this 
aim is to put ourselves in the author's shoes in an effort to comprehend 
his/her ends and means. Since a person's perception of his/her ends and 
means is related partly or even mainly to his/her previous interaction 
with others, either subconsciously or through conscious choice, it is 
reasonable to take such interaction or interbehavior (e.g., 
indoctrination) into account when describing a person's ideas. If this 
is all that SSK is, then it does not differ at all from the 
"praxeological" approach to history that Mises taught in _Theory and 
History_? It does not differ from methodological individualism. If SSK 
does not differ, we ought to get on with the task of defining what is 
common among distinctly human beings, as Mises did in the first part of 
_Human Action_. Otherwise our communications are not likely to be very 
efficient. If SSK does differ from methodological individualism, then 
how does it differ? This is the question left open by Wade's brief 
description. 
 
Many people use the term "social factor" when they want to chide 
individualism. They say: "Her behavior was influenced by social 
factors." By this they mean either (a) that she had no choice or (b) 
that we can explain at least part of her choice by referring to the 
actions of other people. If they mean (a), then they might as well 
assume that the human beings they are discussing are robots without the 
facility of independently judging an idea. If they mean (b), then their 
explanations of economic ideas should consist of two parts: one that 
assumes that the idea-holder is a robot, the other that she is a 
distinctly human actor with the ability to think and choose 
independently of "social factors." Obviously, the effort to belittle 
individualism by using the term "social factor" fails when we pin it 
down in this way. 
 
Wade says: "Well, of course economists' beliefs are caused by social 
factors..." and "SSK says society, not nature, causes the beliefs of 
scientists." 
 
To say that "social factor," or "society" "causes" the beliefs of 
economists employs the term "cause" in a rather queer way, it seems to 
me.  Does "cause," here mean the same thing as in the phrase "the rising 
sun causes our perception of the morning light?" If so, then Wade seems 
to be assuming that the ideas of human beings are only a collection of 
atoms and molecules. The difference is that the ideas are somehow 
programmed by the non-chosen behavior of other beings with different 
atomic and molecular arrangements. Yet is not the unique characteristic 
of an idea or a thought that it is a distinctly human phenomenon? That 
it can be evaluated according to its usefulness in accomplishing some 
aim? That we can comprehend its usefulness to the user by putting 
ourselves in her shoes? Can a robot have an idea? Can it contribute to 
the field of economics?  
 
The answers we give to these questions help to determine whether we view 
an historical idea as progress on an earlier idea or whether we view it 
as just one among many of equal rank. Stated differently, our answers 
determine the extent to which we think of the history of economic ideas 
in relativistic or progressive terms. 
 
It seems to me that historians of economics nowadays too readily accept 
the language of the natural sciences and the imprecise ideas implied in 
collective terms like "social" and "society." I just don't see how one 
can expect to get very far without approaching the study of economics as 
a distinctly human endeavor carried out by individuals who differ in 
kind from the phenomena of natural science. Because it is a distinctly 
human endeavor, we must attribute the dead economists with at least the 
same potential for making independent judgments that we assume we 
ourselves possess when we study them. We cannot and should deny that 
human beings interact and they often generate and modify their ideas 
through interaction. Indeed, no economist we know has ever emerged from 
the woods without being raised by other human beings. Nevertheless, 
economists are not robots in this interaction; they are distinctly human 
beings with the capacity for independent judgments. Or at least most of 
them are for at least some of the time. 
 
--  
Pat Gunning 
http://stsvr.showtower.com.tw/~gunning/welcome 
http://web.nchulc.edu.tw/~gunning/pat/welcome 
 
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