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Ann Mayhew wrote: 
 
>His [My] argument is that individuals are thinking and creative; 
institutions are products of individual creativity; therefore 
methodological individualism is an approriate approach to the study of 
institutions. 
 
 
Ann, this is not exactly what I meant to argue. In formal terms, my 
argument goes something like this: 
 
1. Some institutions (or parts of institutions) are the consequence of 
individual action. 
    a. Some institutions (or parts of institutions) are deliberately created and,
therefore, can be best explained by referring to the deliberate actions of the individuals
who created them.
    b. Some institutions (or parts of institutions) are the unintended, or unplanned,
outcome of individual action. These can also be explained by referring to the deliberate
actions of individuals.
 
2. Some institutions (or parts of institutions) are the outcome of human 
behavior that is not deliberate or planned. These can best be explained by 
referring to the behavior and its non-deliberate causes. By non-deliberate 
causes, I am referring to what we might roughly call "instincts." The 
causes of this behavior is probably best sought in biology, broadly 
defined. 
3. Institutions have no other "cause." (Of course, I am not writing 
scientifically, or logically, not theologically.) 
4. Therefore, your use of the phrase "historically-determined institutional 
patterns" in your assertion that 
 
 
"The limits of methodological individualism upon which the broad 
neoclassicalsynthesis rested, became apparent even as neoclassicism became 
dominant." 
 
takes too lightly the relationship between an individual and an 
institution. 
 
Perhaps you did not understand this argument since your most recent post 
goes on to say: 
 
>The issue is to select the most appropriate unit of analysis for 
understanding the economy. A focus on individuals limits the focus of 
analysis to choice among a set of alternatives and begs the question of how 
and why those alternatives are the relevant set for the chooser. 
> 
 
It is consistent with my argument to agree that a focus on individuals 
limits the set of alternatives for an historian and an analyst to choose. 
But this is only because such a focus does not take biology, broadly 
defined, into account. Do you see some other limit? 
 
In answer to John Womack's question about Menger, I believe that the 
argument above is consistent with Menger. It is possible that he was the 
first to make it. See his "Concluding Remarks" in Part 3, Chapter 2 of his 
Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences. I do not know 
whether any of the "new institutionalists" have worked on methodology. If 
not and if one wanted to do so, perhaps Menger is the best place to begin. 
With regard to early American Institutionalism, John Bates Clark is also a 
good source for exploring the methodology of what we later call 
neoclassical economics, although I cannot give you a definite reference at 
the moment. 
 
Today, Ludwig von Mises is regarded as the methodological leader of 
Menger's School. In Human Action (1966), Mises discusses this issue from 
several points of view: Here are a three references. 
 
1. On the "great debate" over method between Menger and the German 
historians, see pp. 4-7,  at http://www.mises.org/humanaction/introsec2.asp 
 
2. On institutionalism, see p. 647, at 
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap23sec1.asp 
 
3. On methodological individualism, see pp. 41-44, at 
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap2sec4.asp 
 
Pat Gunning 
 
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