Fred Foldvary wrote:
>One can observe people world-wide seeking to obtain
>more goods.
True. And one can observe, with equal or greater
frequency, people doing exactly the opposite.
After people pass a certain material sufficiency,
you can observe them deciding to seek
non-economic satisfactions. You can observe them
choosing to go to work less and to go fishing
more; you can observe them choosing more time
with families or with other pursuits. Or you can
observe me, who gave a considerable portion of my
business to have time to do teaching and writing.
The teaching will never compensate monetarily for
the forgone business; nevertheless, it was a good trade.
You observed, and demonstrated that observation
is a selection process; you saw what you were
trained to see. It is not that what you saw
wasn't there, but it wasn't all that was there.
> I know of no general culture where this
>is not the case.
On the contrary, in lots of cultures, unlimited
desire is considered gauche and is not socially
sanctioned. This is especially so in cultures
often labelled "primitive," but exists even in
many places in Western Europe, where the social
net is often so extensive that work is damn-near
optional; in France,work is considered a positive
nuisance (I'll catch hell for that
remark--actually, the French who do work are
among the most productive workers in the world).
Whether such systems are sustainable, or fair, or
whatever, is an open question, but it certainly
indicates a wider variety of cultural attitudes
to the question; the American attitude is not
universal. Not across history and not even now.
>How do you know that what people in general want is
>infinite and perfect?
>Can one peer into their subconscious?
>One could argue that many people want to live forever
>in some afterlife, but this is not necessarily
>universal, and may be culturally taught.
Well, if its taught, its culturally taught; there
is no other kind of teaching. But as for how I
determined that people want something perfect, I
admit that it is a belief, but it is nevertheless
a reasonable belief. For every culture in man's
long history has taken it as a fact, rightly or
wrongly, that man is both material and spiritual,
however differently they define that
spirituality. Now, matter can only satisfy
matter; spirit wants what transcends matter, even
if it is rooted in matter. The spirit wants truth
and beauty, and wants to pursue them for their
own sakes. But it cannot get them here, so it
settles for less, a less which is often more in
terms of material goods. So the pursuit of the
ultimate that is only partially obtainable
ensures, more or less, that desire will always
exceed what can possibly be supplied. And that
desire--eros--is the final cause of all demand
curves, and the final guarantor of their
continuance. In this sense, all economics is
erotic, even if economics isn't particularly sexy.
>Logic is not supplied by any person.
But the propositions upon which logic works are.
Logic provides no truths, it is merely a test of
the validity of the relation of conclusions to
premises, but the premises are not in themselves
supplied by logic. However, I suspect that you
are using "logic" where you mean "reason." And
reason certainly is personal. Reason may use logic, but is not reducible to it.
>But we can apply logic to the interpretations also.
>Ultimately, logic will tell us that either an
>observation has an extremely high probability of being
>true, or else that we are uncertain whether it is in
>accord with reality.
I think that the relationship between concepts,
precepts, propositions, and other mental
constructs and what you are calling "reality" is
a lot more problematic than you seem to think it
is. I am guessing that you think observation and
empiricism and positivism solves all these
problems. However, the words of D. McCloskey are useful here:
"Modernism promises knowledge free from doubt,
metaphysics, morals, and personal conviction;
what it delivers merely renames as Scientific
Method the scientist�s and especially the
economic scientist�s metaphysics, morals, and
personal convictions. It cannot, and should not,
deliver what it promises. Scientific knowledge is
no different from other personal knowledge.
Trying to make it different, instead of simply
better, is the death of science."
>I don't undertstand why we MUST be connected to
>cultural or personal bias.
Because you are a human being, and humans have no
other way of being than being cultural. It is
true that, on rare occasions, feral children are
found, but they are rarely found to be
economists. This conversation is conducted in
language, and language is a cultural artifact, as
are all the terms and constructs we use. We
cannot escape being what we are; and to live in
the fiction that you can only blinds one to the
true hold that time and place have on one. The
best strategy is to recognize that hold, identify
it, and see where its virtues and vices lie, its
strength and shortcomings. Play to the one and try to mitigate the other.
>In my judgment, we can transcend culture by asking the
>Socratic questions:
I'm not sure Plato would have agreed. In his
view, the perfection of man was far too tied to
the polis is be a-cultural, and men without a
polis were barbarians. Even in his idealism, he
could not escape the Republic, and the Republic was very Greek.
> > The attempt to read an
> > author apart from the context of his time and
> > tradition is ahistorical and likely inaccurate.
>
>But then is THAT proposition of yours not itself also
>ahistorical and inacurate?
No.
John C. Medaille
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