Samuel Bostaph wrote:
> We choose because we have free will and human actions are
> non-deterministic. [Apologies to you Marxists out there
> who have swallowed the historical materialism argument.
> I think you are wrong, but that is another argument.]
A claim that humans make economic choices because they have
free will is not a challenge to Marxism any more than to
neoclassical economics. Rather it is a challenge to the
physicalist interpretation of the world, which is to say
modern science. It is also a pointless claim for
economists: economic science acquires nothing from the claim
(except the useless possibility of truly inexplicable actions).
As far as I am aware, nobody has yet said in a sensible way
just what "free will" means. Perhaps Kant got the closest,
and he was forced to maintain a kind of compatibilism.
Which is just to say, there is nothing in it for science.
Cheers,
Alan Isaac