Dear Duncan, Carlo

I suggest not enough has been made of the element of self contradiction in
Keynes’ Treatise.  

His arguments bring to my mind those over trinitarianism.  Was Christ human
or divine?   Historically, the winning strategy has been, it seems to me,
the self contradictory one.  Likewise, are priors numerical or not?  Keynes
chose to make them both.  This would I think be utilising ideas “that Keynes
thought might be acceptable to the philosophical tradition of the Cambridge
of his time”.  

Concerning “the process by which communities form consensus on priors, which
Keynes seems to have thought of as ‘conventions’ ”.  That seems to be the
key to the (very close) relationship between Keynes and Wittgenstein, which
Michael originally enquired about.

In 1935 Bertrand Russell was sarcastically dismissive of such a
‘conventional’ approach when he wrote "The idea of one universal truth has
been abandoned; there is English truth, German truth, Montenegran truth, and
truth for the principality of Monaco."

The chain Keynes > Wittgenstein > Feyerabend > McCloskey however apparently
yields (2003) its positive affirmation “There are no timeless standards
outside those of an interpretative community” 

Rob Tye