----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
Pat,
I'm a bit late getting started today, and at random I started with your
posting.
I would agree with you that for the most part, it is very difficult to
enter the "club of economists" if you don't accept the reality of the
utility conception of motivation.
I manage to slip by the gate keepers. Why would I raise any question about
the issue? Well, there is a distinguished linage of folks who have raised
questions about this. Joan Robinson for one, Keynes for another, and then
there is Veblen. According to L. Robbins only the ignorant and the
perverse entertain any such doubts, but I don't see that one needs to be
ignorant to have doubts. Perverse, well maybe.
The standard version of choice theory has been the marginal utility fable.
But, the fable generates some persistent anomalies-- the Giffen paradox for
example. I've developed an alternative choice model using control theory
that explains the Giffen paradox, and a number of other anomalies. (The
compensated demand function, contrary to common belief doesn't solve the
Giffen issue.) And, under most circumstances a control theory price
theoretic model generates results that are very similar to, but not
precisely, those of orthodox price theory. That is, _most_ demand
functions slope downward.
Control theory has in the last decade or so become one of the theoretical
foundations of biology. So, if we give any credit to Marx, Marshall and
Veblen who suggested that the future of economics would be connected to
developments in biology, it would be natural to suspect that control theory
might have fundamental implications for theoretical economics.
The usual test for a new conception is first does it explain an interesting
anomaly, and then does it provide an explanation for the "normal cases"
which are thought to be adequately explained by the existing theory.
Control theory appears to do so.
Bill Williams
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