Dear colleagues,





I hope this email finds you well. 





I am writing regarding the first session of the fifth year of the research seminar I organize at the Collège International de Philosophie (Université Paris Lumières) with the support of the Centre Walras-Pareto (University of Lausanne).





For the first session, I will have the immense pleasure of listening to George DeMartino, professor of international economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and the former President of the Association for Social Economics. George’s talk, entitled "‘Irreparable Ignorance’ and the Problem of Harm in Economics", will take place on Friday, the 22nd of September, from 6 pm to 7.30 pm Central European Time.





Here is the summary of his talk: Economists cause harm in part owing to the uneven impact of economic interventions—a topic explored in the profession for well over a century. But a second driver of “econogenic” (economist-induced) harm has received far less attention than it deserves. Economists face a deep epistemic problem I call “irreparable ignorance.” That is, they do not and cannot know much of what they need to know to do much of what they are doing. Not least, economists can’t know causality in the social world. Economists are trained to repress the problem via a progressive view of economic science which holds that economic knowledge improves over time, that errors are corrected, and that as a consequence, the domain of ignorance necessarily shrinks and the social impact of economists’ practice necessarily improves. All of these presumptions are false. In fact, learning over time necessarily involves forgetting, and some of what is forgotten leads to disastrous consequences. Moreover, new knowledge always generates new “salient” ignorance—ignorance that was inconsequential in the past but which becomes perilous when expanding knowledge generates new, crucial questions that cannot be answered adequately when the knowledge is urgently needed. But if we give irreparable ignorance its due, how can economists intervene responsibly and usefully in policy design and assessment? Fortunately, some economists and many other professions that confront “wicked problems” are now wrestling with this question. 





George is the author of numerous outstanding books and papers, notably Global Economy, Global Justice Theoretical and Policy Alternatives to Neoliberalism <https://www.routledge.com/Global-Economy-Global-Justice-Theoretical-and-Policy-Alternatives-to-Neoliberalism/DeMartino/p/book/9780415224017> (Routledge, 2000), The Economist’s Oath <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-economists-oath-9780199730568?q=The%20Economist%E2%80%99s%20Oath&lang=en&cc=us> (OUP, 2011), The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-professional-economic-ethics-9780199766635?cc=us&lang=en&> (2016, with Deirdre M. McCloskey) and most recently, The Tragic Science <https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo177914924.html> (University of Chicago, 2022). Numerous economists and scholars, e.g., Nancy Folbre, Cass R. Sunstein and Dani Rodrik, have reviewed and acclaimed The Tragic Science for its insightful and critical examination of how the epistemological and moral shortcomings of economics have caused considerable damage in the past decades. In this talk, George explores central themes from that book.





The session is open to all without registration and you can follow it using this link: https://unil.zoom.us/j/98635346610





You can view the full program of the seminar using this link <https://www.academia.edu/106453901/Description_Evaluation_and_Prescription_in_Economics_and_Philosophy>.





Thank you in advance for your attention and consideration.


My very best wishes,


Sina Badiei

-- 
Sina Badiei, Ph.D. in Philosophy, Epistemology and History of Economics
Junior Lecturer  <https://www.unil.ch/iep/en/home/menuinst/membres.html?url_params=-v_faculte=40-v_unite=137-v_personne=1241017-mode=fiche&pubsIdParam=578d3aca67674aab85aca2fc7ef4834f>at the Walras-Pareto Centre, Institut d'études politiques de l'Université de Lausanne
Director of Program in Philosophy and the Human Sciences <https://www.ciph.org/spip.php?page=quisommesnousdetail&id_personne=3152> at the Collège International de Philosophie, Université Paris Lumières
Qualified as Assistant Professor (Maître de conférences) by the French C.N.U. in Economics, Philosophy, and the History of Science
https://sinabadiei.academia.edu/