Hi George DeMartino,


Apropos your recent question concerning the history of economists using counterfactual accounts of causation, William Stanley Jevons made the following comment in his Elementary Lessons in Logic (1888):


 “A necessary or indispensable antecedent is however identical with a cause, being that without which
the effect would not take place” (Jevons, 1888, p. 240).


REFERENCE

 Jevons, William Stanley. (1888/2010). Elementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive
& Inductive. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. Print



Hope that helps,


Adrian K. Yee - PhD Student
History & Philosophy of Science
University of Toronto
http://hps.utoronto.ca/staff/adrian-k-yee/

________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of George DeMartino <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 12 December 2018 11:02:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SHOE] Research Question--economists on counterfactual reasoning

I am investigating the history the idea of counterfactual reasoning—and especially its place in social science explanations that entail causation. There is a massive literature outside of economics on all conceivable issues pertaining to counterfactualization (I’d be happy to provide citations to anyone who might be interested), but I have been much less successful in tracking down contributions by economists. Either economists have been less inclined to think about the connections between causal arguments and counterfactuals, or I’m looking in the wrong places.

I would appreciate any leads that folks may have.

Background—I'm giving the pres. address for the Association for Social Economics at the ASSA meetings (working title: "The Specter of Irreparable Ignorance"), and am intending to argue that those economists who emphasized fundamental uncertainty as concerns the future tended to presume that the past was essentially knowable. Am thinking of Shackle in particular in this connection, who wrote:

"The vital and fundamental difference between the nature and meaning of the content of time past or present and the content of time to come was brought into brilliant focus by the Swedish economists Myrdal and Lindahl, who invoked the phrase ex ante and ex post, to name the two points of view, that of the forward look into the void of unknowledge, and the backward look into the past with its ascertainable history” (xi, final emphasis added).”

I plan to argue that since causal explanation (necessarily?) entails counterfactual reasoning, and since counterfactual narratives are irreducibly fictional/speculative, we confront epistemic limits in knowing the past that are, in key respects, identical to the limits we face in knowing the future. Hence, the past does not represent “ascertainable” history in the way Shackle argues here. The problem of fundamental uncertainty is therefore somewhat deeper than Shackle and others recognized.

Thanks in advance for any help with citations to the relevant economic literature. (I’d be happy to share the draft of the paper when it’s completed.)

Regards,
George


George DeMartino
Professor and Co-Director
MA Degree in Global Finance, Trade,
and Economic Integration (GFTEI)

President, Association for Social Economics
(http://socialeconomics.org/)
Website: https://georgedemartino.com/

On Economy Harm Profile Analysis (NPE):

Econogenic Harm and the Case for ‘Economy Harm Profile’ Analysis<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2018.1526265>



Free download here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/J2e3BIQzd7QC6Pic3tka/full



New Book:
 The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics,<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-professional-economic-ethics-9780199766635?prevSortField=1&sortField=8&start=0&resultsPerPage=20&lang=en&cc=us&prevNumResPerPage=20> eds. George DeMartino and Deirdre McCloskey.<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-professional-economic-ethics-9780199766635?prevSortField=1&sortField=8&start=0&resultsPerPage=20&lang=en&cc=us&prevNumResPerPage=20>

Other New Work:
On Irreparable Harm (RoSE): http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/xRUR7vYEeBbwycyunvb3/full
On Fair Trade (CJE): http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/1/69.full?etoc