Seminar on “Economics as a Value Science”

Part of a work-in-progress in philosophy of economics, here is the video of a seminar I led on “Economics as a Value Science.” Part of my argument is that there is a large, problematic gap in economic theory about the relationship between economic facts and economic values. Along the way I discuss Friedrich Hayek, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Rudolf Carnap, Richard Rorty, Milton Friedman, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand. The table of contents of the seminar are below the video frame.

Seminar contents:

Introduction
Philosophical issues in economics
David Hume
Immanuel Kant
Philosophical dichotomies
Implications for economics

Economic agents
Policy recommendations
Nature of philosophers
Value
Irrational values and biases

Positivism: Rudolf Carnap
Postmodernism: Richard Rorty

Free-market economists on facts and values:
Quote: Human Action, Ludwig von Mises
Quote: The Methodology of Positive Economics, Milton Friedman
Quote: Rules and Order, Friedrich A. Hayek

Dichotomous problems
Quote: A History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter

The Aristotelian approach
Objectivity or subjectivity of values
Objective value thesis
Subjective value thesis

Three-way debate:
Intrinsic value thesis
Subjective thesis
Objective thesis

Values as a species of facts
Biological perspective
Fish example: Facts, Values
Value statements
Human beings: Facts, Values

Value examples
Implications for the subjectivity and objectivity of value
Human valuing
Individuality
Authoritarianism
Free society

Epistemological resources on natural and objective value
Final words
Final credits

The above video at UFM’s site.

Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand — APEE panelists

Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand

I am chairing a session and presenting a paper on the theme of “Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand” for the annual conference of the Association for Private Enterprise Education, to be held April 1-3, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The rationale for the session: Three giants of twentieth-century thought — but few comparative studies have been done. The following panelists will discuss rights-related issues in the thought of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand.

Richard Ebeling, Department of Economics, Northwood University
Title: Mises on Rights and Principles

Eric Mack, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University
Title: Desert and Entitlement in Atlas Shrugged

Michelle Vachris, Department of Economics, Christopher Newport University
Title: Atlas Shrugged down The Road to Serfdom: Rand and Hayek on Rights

Stephen Hicks, Department of Philosophy, Rockford College
Title: Economic facts and values in Mises, Hayek, and Rand

Seminar: Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy

One of my talks at Francisco Marroquín University was on making sense of our mixed economy–an unwieldy combination of market and socialist elements. The 28-minute talk integrates themes from my intellectual heroes–Smith, Mill, Mises, Hayek, Rand, Popper, Friedman, Buchanan, and Tullock–and connects market economics, politics, ethics, history, and public choice to explaining our semi-coherent mixed economy. The flowchart worked through is online here.

Related:
The above talk at UFM’s site.
The flowchart: Pathologies of the mixed economy (or, How we got into this frackin’ mess).
The previous talk referred to at the beginning: Seminar on entrepreneurial ethics.
Interview with UFM’s Luis Figueroa on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

More: Do conservatives really value economic liberty?

Some do, sort of. But most of its major representatives do not. Another example is GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich.

In his 1984 book, Window of Opportunity, Gingrich attacks laissez-faire and proposes what he calls “opportunity society conservatism”:

“The opportunity society calls not for a laissez-faire society in which the economic world is a neutral jungle of purely random individual behavior, but for forceful government intervention on behalf of growth and opportunity.”

So the free market is a “jungle” and “purely random” and Gingrich favors “forceful” government intervention.

Two more examples, recalling an earlier post — of anti-free-market conservatives, each representative of a different sub-species of conservatism.

First the traditional conservatives, taking Robert Bork as representative, this from his Slouching Towards Gomorrah:

“Because both libertarians and modern liberals are oblivious to social reality, both demand radical personal autonomy in expression. That is one reason libertarians are not to be confused, as they often are, with conservatives” (p. 150). Bork goes on to argue that “Free market economists are particularly vulnerable to the libertarian virus” and to cite philosophical errors about ethics and human nature as the root problem: too often the free market economist “ignores the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy” (p. 151) and fails to recognize that “[u]nconstrained human nature will seek degeneracy often enough to create a disorderly, hedonistic, and dangerous society” (p. 153).

Second, the neo-conservatives, taking Irving Kristol, “godfather” of the neo-cons, as representative, this from his contribution to his co-edited Capitalism Today:

“The inner spiritual chaos of the times, so powerfully created by the dynamics of capitalism itself, is such as to make nihilism an easy temptation. A ‘free society’ in Hayek’s sense gives birth in massive numbers to ‘free spirits’ – emptied of moral substance” (p. 13).

Gingrich, Bork, and Kristol are among the biggest names in contemporary American conservatism and all are opposed to free-market capitalism. Can we cite equally prominent conservatives who are forcefully and consistently free-market capitalist? So what are we to make of the often-held view that connects conservatives to economic liberty? Is it merely that they are relatively less anti-free-market than their left-leaning opponents?

[Source for the Gingrich quotation: David Brooks, "The Gingrich Tragedy." The New York Times, December 8, 2011.]

My upcoming lectures at Universidad Francisco Marroquín

From November 3 to 6, I will be giving an invited series of lectures and seminars (nine hours worth of them!) at the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala.

My general themes will be entrepreneurship, ethics, philosophy, and political economy.

The times titles of my various talks are as follows.

Open Lecture (Thursday, November 3): “Entrepreneurs and Philosophers: Why a Philosophy of Freedom Matters.”

Luncheon Seminar (Friday, November 4): “Economics as a Value Science.”

Full-day Seminar (Saturday, November 5): “Philosophy for Economists and Economics for Philosophers.” Sub-units for the day:

1. Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy

2. On the Best Arguments against Free-Market Capitalism
“Socialism is moral even if it isn’t practical.”
“Wealth is a social creation.”
“We live in a world of scarce resources.”
“The free market is dog-eat-dog.”
“Humans are too depraved for freedom.”
“Humans are too incompetent for freedom.”
“Value is not of the material world.”

3. Ethics and Political-Economy
Entrepreneurship and Virtue Ethics
Objective, Subjective, and Intrinsic Value
Egoism, Altruism, and Predation
The Entrepreneurial Life

4. Government in a Free Society
What government is—the what and the how
Legislating morality

5. The Case for the Free Society
Moral and Economic Arguments for Freedom
Empirical Data and Theoretical Principles
“What” and “How” Arguments
Integrating Friedman, Hayek, and Rand
The Positive and the Negative Cases for Freedom

6. Freedom and the Meaning of Life

Thanks to UFM’s Centro Henry Hazlitt for sponsoring my visit.

Interview with Douglas Den Uyl on “The Essence of Capitalism”

Douglas Den Uyl spoke at Rockford College on four competing (and/or compatible?) theories of the nature of capitalism: Milton Friedman’s “Utility” account, Friedrich Hayek’s “Epistemic” account, Adam Smith’s “Aesthetic” account, and Ayn Rand’s “Self-Fulfillment” account.

Here is my sixteen-minute interview with Dr. Den Uyl following his lecture:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Cross-posted at the CEE site.

APEE update — Elinor Ostrom

I’m looking forward to learning new things at my APEE session tomorrow on “Hayek and Rand on Values.” The panelists are Emily Chamlee-Wright, Steve Horwitz, Edward Hudgins, and William Kline, each of whom knows a lot about both Hayek and Rand.

At the opening banquet tonight, we heard an address from Lin Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Who would have thought that a talk on the evolution of water property rights in the Los Angeles area could be so interesting?

I previously wrote briefly about Ostrom and Indiana University, at the end of this post.

Hayek and Rand on values — APEE 2011 conference

For this year’s conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I am organizing and chairing a session on two giants of the twentieth century — Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand — with four scholars comparing their views on values and political economy.

Topic: Hayek and Rand on Values

Chair: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D., Rockford College, Illinois

Panelists:

Emily Chamlee-Wright, Ph.D. Elbert Neese Professor of Economics, Beloit College, Wisconsin
Title: “Cultivating the Economic Imagination with Atlas Shrugged”
Abstract: In this paper I describe my use of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in an undergraduate comparative economic systems course. I argue that the novel is the ideal vehicle for cultivating what I call the “economic imagination,” by which I mean the ability to see the systematic outcomes that emerge under different political economic rules of the game. Further, I argue that the novel is particularly well-suited to animate discussions of essential comparative systems topics, including Marxism, the various phenomena associated with the soviet-type economy, and fascism. Finally, drawing upon student writing, I argue that though Rand’s view of reason and epistemology are often at odds with Austrian economics, these tensions are productive in conveying Austrian insights regarding the extended order.

Steve Horwitz, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University, New York
“Hayek, Rand, and the Ethics of the Micro- and Macro-worlds
Abstract: Hayek and Rand both supported capitalism, but their ethical systems were different. This paper explores the differences and how they apply to the institution of the family. It concludes that Rand’s ethical system matches very well with what Hayek sees as necessary in the “Great Society” of the macro-cosmos, but that our understanding of the institution of the family seems better suited to a more altruistic ethical code. The challenge for a Hayekian ethics that pays attention to institutional contexts is how to ensure that the complex process of making those distinctions is learned as children pass into adulthood.

Edward Hudgins, Ph.D., Director of Advocacy, The Atlas Society, Washington, D.C.
Title: “Is a Moral Foundation Necessary for Spontaneous Order?”
Abstract: F. A. Hayek argued that social order and institutions—markets, money, law—arise spontaneously out of the actions of individuals seeking their own interests but not through specific planning by individuals. Further, because it is impossible in markets for any individual to know what mix of goods and services will best satisfy consumer demands, attempts at central government planning will result in adverse unintended consequences.
But it can be argued that such a system will only operate to protect individual liberty and limit government if enough individuals, reinforced by the culture, accept and live by certain moral principles and the Objectivism provides such a foundation.

William Kline, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Liberal and Integrative Studies, University of Illinois, Springfield
Title: “Individualism and Interdependence”
Abstract: When do we need other people? Both Hayek and Rand agree on the importance of the division of labor. People need other people to produce what they cannot or will not do themselves. Hayek and Rand also broadly agree on the importance of property rights that make the division of labor, and the market in general, possible. Yet, theses authors deeply disagree on the degree of interdependence necessary for establishing valid property claims. This paper explores Hayek’s use of a Humean conception of property that emphasizes tradition and cannot exist independently of others and contrasts it with Rand’s use of a Lockean/Cartesian approach that argues for the existence of objective, nonconventional property rights. This paper argues that the two authors can be reconciled by distinguishing between what Hume identifies as the need for property rights versus the actual rules that protect them.

The session is scheduled for Monday, April 10 at the bright and cheery 8:10 a.m. time slot.