Value Judgements And Value Neutrality In Economics

First published in 1998, Loughlin examines the conception of rationality through the gazes of science, philosophy and political philosophy to further explain the concept of rational reasoning, the effects it has on the development on natural and social science and its implications on how we think about morals and politics.

This paper tackles the problem of the demarcation of value judgments in economic expertise. Is it possible to disentangle values from facts, or neutral scientific assertions from value-laden judgments, in the context of economic expertise? If not, why not? And if it is, under what conditions? First, drawing on concepts from analytic philosophy, the paper highlights the interdependencies between descriptive, evaluative, and prescriptive judgments. Second, drawing notably on social studies of science, the paper proposes a definition of 'expertise', and translates this into a list of successive stages wherein these different types of judgments are involved. A backward analysis of these stages is provided in order to identify where values stand, and who holds them. Third, reconsidering the positions of neutrality in economics (Mongin 2006), the paper defends the 'weak non-neutrality' view in the context of expertise, and concludes with reflections on what could be done to address the problem of democratic legitimacy raised by the difficulty of demarcation.

This book brings together key players in the current debate on positive and normative science and philosophy and value judgements in economics. Both editors have engaged in these debates throughout their careers from its early foundations; Putnam as a doctorial student of Hans Reichenbach at UCLA and Walsh a junior member of Lord Robbins’s department at the London School of Economics, both in the early 1950s. This book collects recent contributions from Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen and Partha Dasgupta, as well as a new chapter from the editors.

Economics as Moral Science investigates the problem of the ethical neutrality of "mainstream" economic theory within the context of the methodology of economics as a science. Against the conventional wisdom, the author argues that there are serious moral presuppositions to the theory, but that economics could still count as a scientific or rational form of inquiry. The basic questions addressed - the ethical implications of economics, its status as a scientific mode of theory-construction, and the relation between these factors - are absolutely fundamental ones for an understanding of contemporary economics, the philosophy of the human sciences, and our current market culture. Moreover, the study provides a thorough philosophical analysis of the critical issues at stake from the inside, from the credible perspective of a particular, but foundational economic theory - the neoclassical theory of rational choice.

Elizabeth Anderson offers a new theory of value and rationality that rejects cost-benefit analysis in our social lives and in our ethical theories. This account of the plurality of values thus offers a new approach, beyond welfare economics and traditional theories of justice, for assessing the ethical limitations of the market. In this light, Anderson discusses several contemporary controversies involving the proper scope of the market, including commercial surrogate motherhood, privatization of public services, and the application of cost-benefit analysis to issues of environmental protection.