JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 00-02-17 21:57:02 EST, you write:
>
> << Yes, that crude empiricism again. David Laibman told me, after
> > hearing my criticisms of efficient market theory, that you can't
> > refute a theory with empirical observations, only with another
> > theory. I think that's silly, but I guess I'm just a crude empiricist.
>
>
> And I disagree with Laibman. Are you sure that's what he said? Did he
> ever write that anywhere? Silly may be too kind of a word for such a
> statement. >>
>
> At the risk of being condemned as silly myself, lwhile I don't know if
> Laibman said this, I think it is a perfectly sensible thing to say. It is a
> central lesson of Kuhn and the no-longer-new philosophy of science. If you
> have a theory that is pretty deeply embedded in your work--not just anoither
> hypothesis within the framework of such a theory, then you will explain away
> apparent empirical counterexamples. They will be unimportant, illusory,
> results of countertendencies. You will require, if you can be induced to give
> up the deep background theory at all, a theory that is at least as powerful
> and either explains the stuff your theory expalined PLUS the counterexamples,
> or offers a whole different way of looking at things that is more
> attractrive.
>
> That is part of why, for example, neo-classical economists have on to a
> theory that us riddled with empirical counterexamples and ceteris paribus
> clauses--they thing there is nothing better to replace their theory. Same
> deal with Marxists,w ho are stuck with a creaky 19th century apparatus that
> nonetheness does some pretty good work; if faces what from the outside can be
> regarded as devastating problems, but people habg on to it. See the ongoing
> debate about FROP. The Marxists quite properly ask, what have you got that is
> better?
What you seem to have translated Laibman's statement into, ala Kuhn, is: a paradigm, or world view, that underlies a whole corpus of theories, can only be changed by substituting a different paradigm (i.e., marxist vs. neoclassical as competing paradigms). True of course. Tautology in fact.
But I doubt if Laibman meant paradigm when he said theory. That would have been uninteresting, and Doug wouldn't have thought it silly, would he?
Marxism a creaky 19th century structure?
RO