[lbo-talk] David Harvey v. Brad DeLong

[Philip Pilkington]

> Philip Pilkington wrote:
> > I don't think he was
> saying that he appropriated his method, I think his point was to show the
> affinity between the two. His method may not have shown it, but his
> socio-ontological conviction did, although this conviction was one of an
> elitist bourgeois.
>
>
>  Critiquing marginalism from the standpoint of the philosophy of
> science is important, but starting from the "concreteness of the
> brain" smacks of, as DeLong would say, "intellectual
> masturbation", no offense intended.
>

Again, this wasn't what was going on. Wojtek was saying that there were
concrete "cognitive" reasons for people adopting a utilitarian stance or
people adopting a social/ontological stance. I thought that this was a very
interesting point but that it missed out on two accounts.
(1) It, in itself, internalised an overly rational framework - my
considering cognitivism to be inherently hostile to social/ontological
stances generally.
(2) That, and this follows from my critique of cognitivism, the reasons
people adopt these stances is more likely to be cultural and historical. (I
was alluding to the fact that Wojtek's use of a cognitivist framework
restricted him from seeing this).
Considering that I think both Wojtek's contribution and my critique were
both interesting and relevant - whether they were tangents or not (they
weren't...) - I find the accusation of "intellectual masturbation" to be
actually quite offensive.