Philip Pilkington wrote:
“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.”
I’m sorry you take offense and I take it back, I just thought “brain” and “intellectual masturbation” made a nice play of words. Why are we so humorless? (notwithstanding my plaguy verve)
All I’m saying, and I don’t want to belabor the issue, is that critique should start from “the bottom up”, and cognitive considerations are too complex as a starting point when the categories in which they are set up are not even justified. For example, the main problem with logical atomism is not that it is overly rationalistic but that it assumes a metaphysics unbeknownst to it, it splits logic and ontology apart and then, of course, it finds itself helpless when things don’t jibe. Same with neoclassical economics, it proceeds without knowing what it is it is assuming, and whatever doesn’t fit into its models, well, it’s just an “approximation error.” So yes, we could, with Keynes, say that marginalism is too individualistic, that it fails to see the whole, but as long as that is due only to our experience at the surface level, we are not explaining what the whole is, the upshot of which is just “words, words, words.” _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Hotmail®:…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_explore_022009