On 7/17/2011 7:39 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
SA wrote: In other words, the important thing is to understand what Karl Marx said, not how an economy works. SA
Let's look at wht this implies.
.*******
Carrol, you don't lack for philosophical ambition. You seem to believe that if you only pose a sufficient number of Really Deep Questions about What Is An Economy?, then somehow you can prove that (a) the economy doesn't exist and (b) that it can't be understood. Poof! - the economy disappears!
Carrol: O.K. Question one, since youtake it for granted that the economy exists and its existence does not need to be empirically demonstrated,:
When I made myself 4 extra cups of coffee this morning, was that activity part of "The Economy"? Some feminist economists in fact claim that it is and that economists' failure to include it in the GDP shows that they are all abunch of male chauvinists.
(Incidentally, your nonsense about Zeno is just that, nonsense. I did not present an analytic argument against the existence of "The Economy." I presente a sloppy EMPIRICAL argument against the existence of the economy. Now in my view, you yourself verge on being a radical empiricist, not as bad perhaps as Sft. Friday, but definitely leaning in that direction. Therefore it is odd that you failed to give an empiracl rebuttal to an empirical argument, but when off adventuring in a field in which your are clearly lost - I men the field of mathematical logic, because that is the discipline to which Zeno's paradox belongs. I'm naïve in it so I wouldn't use it. You are ven more naïve in it since you use it where it is inappropriate.)
Now I am not trained _at all_ in "economics," but I've read a hell of a lot of it over the years; I read all of Doug's Left Business Observer until my eyes went bad. I've read many Marxist economists (most of whom disagree with other Marxist economists); I've read debates on Pen-L. And so forth. And I offer as a sloppy empirical generalization, NOT as any kind of paradox, not one of these writers has been able to offer a definition of the object of study of a discipline called "Economics." They all simply assume that "The Economy" exists without even making a pretense of distinguishing human activity which is part of "The Economy" from that which is NOT part of The Economy. My example above of making 4 cups of coffee is probably too simple, though I doubt that you can answer it rigorously. But if you really want to demonstrate that The Economy really names something, you will have to provide yourself some "hard c ases" to show that your definition holds.
Read Ian's post. Take it seriously.
This is just a first response. There will probably be more.
Carrrol