After Sen what about objectivity in economics?

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1 After Sen what about objectivity in economics? Human Values, Justice and Political Economy Symposium with Amartya Sen and Emma Rothschild Coimbra, 14 de Março 2011 Vítor Neves Faculdade de Economia / Centro de Estudos Sociais vneves@fe.uc.pt When asked to talk on how the work of these two eminent scholars, Professors Amartya Sen and Emma Rotschild, has been influencing our own work here I hesitated a bit on what topic to choose. Sen is, in effect, such a prolific writer and his work so vast that his influence spreads on many different areas. Fortunately, I was aware that several other colleagues of mine would also speak today, so I ended up choosing one very particular topic in Sen s work: his contribution to the discussion of objectivity in economics. The subject seems to dispense justification. In effect, after the crisis of 2008 and the tremendous shock waves that followed which have again put serious doubts on the reputation of economics as a science it is our perception that the old (and unsettled) issue of value-freedom and objectivity in economics is re-emerging as an urgent topic. So, a colleague of mine, José Castro Caldas, and I organized last year, here in Coimbra, a seminar on facts, values and objectivity and, based on that meeting, we are now editing a book on this subject. Obviously, the relevance of Sen s contribution to this topic is indisputable. The tradition in economics has been to try to put aside values and normative judgment as much as possible. Hutchison saw the positive-normative dichotomy as absolutely necessary to prevent propagation of ideology in economics and Mark Blaug also agreed that [i]f there are not at least some descriptive, factual assertions about economic uniformities that are value-free, it seems difficult to escape the conclusion that we have a licence in economics to assert just about anything that we please (Blaug, 1998: 373). 1

2 The truth is that in spite of all attempts to develop an ethically-neutral positive economics the issue of ethical value judgments in economic science, as Wilber and Hoksbergen (1998 [1986]:17) noted, stubbornly refuses to go away and it permeates even the core of economic theory. Economics, as the title of a small book of Sen, published in France, reminds us, is a moral science. Professor Sen it is widely acknowledged has, for a long time now, been one of the most distinguished voices in the economics profession to show us the enormous relevance of ethical considerations in economics (and also of course, has he noted, the importance of economics to ethical studies [but this is a different matter]). Reading his writings, namely his magnificent book On Ethics and Economics, it becomes pretty clear how wrong and misleading it was Robbin s statement that it would not be logically possible to associate economics and ethics in any form but mere juxtaposition (Robbins, 1935:148). Albert Hirschman another great economist we are proud of counting as one of our honoris causa doctorates finished his marvelous Morality in the social sciences: a durable tension expressing hopes that a kind of social science very different from the one most of us have been practicing would eventually develop. In a somewhat utopian tone he described his dream for such a new science as follows: a moral-social science where moral considerations are not repressed or kept apart, but are systematically commingled with analytic argument, without guilt feelings over any lack of integration; where the transition from preaching to proving and back again is performed frequently and with ease; and where moral considerations need no longer be smuggled in surreptitiously, nor expressed unconsciously, but are displayed openly and disarmingly. (Hirschman, 1981:305-6) This, Hirschman told us, would be, in part, his dream for a social science for our grandchildren. It is obvious that we are still very far from such a dream. But isn t this kind of moral-social science what we can already find in the works of Amartya Sen, for 2

3 instance in his Development as Freedom or in the more recent The idea of justice? Of course, neither Sen nor Hirschman ignored the old tension, emphasized by Alfred Marshall, between the warm heart and the cold head. Virtually all of us, as Myrdal claimed, aspire to objectivity as the ethos of social science. But objectivity is an elusive concept. It is usually thought as an epistemological (and ethical) value, as a demand for universality, interpersonal invariance and detachment: universality in the sense of a shared understanding of some aspect of life or the world by everyone reasoning consistently on the available evidence and arguments; interpersonal invariance meaning invariance regarding the individuals respective positions; and detachment from the contingencies of the self. 1 Objectivity would be, in the words of the philosopher Thomas Nagel (1986), the view from nowhere, an external view which we would endeavor to attain by stepping back (p.5) from initial views or still by leaving a more subjective, individual, or even just human perspective behind (p.7) through a process of abstraction. Objectivity and subjectivity are, Nagel thinks, just a matter of degree. A view or form of thought, says Nagel, is more objective than another if it relies less on the specifics of the individual s makeup and position in the world, or on the character of the particular type of creature he is (p.5). It is with this view from nowhere conception that Sen takes issue. For him, every view is position-dependent, it is a view from a delineated somewhere. Objectivity has to be thought in terms of positional and trans-positional objectivities. We may find a first treatment of these concepts in an article Amartya Sen published in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in the spring of Objectivity is obviously not understood here as coincident with truth; these are different concepts. Certainly we might discuss objectivity as an ontological concept, but this will not be my concern here, as it wasn t in Sen s analysis. 3

4 entitled precisely Positional Objectivity and he returned again to the subject in the chapter 7 of The Idea of Justice. Sen s point of departure is simple: what we can see, believe or decide is not independent of where we stand regarding the object we try to understand. Objectivity cannot avoid facing the inescapable positionality of our observations and judgments 2. However, Sen also claims, positional variability does not mean that positionally-dependent observations cannot, at the same time, be personinvariant. If positionally-dependent claims are interpersonal-invariant when the observational position is fixed that is, if anyone occupying the same position can confirm the same observation or accept the same judgment there is no reason to see these observational claims as specific to a person s mind (that is, as being subjective). They are positionally objective. Of course, nothing prevents positionally-objective claims from being partial and wrong from being what Sen calls objective illusions. Sometimes they are sufficient to solve certain kind of problems, more often they are not. 3 In the latter case (which includes scientific reasoning) a trans-positional scrutiny, that is, a process of constructing a coherent synthesis intended to accomplish a more global, shared and impartial view is due the view from everywhere, as Elisabeth Anderson (2003: 6) called it. This is obviously different from Nagel s view from nowhere. Nagel view is achieved through a process of abstraction from individual differences (an example of this is the rawlsian view of justice derived from choices made behind a veil of ignorance in the context of an ideal original position ). A trans-positional objective view still draws upon irreducible positional observations and judgments as information resources but tries to go beyond them. Positional objectivity remains important but is not in itself adequate. The challenge is, of course, how to construct more global views out of more local standpoints. As Sen (2009:169) notes, [i]llusions that are associated with 2 Positionality is not, of course, just a matter of spatial location; it involves other positional parameters, influencing various persons, for instance blindness, normal eyesight, knowing or not knowing a specific language, a particular concept, being or not being able to count, etc. 3 Positional objectivity can indeed be the appropriate understanding of objectivity, depending on the exercise in which we are involved. (Sen, 2009:159) 4

5 some positional objectivity can be very hard to dislodge, even when the positionality involved misleads and misinforms rather than illuminates. Objectivity is indeed very difficult to achieve. It may even be the case that, no matter how much we walk, it will never be there. But, surely, there is no other way to science. Amartya Sen s The Idea of Justice provides, in my view, and if I read it correctly, excellent examples of how to effectively pursue objectivity in economics: his defense and practice of engagement in critical and impartial scrutiny, his remarkable attitude of dialogical (and sometimes adversarial) encounter with theses, persons and ideas he disagrees with, his strong support of public reasoning and debate, and his understanding that a plurality of reasons has to be accommodated in our reasoning are certainly paths to be praised and followed. Pluralism and critical reasoning, public exposure and rational discussion of values seem to be the way. References Anderson, Elisabeth (2003), Sen, Ethics, and Democracy, Feminist Economics, Blaug, Mark (1998), Positive-Normative Distinction, The, in John Davis, Wade Hands and Uskali Maki (eds.), The Handbook of Economic Methodology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp Hirschman, Albert (1981), Essays in Trespassing: Economics to politics and beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagel, Thomas (1986), The View from Nowhere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robbins, Lionel (1945 [1935], An Essay on the Nature & Significance of Economic Science, London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. Sen, Amartya (2009), The Idea of Justice, London: Penguin Books Wilber, Charles and Roland Hoksbergen (1998 [1986]), Ethical Values and Economic Theory: A Survey, in Charles Wilber (ed), Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. 5