Sunday, July 29, 2012

Lars Syll — Keynes and Knight on uncertainty – ontology vs. epistemology


Report of a conversation between Lars and Paul Davidson on the philosophical underpinning of probability and its relevance in economics and finance.

Keynes and Knight both asserted uncertainty but their concept of it were different. Keynes asserted ontological non-ergodicity, whereas Knight assumed ontological ergodicity and asserted only epistemological non-ergodicity.

Lars and Paul Davidson explore the implications of this distinctions and come down on the side of Keynes.

These distinctions are key in understanding the fundamental difference between the mainstream and Post Keynesianism.

Read it at Lars P. Syll's Blog
Keynes and Knight on uncertainty – ontology vs. epistemology
Lars P. Syll


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this Tom!Wonderful conversation between Lars and Paul on really essential thing in economics!It is a real treat to visit this blog with always good stuff,a rarity among all garbage that occupy internet today!So thank´s again!

Major_Freedom said...

Some "Austrian" interpretations of probability and uncertainty, in case anyone's interested:

THE LIMITS OF NUMERICAL PROBABILITY:
FRANK H. KNIGHT AND LUDWIG VON MISES
AND THE FREQUENCY INTERPRETATION
, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

and

Risk, Uncertainty, and Economic
Organization
, by Peter Klein.

Wekasus said...


BLACK SWANS AND KNIGHT‟S EPISTEMOLOGICAL UNCERTAINTY: ARE THESE
CONCEPTS ALSO UNDERLYING BEHAVIORAL AND POST WALRASIAN THEORY


Having problems understanding all of these philosophy terms!! Still very interesting.