Understanding Society
Do we still need microfoundations?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Daniel Little — Do we still need microfoundations?
Understanding Society
Do we still need microfoundations?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
More generally, the idea that there are social properties that are fundamental and emergent is flawed in the same way that vitalist biology is flawed. Not a fan of "emergence" -as Hegel said somewhere "emergence is not a category"; but this is mostly a dislike of a currently-fashionable-again word for older ideas.
But who is a vitalist biologist? The problem today is the opposite: arguments and views insisting on microfoundations insist on my-favorite-old-microfoundations. They don't just get rid of vitalist biology, but boil down to insisting that even using words and concepts like "life" and noting that, yes, people can usually tell whether something is alive or dead - unscientific and illegitimate. So physics is a real science and biology isn't. Yeah right. This is wronger than vitalism. They should watch the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.
As so often, the outcome of a long struggle is basically a partial return to the views of the German Idealists 200+ years ago - I would call Marx the last of them - but finally understanding something of what they were saying. A step forward would be to abandon the cult of "isms" and big words.
I think they do need microfoundations - much better and more comprehensive ones than the kind practiced now.
I listened to a talk by Robert Schiller this week about his new book with Akerloff, and again came away with the impression that microeconomists are on the whole much smarter and more scientifically sound than macroeconomists. Most of macro is a a pseudo-science constructed to support ideological predispositions and silly just-so stories. The idea that there is a non-reductive realm of autonomous macro-economic laws is a fantasy.
"that microeconomists are on the whole much smarter and more scientifically sound than macroeconomists"
Microfoundations are impossible. You have no idea what the aggregation function is, or what the cross contamination is from the network effects.
The whole thing is based upon quicksand.
Post a Comment