Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- 1 From Hume to Hayek Economic philosophy and the role of ideas in social action
- 2 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, I Physicalism and the birth of the ‘man–machine’ doctrine: La Mettrie
- 3 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, II Economics and the rise of ‘economic man’: Jevons and Edgeworth
- 4 Economic man and man–machine Some logical parallels and contrasts between the two concepts
- 5 The logic of the economic situation Complex societies and the choice of conduct–enforcing mechanisms
- 6 The passions of the imagination, I Hume and Adam Smith on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 7 The passions of the imagination, II Hume and Adam Smith on the psychology of the economic agent
- Conclusion to part I
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Economic man and man–machine Some logical parallels and contrasts between the two concepts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- 1 From Hume to Hayek Economic philosophy and the role of ideas in social action
- 2 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, I Physicalism and the birth of the ‘man–machine’ doctrine: La Mettrie
- 3 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, II Economics and the rise of ‘economic man’: Jevons and Edgeworth
- 4 Economic man and man–machine Some logical parallels and contrasts between the two concepts
- 5 The logic of the economic situation Complex societies and the choice of conduct–enforcing mechanisms
- 6 The passions of the imagination, I Hume and Adam Smith on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 7 The passions of the imagination, II Hume and Adam Smith on the psychology of the economic agent
- Conclusion to part I
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The argument so far has set forth three basic approaches to the question of the role of beliefs and opinions in the economic behaviour of the individual agent. Chapter I put forward the position predominant in economic philosophy: ‘Ideas rule the world of human affairs and its events’. The stress falls squarely on the power of beliefs and opinions to determine conduct, and these are themselves largely explained (except Hume) as resulting from the ‘war of ideas’ waged by intellectuals, in particular those who deal directly with economic and political issues.
Chapter 2 outlined the radical challenge to this view associated with physicalism and the ‘man–machine’ doctrine: ‘Mental events are caused phenomena with no causal efficacy’. The beliefs and opinions of agents, in so far as they correlate with their bodily actions, are assumed away as epiphenomena, i.e. a subclass of physiological events which is devoid of true explanatory power.
Finally, chapter 3 retraced the formulation of the concept of ‘economic man’ in the history of economic science, focusing on the rise of standard neo–classical theory and its attempt to work out a ‘mechanics of utility and self–interest’ or ‘Mechanique Sociale’. A central feature of this move, it is argued, was the normalization of economic behaviour, so that the actions of the individual agent could be explained as automatic responses to the changing price signals in the economy.
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- Information
- Beliefs in ActionEconomic Philosophy and Social Change, pp. 48 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991