Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Exordium
- Part II Narration
- Part III Division
- Part IV Proof
- Part V Refutation
- 14 The very idea of epistemology
- 15 The tu quoque argument and the claims of rationalism
- 16 Armchair philosophy of economics
- 17 Philosophy of science without epistemology: the Popperians
- 18 Reactionary modernism: the Rosenberg
- 19 Methodologists of economics, big M and small
- 20 Getting “rhetoric”: Mark Blaug and the Eleatic Stranger
- 21 Anti-post-pre-metamodernism: the Coats/McPherson/Friedman
- 22 Splenetic rationalism, Austrian style
- 23 The economists of ideology: Heilbroner, Rossetti, and Mirowski
- 24 Rhetoric as morally radical
- Part VI Peroration
- List of works cited
- Index
15 - The tu quoque argument and the claims of rationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Exordium
- Part II Narration
- Part III Division
- Part IV Proof
- Part V Refutation
- 14 The very idea of epistemology
- 15 The tu quoque argument and the claims of rationalism
- 16 Armchair philosophy of economics
- 17 Philosophy of science without epistemology: the Popperians
- 18 Reactionary modernism: the Rosenberg
- 19 Methodologists of economics, big M and small
- 20 Getting “rhetoric”: Mark Blaug and the Eleatic Stranger
- 21 Anti-post-pre-metamodernism: the Coats/McPherson/Friedman
- 22 Splenetic rationalism, Austrian style
- 23 The economists of ideology: Heilbroner, Rossetti, and Mirowski
- 24 Rhetoric as morally radical
- Part VI Peroration
- List of works cited
- Index
Summary
One of the editorial tasks undertaken by Hausman and McPherson in Economics and Philosophy was a little symposium on The Rhetoric of Economics (in April 1988). Two of the participants, Uskali Mäki and Steven Rappaport, were conventional Methodologists, trained as analytic philosophers.
Least contentious was Uskali Mäki's suggestion that Arjo Klamer and I combine one version of “realism” with rhetoric. Mäki's piece is introduced with a rhetoric of sharp revision — Klamer and I are said to hold “erroneous” beliefs, and the first sentence announces a “critical tone.” But in fact I agree with most of the points he makes, wondering why he would think I would disagree with them; and furthermore I admire his style and good sense. There is not much on which we disagree.
Mäki follows by instinct, as does Rappaport, the “Hippocratic Oath for Pluralists” proposed by Wayne Booth:
II. I will try to publish nothing about any book or article until I have understood it, which is to say, until I have reason to think that I can give an account of it that the author himself will recognize as just. Any attempt at overstanding [sic] will follow this initial act of attempted respect … Paraphrasing Coleridge: Before I damn a critic's errors, I will try to reconstruct his enterprise as if it were my own.
Booth 1979, p. 351, his italics- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics , pp. 199 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994