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Why is there property? A response to Professor Wilson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2022

Richard Adelstein
Richard Adelstein*
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University, Middletown CT 06457, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: radelstein@wesleyan.edu
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Abstract

A critical response to Bart Wilson's (2022) theory of property, focusing on his assertion of a final cause in the evolution of property. It argues that while Darwin's great achievement was to remove final causes from earthly evolution and thus move the question of how biological life is organized from theology to science, Wilson's apparent restoration of a final cause to the evolution of property would move the question of how social life is organized from science back to theology, a clear step backward.

Keywords

Final causessocial evolution
Type
Comment
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 268 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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References

Hempel, C. G. (1959/1965), ‘The Logic of Functional Analysis’, in Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, New York, NY: The Free Press, pp. 297–330.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2003), ‘The Hidden Persuaders: Institutions and Individuals in Economic Theory’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 27(2): 159–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, B. J. (2022), ‘The Primacy of Property, or, the Subordination of Property Rights’, Journal of Institutional Economics, published online. doi: 10.1017/S1744137422000212.Google Scholar