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A RESPONSE TO DASGUPTA1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2007

HILARY PUTNAM  and
VIVIAN WALSH
HILARY PUTNAM
Affiliation:
Harvard University
VIVIAN WALSH
Affiliation:
Muhlenberg College
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Extract

The present note will be concerned only with Sir Partha Dasgupta's recent article in this journal (Dasgupta 2005). What is more, it will concentrate on those parts of the article which contain a serious misreading of Hilary Putnam's position on the entanglement of facts, theories and values. These philosophical matters can perhaps be clarified for economist readers (they should require no clarification for philosophers) by considering, to begin with, Dasgupta's interpretation of the Bergson–Samuelson position. What (Bergson) Burk (1938) and Samuelson (1947) were doing, according to Dasgupta, was to establish ‘the ethical foundations of the subject. . .over five decades ago’ (Dasgupta 2005: 221–2).2 Thus a major theme of the article is heard at once: economics is supposedly based on sound ethical foundations, and these can be traced (it is supposed) to specific work written long ago, and hence needing no augmentation. These ethical foundations, it is claimed, ‘are now regarded to be a settled matter’ (2005: 222).

Type
Essay
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 359 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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