What I’m saying is that truth isn’t adequate to resolve all disputes, because intentions, plans, and “values” aren’t true. Truth constrains goals but doesn’t decide between them.

It may be that Marilyn Waring thinks or claims that improvements in the accuracy of economics with regard to the description of the role of women will in itself have feminist results, but I don’t think that that would be adequate. Becker’s work on the family seems clearly anti-feminist, and not simply because it’s descriptively flawed.

I merely hope that, despite your assertions, it
still is. That was a normative statement, or hope.

The case with equality is similar. Some economists have a concern for equality, some don’t. Malthusian and Social Darwinist law-of-the-jungle ethics have played a role in the history of economics, and heir shadow is always there. (Amartya Sen has recently tried to bring ethical concerns up into economics.)

Pragmatists always have to fight this fight. The difference between feminist and non-feminist economics isn’t a true-false difference. It’s a difference in goals. Like the difference between timber-industry forestry and evironmentalist forestry.

You have missed my point again, in a very predictable positivist (sensu latu) way.

As I’ve been trying to explain, here and at my link, theory is (or should be) one, but applications are plural and different.

The feminist application of economics values women more than non-feminist applications do. Non-feminist economists are willing for the “real” economy to be subsidized by unpaid labor of inferior people (mostly women), and will take that unpaid labor for granted unless it runs short. There’s no explicit declaration that women are inferior. They just leave stuff out.

There’s no falsehood in non-feminist economics. Being fair to women, or understanding how the family works, are not one of their purposes. Feminist economics isn’t any truer (or less true either). It just ahs different purposes.

Why do you particularly blame conservative economists for trying hide their values tacitly in their theory, when Henry has done that immediately in his post above? (Possibly unconsciously.) Personally I have yet to find a single political type that only goes for the truth, I don’t think liberals are any better in this respect than conservatives. We may be more aware of it in others, but research into self-deception finds it pretty evenly spread amongst humans. Are you sure that conservative economists are more inclined to tacitly hide values in their theory than liberal economists, or is it possible that you are deceiving yourself? That the value judgments jump out at you when you disagree with them, but don’t when you agree with them.

The practical purposes of different kinds of economists are different

Really? I had always hoped that feminist economists, labour economists, environmentalist economists, neo-classical economists, Austrian economists, electrical engineers, biochemists, doctors, etc, always aimed, first and foremost, at the truth. Of course, us humans are weak, self-deception is wide-spread, perhaps unavoidable, we all have other purposes, but surely in any area claiming to be a science, applied or theoretical, we should share the practical purpose of getting as close to the truth as possible?

As a feminist, I would really be depressed if feminist economics was not aimed at the truth. Please tell me it ain’t so.

The practical purposes of different kinds of economists are different, because of different value systems (politics being a value system for this purpose, though value-free political science does exist too). But economists want to hide their values tacitly in their theory, in order to accuse their political adversaries of being anti-scientific. (I am thinking especially but not only of conservative economists). This is dirty pool.

I shouldn’t even be commenting here, but people who are actually in the econ biz and know what they’re talking about seem to be too timid to say anything. I’m always torn between trolling these thread, and letting the poor things sit all alone by themselves wih no comments.

And how would separating economics in a way like engineering is separated from physics cause Henry to be clear on whether he is making a normative or a descriptive statement?

Another high economic belief is that economic growth will automatically bring all other good things (freedom, democracy, human rights, happiness, the end of poverty, etc.), and that per capita income is a good proxy for all other good things, so that everything else should be subordinated to economic growth. Anyone who disagrees is asked whether they’re in favor of starvation.

Forestry is the best example I have. The scientific forestry of 1960 or so was almost entirely devoted to increasing timber cut, with relative or absolute disregard for effects on water quality, wildlife, and esthetic qualities. As time has gone on forestry has changed, but very slowly, because the main consumers of forestry science are timber companies whose primary goal is to increase the timber cut. And the old-line foresters always weigh into arguments against environmentalism by citing their scientific credentials and accusing their adversaries of being ignorant. (This is not a hypothetical. I lived in Oregon for a long time, where these issues are of major importance, and various people from the Oregon State Forestry Department joined in the argument, almost always on the timber industry’s side.)

And my claim is that economics is too much like forestry, and has drawn tacit normative judgments up into the theory. And these judgments are those of the big consumers of economic science—roughly speaking, finance, and to a decreasing degree, government. Environmentalist economics, labor economics, and feminist economics have no necessary theoretical disagreements with finance economics, except for including aspects of reality that finance economics ignores.

They do have normative differences, because they’re applications for a different purpose. But they are not “more normative” than fincance economics is.

Engineering doesn’t seem normative because some norms are non-controversial, but for example, for decades forestry (botanical engineering) was entirely at the service of the timber companies.

Like most things on this planet, the truth of this statement is that it depends. What I am trying to figure out is whether, when Henry talks about the “primacy of politics”, he intends this to be read as a normative statement or a descriptive statement. And I am also arguing that as a descriptive statement “primary of politics” is wrong, no matter how desirable such a state may be in a normative sense.

I venture the proposition that confusing normative and descriptive statements is bad, at least when the purpose is to develop a pragmatic understanding that will “help us to understand real life problems.”