Utopia and epistemology

John Baldessari, “Man Running/Men Carrying Box” (1988-1990)

It was Paul Samuelson who, in 1997, declared with morbid optimism that “Funeral by funeral, economics does make progress.”*

What Samuelson presumed is that, over time, wrong ideas would be killed and laid to rest and better ideas would flourish, thus creating the foundation for progress in economic thought.

That’s what I consider to be the epistemological utopianism of mainstream economic thought: using the correct scientific methods, the work that economists do gets closer and closer to the Truth—the singular, incontestable, capital-t truth. It used to be the case (for Samuelson and many others, such as fellow Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, Gerard Debreu, and Paul Krugman) that mathematical models represented the best way of making progress (inspired by a particular conception of nineteenth-century physics).** The current fad is to rely on randomized experiments and big data as evidence that economics is finally becoming a real, empirical science (akin to biology and medicine).

In the first case, rationalism is the reigning theory of knowledge; in the second case, it’s empiricism. However, both theories represent two sides of the same epistemological coin, defined by a radical separation between theory and reality and some sort of correspondence between them. In other words, both rationalism and empiricism are foundationalist theories of knowledge according to which the gap between theory and reality is eventually—”funeral by funeral”—closed.

It’s a utopianism that serves as both the premise and promise of mainstream economists’ practice. And we know something about the consequences of that epistemological utopianism—for example, the combination of ignorance and arrogance when it comes to the work of nonmainstream economists (who stand accused of not doing science and therefore of not contributing to the progress of economics), noneconomists (whose methods are neither mathematically nor empirically rigorous enough), and everyday economists (who either produce cultural representations that accord with the lessons of mainstream economics, in which case they be invoked as illustrations, or whose work is dismissed and needs to be attacked and eradicated, because it runs counter to mainstream economics). Not to mention the idea that, in the midst of the worst economic crises since the first Great Depression, mainstream economists could blithely assert that their theories had done just fine; the only problem was the fact that policymakers hadn’t adequately listened to or followed the advice of mainstream economists. Finally, of course, there’s the closing-off of publishing venues (like the leading journals), research funding (especially the National Science Foundation), teaching positions (especially in research universities), and so on—all in the name of a singular scientific method and conception of truth.

As I have shown (e.g., here and here), mainstream liberals today are also obsessed with the defense of science and capital-t Truth. In their zeal to attack Donald Trump and the right-wing media’s defense of his administration’s outlandish claims about a wide variety of issues—from climate change to the Mueller investigation—they increasingly invoke and rely on an absolutist theory of knowledge. And then, of course, claim for themselves the correct side in the current debates. They, too, are guided by the utopianism of essentialist theories of knowledge.

The problems with epistemological utopianism are legion. I’ve mentioned some of the nastier consequences above. But there are other issues. For example, in their defense of absolute truth, they invoke a time—before the current “post-truth” regime—when a set of institutions (such as journalism, science, and the academy) supposedly got it right. Except they can’t ever cite an example of how those institutions successfully adjudicated the facts in play—when, supposedly, there was universal assent to the truth claims, either within the academy or the wider society—and they ignore all the times when they simply got it wrong.

Moreover, they’re willing to admit that the claims to truth are often deflected by lots of other influences—such as narratives, confirmation bias, ethics, and information overload. But the problem is always “out there,” among regular people, and not the scientists themselves (whether in economics or other disciplines). Epistemological utopians simply can’t acknowledge that, in their daily practice, mainstream economists and liberal thinkers are also engaged in story-telling, that they accept evidence that confirms their preconceived notions and assess counter evidence with a critical eye, make ethics-laden decisions based on relations of unequal power, and operate with overconfidence based on the illusion of knowledge.

There are, of course, many alternatives to the utopianism of absolutist epistemology. One of them is what I call “partisan relativism,” associated with the Marxian critique of political economy.

In fact, I (with my friend and frequent coauthor Jack Amariglio) have just published an entry on “epistemology” in the Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics. There, we discuss many different contributions to Marxian epistemology and highlight the role that postmodernism has played in providing an alternative to and moving beyond the long history of attributing to Marx a modernist project of attempting to delimit the certainly of scientific knowledge from non-science (or ideology). Thus, we write, postmodern Marxists

frequently call attention to the “relativism” that they believe is Marx’s main epistemological message and/or is exemplified in his texts. Marx’s aleatory materialism, for postmodern Marxists, also establishes an under-determination in the realm of knowledge; a discursive whole cannot close itself. Influenced by Jacques Derrida’s conception of “deconstruction,” postmodern Marxists insist that discourse is always marked by slippages, aporia, displacements, and deferments. For them, meaning is overdetermined and uncertain. A certain knower is thus a contradiction in terms.

In addition, if scientific discourse is not the mirror of nature, then there is an “ethical” dimension to all knowledge production. Cornel West, utilizing Richard Rorty among other “pragmatist” philosophers, brings out the enduring, constitutive ethical and political aspects of how and what we know, and what we intend to do with this knowledge.

Thus, we go on to explain, relativist Marxists dispute the claims of a certain knowing subject (indeed, they challenge the very idea that knowledge begins with a knowing subject) and focus instead on how knowledge claims are internal to theoretical frameworks and the manner in which knowledges produce within different theories or discourses have specific—and often quite different—conditions and consequences in the world within which those knowledges are produced.

Thus,

For many Marxist epistemologists, knowledge is active and actionable, and its existence as material image/image of the material is one requisite condition for the revolutionary socioeconomic—especially class—change that Marx vehemently proposed.

And that, in the end, is the utopian moment of Marxian epistemology—not a utopian appeal or aspiration to absolute truth, but instead a practice (one might even call it an ethics) of materialist critique. That critique operates at two different levels: it is a critique of all theoretical claims (such as those made by mainstream economists) that normalize or naturalize the existing economic and social order and a critique of capitalism itself, since from a Marxian perspective capitalist societies are based on and serve to reproduce an exploitative class structure.

It should come as no surprise then that the utopian horizon of Marxian epistemology is summarily rejected by mainstream economists and liberal thinkers—or that the latter’s epistemological utopianism often serves to locate itself within and ultimately to justify, by treating as normal or natural, the existing set of economic and social institutions.

 

*“Credo of a Lucky Textbook Author,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11 (Spring): 159.

**It’s a particular conception of physics that has been disputed by many others, including Thomas Kuhn (and his theory of “scientific revolutions”), Paul Feyerabend (who argued that there are no useful and exceptionless methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge), Richard Rorty (who criticized the idea of knowledge as representation), and Michel Foucault (who showed that different systems of thought and knowledge—epistemes or discursive formations, in Foucault’s terminology—are governed by different sets of rules). Their criticisms of essentialist epistemologies apply as well to the more recent turn to “empirical” methods as the foundation of economic knowledge.

Liberal Superman theory

Chen Wenling, “What You See Might Not Be Real” (2009)

I’ll admit, there are times when I regret the fact that I’m a relativist. Wouldn’t it be nice, I say to myself on occasion, to be able to claim—beyond a shadow of a doubt, to my students, colleagues, or readers of this blog—that something or other (neoclassical economics or capitalism or name your poison) is wrong and that the alternative (Marxian economics or socialism or what have you) is absolutely correct.

But then I read a defense of capital-T truth—such as David Roberts’s [ht: ja] attack on the alt-right and fake news and his presumption that the liberal mainstream is uniquely capable of upholding “truth, justice, and the American way”—and I thank my lucky stars that I don’t have to make such outlandish, embarrassing arguments. Fortunately, my relativism means I’m not saddled with the mainstream liberals’ delusion that they have, if not God, at least Superman on their side.

I’ve been over this epistemological terrain before (e.g., here, here, and here). But it seems, in the current conjuncture, mainstream liberals—in their zeal to attack Donald Trump and the right-wing media’s defense of his administration’s outlandish claims about a wide variety of issues, from climate change to the Mueller investigation—increasingly invoke and rely on an absolutist theory of knowledge. And then, of course, claim for themselves the correct side in the current debates.

As Roberts sees it, the United States

is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening.

The primary source of this breach, to make a long story short, is the US conservative movement’s rejection of the mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge (journalism, science, the academy) — the ones society has appointed as referees in matters of factual dispute.

In their place, the right has created its own parallel set of institutions, most notably its own media ecosystem.

Consider the assumptions built into those statements for a moment. Roberts believes that society has appointed a unique set of mainstream institutions—journalism, science, the academy—to serve as referees when it comes to adjudicating the facts in play. Nowhere does he discuss how, historically, those institutions came to occupy such an exalted position. Perhaps even more important, he never considers the disputes—about the facts and much else—that exist among journalists, scientists, and academics. And, finally, Roberts never mentions all the times, in recent years and over the centuries, the members of those institutions who got it wrong.

What about the reporting on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Or the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male? Or the university professors and presidents, at Yale, Harvard, and elsewhere, who supported and helped devise the U.S. war in Vietnam?

The list could go on.

There is, in fact, good reason not to simply accept the “facts” as gathered and disseminated by mainstream institutions. Historically, we have often been misled, and even mangled and killed, by those supposed facts. And, epistemologically, the members of those institutions—not to mention others, located in different institutions—produce and disseminate alternative sets of facts.

Maybe that’s Roberts’s problem. He actually thinks facts are gathered, as if they’re just out there in the world, waiting to be plucked, harvested, or dug up like fruits and vegetables by people who have no particular interest in which facts find their way into their baskets.

Alternatively, we might see those facts as being created and manufactured, through a process of knowledge-production, which relies on concepts and theories that are set to work on the raw materials generated by still other concepts and theories. The implication is that different sets of concepts and theories lead to the production of different knowledges—different sets of facts and their discursive and social conditions of existence.

I have no doubt that many journalists, scientists, and academics “see themselves as beholden to values and standards that transcend party or faction.” But that doesn’t mean they actually operate that way, somehow above and apart from the paradigms they use and the social influences exerted on them and the institutions where they work.

As for as Roberts is concerned, only the “far right” rejects the “very idea of neutral, binding arbiters” and adheres to a “tribal epistemology.” And mainstream liberals? Well, supposedly, they have the facts on their side.

If one side rejects the epistemic authority of society’s core institutions and practices, there’s just nothing left to be done. Truth cannot speak for itself, like the voice of God from above. It can only speak through human institutions and practices.

For Roberts, it’s either epistemic authority or nihilism. Absolute truth or an “epistemic gulf” that separates an “increasingly large chunk of Americans,” who believe “a whole bunch of crazy things,” from liberal Democrats.

What Roberts can’t abide is that we “live in different worlds, with different stories and facts shaping our lives.” But, from a relativist perspective, that’s all we’ve ever had, inside and outside the institutions of journalism, science, and the academy. Throughout their entire history. Different stories and different sets of facts.

And that hasn’t stopped the conversation—the discussion and debate within and between those different, often incommensurable, stories and facts. The only time the conversation ends is when one set of stories and facts is imposed on and used to stamp out all the others. A project always carried out in the name of Truth.

Clearly, Roberts mourns the passing of a time of epistemological certainty and universal agreement that never existed.

Roberts instead should mourn the effects of a Superman theory of knowledge that got him and other mainstream liberals into trouble in the first place. In recent years, they and their cherished facts simply haven’t been persuasive to a large and perhaps growing part of the population.

And the rest of us are suffering the consequences.

 

The innocent eye test?

I’ve been around economics long enough now that, upon reading the latest defense of economics as a science, I just have to chuckle. Or I would, if the implications were not so devastating.

The latest comes from Harvard professor Raj Chetty, who cites the recent surge of work based on randomized experiments and big data as evidence that economics is finally becoming a real, empirical science (like, in his view, medicine).* As if the facts and testing hypotheses—the results of what we might call the innocent eye test—were going to settle the ongoing debates about the causes and consequences of economic problems such as poverty, unemployment, and inequality.

I remember when it was exactly the opposite that was supposed to guarantee the scientificity of economics, which reached its zenith with the formal modeling of neoclassical general equilibrium theory. Then, it was rationalism; now, it’s supposed to be empiricism.

In both cases, the supposedly scientific nature of economics is bound up with an absolutist epistemology, which is invoked to establish a clear separation between science and non-science (which, as I explained to students the other day, if you say it quickly, becomes nonsense). Attempting to make that separation presumes both a strict dichotomy between theories and facts and a one-way determination of one way by the other. (Thus, either innocently gazing at the facts determines the appropriate theory or deductions from the theory determine the rational order of the facts.)

The alternative, of course, is a nonabsolutist theory of knowledge according to which the theories and facts mutually determine one another. This is a kind of relativism according to which economics is made up of different groups of theories and facts—neoclassical theories and facts, Keynesian theories and facts, Marxian theories of facts, and so on. (Thus, for example, the most recent Nobel Prize in economics was shared between the mainstream efficient and inefficient market hypotheses and not to an alternative view, which I would call the “crisis market hypothesis.”)

It’s actually a partisan relativism, since given the effects of different approaches to economics, it is important to consider the economic and social consequences of the different groups of theories and facts in assessing their validity. And then to choose which one makes sense.

The more general point is that theoretical differences in economics matter, for how we think about the world and how we choose to intervene in it. As it turns out, the shifting battle over which absolutist theory of knowledge provides a firmer foundation of economic science is a sideshow. But a sideshow with enormous implications in determining which facts and which theories are allowed into the conversation—and which, of course, are excluded.

That’s why the innocent eye test is, in the end, not so innocent.

 

*The analogy to medicine is perhaps more weighted than Chetty imagines, since it is still governed by an oath to keep the sick “from harm and injustice.” As George DeMartino has forcefully argued, there is no such ethical injunction in economics.