Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics

"Radical Subjectivism": Not Radical, Not Subjectivist

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
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Volume 3, No. 2 (Summer 2000)

 

While there may be other empirical arguments that radical subjectivists make which might entail revisions of economic theory, nothing as such about economics or the aims of economics follows from the core claim of radical subjectivism, that the future is indeterminate. While in physics and logic important issues do hang upon the indeterminacy of the future, as far as economics goes nothing of substance hangs upon the claim.  Radical subjectivism does not have, as far as I can see, any proper implications for economic theory that could not be stated by someone who accepted the principle of bivalence together with the Popperian claim that future states of human knowledge are in principle unpredictable. Thus, insofar as specific claims in economics are concerned, the debate between radical subjectivists and their opponents is an argument about preferred modes of speech.

CITE THIS ARTICLE

O'Neill, John. "'Radical Subjectivism': Not Radical, Not Subjectivist."  The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 3, No. 2 (Summer 2000): 21–30.

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