Abstract
Peter Boettke (2007) argues that economists need not act pluralistically in order for pluralism to thrive in the marketplace of economic ideas. From a market process perspective, Boettke sees intellectual diversity and openness as catallactic outputs, not inputs—emergent by-products of academic specialization and trade. To expect individual scholars to behave in a pluralistic manner is unnecessary and “completely inappropriate” since it detracts from their central task: “to commit themselves to an approach and pursue it doggedly, even in the face of great doubt and resistance by one’s peers” (Boettke 2007). This paper proposes a Smithian revision of Boettke’s position. The author argues that scholarly pluralism is best understood as a constitutional rule of academic life—a virtue ethic that promotes learning and intellectual freedom by mitigating tyranny and autarky in the republic of science. Drawing from the writings of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Deirdre McCloskey, Bruce Caldwell, James Buchanan, Don Lavoie, and Boettke himself, the author argues that scholarly pluralism has been, and continues to be, a necessary condition for the flourishing of Austrian economists as free, responsible, efficacious thinkers.
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Notes
Boettke’s essay is just a three-page blog post. However, my argument addresses a larger strand of Boettke’s thought: the “robust political economy” approach outlined in Boettke and Leeson (2004). Boettke’s view of science as a market process (Boettke 2007) is precisely analogous to the Boettke/Leeson view of market processes in general. The present paper engages this broader approach as it pertains to the nature and value of intellectual pluralism.
Boettke is not the first philosopher to argue that scientific progress is best served when individual scholars pursue their (narrowly defined) intellectual self-interest. De Langhe (2009, 88), for example, claims that “pluralism is a desideratum at the aggregate level, but not necessarily at the individual level,” since the formulation of “an original, robust, and consistent position... is the only way to obtain sufficient informative guidance for question-resolving inquiry.” Such arguments cohere with the broad “invisible hand of truth” tradition in philosophy of science represented by Radnitsky (1987) and Kitcher (1993).
Lavoie (1995b, 398) argues that “scholars who help us to advance the truth are acting in service of society.” Hence, even though “there is room for a great deal of discretion by scholars about what questions are worth asking, they should also keep in mind that they are ‘public servants.’” (ibid.).
Though rarely couched in the language of war, the rigid monism of post-WWII US mainstream economics derived considerable impetus and credibility from the wartime context (Morgan and Rutherford 1998; Mirowski 2002). In turn, the “paradigm warfare” rhetoric of heterodox dissenters from the 1950s to the present can be understood as an emulation of the mainstream, particularly the postwar mainstream embrace of methodological uniformity (qua Scientific Method) as “a wall against irrational and authoritarian threats to inquiry” (McCloskey 1998, 169; Richardson 2006, 14–16; see also Hutchison 1960 [1938] and Popper 1945).
Similar definitions of pluralism qua intellectual virtue appear throughout the vast literature on critical thinking, most notably in the work of Richard Paul, who defines the critical thinking as “a synthesized complex of dispositions, values, and skills” such as courage, empathy, integrity, humility, reflexivity, perseverance, fair-mindedness (Paul 1999, 129).
In a similarly constitutional vein, Caldwell (1982, 252) defines methodological pluralism as a set of “common-sense procedural norms.”
Hayek (1967, 126) discusses the educational dilemmas of disciplinary specialization and the importance of academic freedom for students, to enable them to increase their knowledge and to “discover [their] true vocation.”
McCloskey’s rhetoric also undercuts the gendered stereotype of the pluralist scholar as a humility-only dove by detailing the multiple dimensions of pluralist virtue, e.g., balancing the virtues of humility with the “intellectual daring and self-confidence” required to “think outside the presuppositions of their intellectual communities, to doubt authorities and imagine unheard of possibilities” (Roberts and Wood 2003, 278).
Caldwell’s position on this issue is similar to Boettke’s. He argues that “methodological pluralism is a program for methodologists,” not for working economists (Caldwell 1982, 251; original emphasis). Yet Caldwell elsewhere describes methodological pluralism as a set of “common-sense procedural norms” (ibid., 252), suggesting a Buchanan–McCloskey view of pluralism as a “rule of the game” pertinent to every academic economist. Caldwell has not written on pluralism since 1982, so this tension in his thinking remains unresolved.
Code makes a similar argument for the value of epistemic restraint (“being able to stand back even from one’s most fervently held doxastic positions”), derived from what she deems a “central epistemic ‘ought’,” namely, the proposition that “we ought to make use of our cognitive capacities so that we preserve and enhance our freedom to know.” “Dogmatism,” she argues, “is essentially a denial of that freedom” (Code 1987, 146–147; see also Feyerabend 1978 and Caldwell 1982, 128).
Colander et al. (2004) argue that intellectual innovations are more likely to occur via conversations among scholars operating at the edges of scholarly communities.
Code (1987, 235) registers a parallel concern about Polanyi’s idyllic vision of the republic of science:
“[Polanyi’s] is, in this respect, a more charitable view of human nature than mine, perhaps because he is prepared to generalize from his own case, which does come across as one of responsible intellectual practice. His discussion confirms my view of how intellectual inquiry should proceed, but I am not persuaded that it always proceeds in this way. Even if baser motives such as undue allegiance to external goods in the form, perhaps, of fame and fortune are ignored, Polanyi’s view presupposes a clarity of vision in practitioners in all practices that is by no means the norm in scientific practice or in cognitive endeavor in general.”
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Acknowledgment
A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics in Washington, DC, November, 2008. I would like to thank Peter Boettke, Ted Burczak, Emily Chamlee-Wright, Steve Horwitz, Roger Koppl, Alice MacLachlan, and Stephen Turner for their valuable questions and suggestions.
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Garnett, R.F. Why should Austrian economists be pluralists?. Rev Austrian Econ 24, 29–42 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-010-0111-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11138-010-0111-7
Keywords
- Pluralism
- Marketplace of ideas
- Republic of science
- Epistemic virtue
- Weingast paradox
- Adam Smith
- Academic freedom