1st Edition

The End of Value-Free Economics

Edited By Hilary Putnam, Vivian Walsh Copyright 2012
    240 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    240 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book brings together key players in the current debate on positive and normative science and philosophy and value judgements in economics. Both editors have engaged in these debates throughout their careers from its early foundations; Putnam as a doctorial student of Hans Reichenbach at UCLA and Walsh a junior member of Lord Robbins’s department at the London School of Economics, both in the early 1950s.

    This book collects recent contributions from Martha Nussbaum and Harvey Gram, as well as a new chapter from the editors.

    Introduction  1. Smith after Sen Vivian Walsh  2. Sen after Putnam Vivian Walsh  3. For Ethics and Economics without the Dichotomies Hilary Putnam  4. Tragedy and Human Capabilities: A response to Vivian Walsh Martha Nussbaum  5. Openness versus Closedness in Classical and Neoclassical Economics Harvey Gram  6. Walsh on Sen after Putnam Amartya Sen  7. Facts, Theories, Values and Destitution in the Works of Sir Partha Dasgupta Hilary Putnam and Vivian Walsh  8. Freedom, Values and Sen: Towards a Morally Enriched Classical Economic Theory Vivian Walsh  9. Entanglement throughout Economic Science: The End of a Separate Welfare Economics Hilary Putnam and Vivian Walsh  10. The Fall of Two Dichotomies, and the Need for a Macro Theory of Capabilities Hilary Putnam and Vivian Walsh.

    Biography

    Hilary Putnam is Cogan University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, USA 

    Vivian Walsh is Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Economics and Philosophy at The Wescoe School of Muhlenberg College, USA.

    "This is a valuable contribution, offering the most sustained presentation to date of the reasons why the fact-value dichotomy cannot stand as a criterion of adequacy of the science of economics. It is a stimulating and rigorous conversation among a set of highly gifted philosophers and economists who have engaged deeply with the underlying issues in the philosophy of economics. Anyone who wants to see the development of a discipline of economics that is better able to confront the economic and social challenged of the twenty-first century will certainly want to read it" --Daniel Little, University of Michigan-Dearborn - Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics