Economic Objects and the Objects of Economics by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319945293
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

6.6 Conclusion

Let me conclude by considering the role that I see philosophers playing in helping to resolve these issues. As I have emphasized in the paper I do not see that role as attacking the economics profession for not understanding the issues. Instead, I suggest a better route is attacking the pedagogical simplifications that the economics profession has made in its teaching of economics. That teaching concentrates far too much on learning technical models with far too little on the difficulties of applying those technical models to real world problems. It provides far too little discussion of why integrating moral judgments into the analysis is a necessary part of policy analysis. That teaching allows the simple textbook models to define the policy questions and policy solutions rather than to let common sense define them. The teaching of economics focuses far too little on teaching students that the goals of society must be collectively determined before any policy can be advocated, and on the philosophical methodology to arrive at those collective determinations.

Economists, on their own, are not going to change. They haven’t been taught any of the philosophical methods that might provide guidance on these issues, so even if they wanted to, they are not prepared to teach students this aspect of applied policy economics. The principles of economics course is very close to the same course taught in 1950; it reflects a template that Paul Samuelson created. It is here where I see philosophers playing an important role. By directing their criticisms at economic pedagogy—analyzing the texts and pointing out where they go wrong, developing examples that show where moral arguments could nicely enter in, and possibly even creating a two or three class “philosophical economics module” that is designed for economists to use to integrate moral issues into the teaching of economics—they could make an enormous difference. Philosophy and religion departments could even start giving a Masters and PhD in Philosophical Economics, with the goal of turning out professors who could have joint appointments in economics and religion and philosophy departments. These specialists could add the needed dimension. Economics is too important to leave the teaching of economics to economists alone.

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