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Economic Point of View An Essay in the History of Economic Thought
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The first edition of Israel M. Kirzner's The Economic Point of
View was published in 1960. In the meantime, the dogmatic
brand of positivism that advocated the banishment of all references
to mental states from scientific explanations and their replacement
by the "data of the senses" has been discredited. In
addition, many contemporary philosophers concede the inherent
rationality of human action, that is, man's capability of freely
choosing among alternatives (as well as creatively discovering
what these alternatives are); and further the indeterminateness
of individual behavior on the basis of what has gone before. Yet
despite these important concessions to the subjectivist position regarding
methodological precepts consistent with sound scientific
investigation, the full import of the teachings of Ludwig von Mises
in Human Action and of Frank H. Knight in On the History and
Method of Economics about the subjective character of economic
phenomena either has not been fully digested by practicing economists
or else has been received with great hostility by those anxious
to submit their models to statistical testing.
As Kirzner's study makes clear, the subject matter of economics
is human action, and a concern with the abstract character of
action is what defines the economic point of view. Human action
in contrast to, say, reflexive action is action directed toward goals
and purposes. Furthermore, while such action often results in the
measurable displacement of real world objects, the significance of
such displacements cannot be adequately understood by merely
correlating (or regressing) one displacement with (on) another.
Economic explanations must either explicitly or implicitly make
reference to individual purposes and plans; otherwise they ignore
a realm of experience as real as the world of things
Israel M. Kirzner - Personal Name
1st Edition
0-8362-0657-6
NONE
Economic Point of View An Essay in the History of Economic Thought
Economics
English
1-250
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