The social philosophy of Kenneth Boulding.

Boulding discusses the image as the key to understanding society and human behavior.

Evolution, Order and Complexity reflects topical interest in the relationship between the social and natural worlds. It represents the cutting edge of current thinking which challenges the natural/social dichotomy thesis by showing how the application of ideas which derive from biology can be applied and offer insight into the social realm. This is done by introducing the general system theory to the methodological debate on the relation of human and natural sciences.

An economist's view, by K.E. Boulding.-- A theologian's view, by C.E. Voss.-- A philosopher's view, by W.A. Kaufmann.

Peace, justice, and freedom are hard to define, but closely related. Peace has many meanings; an important one is “inclusive peace,” defined by dividing total human activity into war and “not war.” Justice is an elusive concept related to the legitimacy of property and the structure of equality. Freedom “to,”“from,” and “of” have different meanings, all related to the boundaries and legitimacy of property. The market has the virtue of economizing agreement and consensus. The existence of public goods necessitates government. (...) Peace, justice, and freedom are unlikely to be achieved without competence, which fortunately can be learned. (shrink)

There is a famous character in one of Oscar Wilde's plays who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. An economist wonders uneasily if the reference is not to him. The word “value” occurs in economic writings with high frequency, the frequency of meanings being almost as great as the frequency of occurrence. It has been the occasions of long and bitter disputes, some on the semantic level, some more substantive. What I want to accomplish in this (...) paper is a relatively humble task—to examine some of the concepts and related systems in economics which seem to be relevant to the general problem of value, and to see how far and in what directions they might be safely generalized. I do not claim that economics, even when generalized to the full, gives us a complete theory of value. Many of the most important and most difficult questions in value theory cannot be answered within the framework which I shall set up. But economics can, I hope, provide something of a foundation on which to build, or at least a launching platform from which to send off our philosophical rockets. (shrink)

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view (...) of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication. (shrink)

The origination of General Systems Theory is credited to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who, two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, published a work in 1932 entitled Theorie der Formbildung. Despite, by his own account, an exposure to and familiarity with the positivism of the Vienna circle, von Bertalanffy was dissatisfied with the reductionist and atomistic forms of explanation which this group asserted is characteristic of scientific explanation. He was particularly unhappy with attempts to pattern explanations of (...) biological phenomena after the model of classical Newtonian physics. In this early work, Models Theories of Development, von Bertalanffy maintained both that the main problem for biology is to discover patterns (laws) which are typical of biological systems and that the discovery of such patterns would produce a major change in the way the world is viewed in general. Von Bertalanffy worked out his proposed model for biological explanation in such subsequent books as Theoretische Biologie and Problems of Life and then in his later years in such works as Robots, Man and Minds and Organismic Psychology and Systems Theory, went on to apply his concepts in a cross-disciplinary way to psychology. Again, by his own account, at a somewhat later period, others, for example the economist Kenneth Boulding and the bio-mathematician A. Rapport, had arrived at, for parallel reasons, certain similar ideas relative to their own disciplines. These individuals together with others formed a joint enterprise which was to result in the interdisciplinary systems movement. Von Bertalanffy stressed the multi-dimension possibilities for fruitful research in a large number of conceptual areas, including the humanities, in his final major work, General Systems Theory Foundation, Development and Applications. (shrink)

This paper argues that history of economics has a fruitful, underappreciated role to play in the development of economics, especially when understood as a policy science. This goes against the grain of the last half century during which economics, which has undergone a formal revolution, has distanced itself from its `literary' past and practices precisely with the aim to be a more successful policy science. The paper motivates the thesis by identifying and distinguishing four kinds of reflexivity in economics. The (...) main thesis of this paper is that because these forms of reflexivity are not eliminable, the history of economics must play a constitutive role in economics. An assumption that I clarify in this paper is that the history of economics ought to be part of the subject matter studied by economics when they are interested in policy science. Even if one does not accept the conclusion, the fourfold classification of reflexivity might hold independent interest. The paper is divided in two parts. First, by reflecting on the writings of George Stigler, Paul Samuelson, George and Milton Friedman, I offer a stylized historical introduction to and conceptualization of the themes of this paper. In particular, I identify various historically influential arguments and strategies that reduced the role of history of economics within the economics discipline. In it I also canvass six arguments that try to capture the cost to economics for sidelining the history of economics from within the discipline. A sub-text of the introduction is that for contingent reasons, post World War II economics evolved into a policy science. Second, by drawing on the work of Kenneth Boulding, in particular, George Soros, Thomas Merton, Gordon Tullock, I distinguish between four species of reflexivity. These are used to then strengthen the argument for the constitutive role of the history of economics within the economics profession. In particular, I argue that so-called Kuhn-losses are especially pernicious when faced with policy choices under so-called Knightian uncertainty. (shrink)

Paul Davidson asserts that Post Keynesians could fare just as well without insights from their Austrian colleagues. He's wrong. Radical subjectivists within both schools of thought have something to gain through dialogue, as evidenced by the efforts of Kenneth Boulding, G.L.S. Shackle, and Ludwig Lachmann. Many Austrian and Post Keynesian economists share a common methodological principle of radical subjectivism, which emphasizes nonergo?dic constructs and systems indeterminacy, and each school can gain from the insights of the other when asking (...) such questions as why capitalism generates recessions and depressions and why capitalism generates any degree of order at all. (shrink)

One cannot really speak of a school of personalistic economists. Moreover, there is a wide gulf between the economic philosophy of the personalists and the mathematical context of economic science. Since the thirties, philosophers such as Alexandre Marc, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier and many others have been searching, on the basis of a personalistic view of man, for a `third way' between individualistic capitalism and statist socialism , but there was seldom interest from the side of the scientific economists.Fortunately, there (...) are some notable exceptions. François Perroux, Kenneth Boulding, Ernst Schumacher, Serge Christophe Kolm, and Amartya Sen are economists who, in various ways, have attempted to bridge the gulf between the personalistic view of man and economic rationality. By carrying out an immanent critique of some of the standard economic assumptions, they opened a path for a normative economics that was clearly distinct from a purely positive economics as well as from Pareto's welfare economics. One can affix various labels to these attempts: humanistic economics , socio-economics , moral economics . In what follows, I shall interpret these attempts as initiatives in the direction of a personalistic economics. I would also situate the current research in `economics and ethics', which is becoming part of the mainstream of economic thought, and which has received official recognition with the recent Nobel prize award to Sen, within this tendency towards a more personalistic economics.Attention to moral feelings, human rights, altruistic motives, justice and solidarity, non-profit organizations, etc., contribute to situating the economic problem in a field where economics, politics and ethics no longer function as three distinct domains but where their interaction is central.Yet does this interactive economics fit into a personalistic way of thinking? Is a generalized system theory not more attractive? System theory has a different focus than personalistic economics. System theory considers the axioms of system equilibrium and sustainable growth as the ultimate horizon, whereas a personalist sees them as merely important conditions for a good society and economy. However refined it may be, system theory views the person from an external point of view, while the personalist refers to the internal experience of human freedom and meaning as something that transcends and regulates the system's functionality.One could object that neo-classical economists do not use system theory as their point of departure. In their eyes, system equilibrium is the result of the utility-maximizing behaviour of individuals. These individuals subjectively determine what their preferences are and then act accordingly. Is this openness for a free, utility-maximizing actor — where there is room for both material and immaterial, egoistic and altruistic preferences — not sufficient to speak of a personalistic economics ? If this were true, then the discourse of personalism would be more or less superfluous.I take the term `personalistic economics' to refer to a normative economics that does not simply reconstruct the problem of efficient allocation as an individual or social problem of utility, but in the first instance as a problem of human dignity and social justice. To reduce the problem of human choice to a problem of subjective utility is in itself a far-reaching normative standpoint. As soon as one realizes this, there is no reason to exclude other normative assumptions, such as personalistic ones. (shrink)

Thomas L. Friedman's recent book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, sees a religious value in globalization: “globalization emerges from below … from people's very souls and from their deepest aspirations” (1999, 338). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made similar claims in 1920, calling globalization the “deep‐rooted religious movement of our age” (Teilhard 1979, 211). He came to this awareness through his experience in World War I. There he began connecting globalization to its roots in evolution and to the (...) mystics’ desire for the “All,” a desire he saw animating the work of believing and unbelieving scientists. He found confirmation of his ideas in the letters of Saint Paul, who told of God eventually filling all things. Teilhard used the vocabulary of mysticism to describe global developments in technology, industry, politics, and the environment, and the ardor of his texts has led to their being widely used for secular gatherings on global subjects. (shrink)

"The evolutionary vision" is a term coined by economist Kenneth E. Boulding to describe a unified view of evolution that encompasses all levels of reality, from the cosmic or physical through the biological, ecological, and sociobiological to the sociocultural. It focuses less on systems or any particular entity than on the processes through which they evolve. In this volume various approaches to the self-organization of matter and information are outlined by authors who are among the chief developers of (...) this new paradigm. They focus on the general laws governing evolutionary dynamics across all levels of evolution, including the evolution of humans and human systems. (shrink)

Contributing Authors Are Francis G. Wilson, Kenneth E. Boulding, Herbert Johnson And Others.

Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation.

David Hume wrote that Berkeley's arguments `admit of no answer but produce no conviction'. This book aims at the kind of understanding of Berkeley's philosophy that comes from seeing how we ourselves might be brought to embrace it. Berkeley held that matter does not exist, and that the sensations we take to be caused by an indifferent and independent world are instead caused directly by God. Nature becomes a text, with no existence apart from the spirits who transmit and receive (...) it. Kenneth P. Winkler presents these conclusions as natural consequences of Berkeley's reflections on such topics as representation, abstraction, necessary truth, and cause and effect. In the closing chapters Proefssor Winkler offers new interpretations of Berkeley's view on unperceived objects, corpuscularian science, and our knowledge of God and other minds. (shrink)

A well-regarded scientist who offered expert testimony at the high-profile 2005 trial over the teaching of evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, presents an ...

Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, first published in 1690, is probably the most ambitious contribution to early modern metaphysics by a woman writing in the English language. This beautifully prepared edition makes Conway’s treatise available to twentieth-century readers in an accessible English translation of the 1690 Latin text—itself a translation of an original English manuscript that has long been lost.

Probes the nature of linguistic or symbolic action as it relates to specific novels, plays, and poems.

Referentialism has underappreciated consequences for our understanding of the ways in which mind, language, and world relate to one another. In exploring these consequences, this book defends a version of referentialism about names, demonstratives, and indexicals, in a manner appropriate for scholars and students in philosophy or the cognitive sciences. To demonstrate his view, Kenneth A. Taylor offers original and provocative accounts of a wide variety of semantic, pragmatic, and psychological phenomena, such as empty names, propositional attitude contexts, the (...) nature of concepts, and the ultimate source and nature of normativity. (shrink)

Probes the nature of linguistic or symbolic action as it relates to specific novels, plays, and poems.

Includes generous selections from the Essay, topically arranged passages from the replies to Stillingfleet, a chronology, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index based on the entries that Locke himself devised.

Dan Zahavi has argued persuasively that some versions of self- representationalism are implausible on phenomenological and dialectical grounds: they fail to make sense of primitive self-knowledge and lead to an infinite regress. Zahavi proposes an alternative view of ubiquitous prereflective self-consciousness.