The Rise, Fall, and Strange Resilience of the Greater Certainty Thesis in Economics

Description

According to the “Greater Certainty Thesis,” which appears in various forms at different points in the history of economic thought, there is something unique about our knowledge of economic (more generally, social) phenomena, as compared to our knowledge of natural phenomena, that makes scientific explanations of the former phenomena more certain, more reliable and secure, than scientific explanations of the latter. In the present paper, we account for the rise, fall, and strange resilience of the Greater Certainty Thesis in terms of changing attitudes about 1) the possibility of certain knowledge, 2) the possibility of acquiring certain knowledge via introspection, 3) the either empirical or rationalistic nature of introspective knowledge, and 4) the perceived success of natural science.

Period	24 Sept 2024
Event type	Guest talk
Location	AustriaShow on map