This book is a critique of Amartya Sen's work in Economics and Philosophy. It argues that Sen's research program failed to take account of
1) Knightian Uncertainty and the need for 'regret minimizing' strategies as opposed to 'utility maximization'. This also means an Arrow Debreu model is bound to be misleading because, apart from Uncertainty, it fails to take account of
2) Concurrency problems
3) problems of Complexity and the higher time class of solution concepts
4) problems of Computability
5) The 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy. A set is only a set if its 'extension' is well defined. But where the 'intension' changes as knowledge changes, Leibniz's law of identity does not hold. This means there is no set and no relation and no function. Sen's work is nonsense on stilts.
A theory of choice can be constructive and appeal to verification and seek for 'univalent foundations'. More particularly, it could either be category theoretical in the Hegelian manner of Lawvere, or be based on Brouwer's 'choice sequences' and thus accommodate mathematical objects which change over time- even in a 'lawless' manner. It is an open question whether 'naturality' or 'non-arbitrariness' arises 'at the end of Time'.
In Economics, Sen and his followers tend to make the following systematic errors-
1) they treat coordination games as cooperative games of a particular type and ignore 'Schelling focality' as a solution concept. They also fail to see why Income and hedging effects arise on associated discoordination games giving rise to arbitrage opportunities.
2) they ignore John Muth's notion of Rational Expectations
3) Sen confuses marginal utility with marginal propensity to consume and has an odd theory about counterfactuals.
4) they ignore Aristotle's warning against 'akreibia' - i.e. seeking for more precision than the subject matter will permit.
5) they misunderstand the concept of 'oikeiosis' and how this relates to what John Maynard Smith called 'uncorrelated asymmetries.
6) The biggest problem with Sen's approach is that he has no theory of disutility which is what matters when it comes to redistribution in Welfare Economics. Sen does not see that disutility relates to opportunity cost and dynamic effects. A small redistributory measure may create great disutility because it is seen as the 'thin edge of the wedge'. More generally, Sen always fails to properly specify the actual opportunity cost- which is global, not local- and which must take into account the costs of compliance or enforcement.
The result of ignoring important developments in Mathematics and Computer Science and Evolutionary Biology made over the last fifty years is that Sen's research program and his voluminous and repetitive publications are wholly vacuous if not mischievous.
Sen is a perfect illustration of 'Rothbard's Law'- viz eminent Economists specialize in what they are worst at. Sadly, Sen has been canonized- in the manner of Mother Theresa of Calcutta- but, it is not at all clear that this has resulted in anything miraculous. My book, examines much recent popular writing by Sen or about Sen or on topics- e.g. Arrow's theorem or Rawls's theory of Justice- central to Sen's enterprise. It represents a compilation of blogposts from 'Poetry as Socioproctology'. It is by no means an academic book. It also has much material on controversial topics in Indian history, politics, and religion.
A second book on the same subject examining other works by Sen is also available on Amazon. Can a third be far behind? Sadly, no.
No comments:
Post a Comment