ABSTRACT
At the heart of the subject referred to as the foundations of welfare economics or theoretical welfare economics or most recently the theory of social choice, has been the question of the appropriate relationship between the positive and the normative, as have been wider questions of the scope of reason in the making of judgements and the role of the economic expert in society. A quite different perspective upon these questions will be seen to have been offered in the preceding chapters than is to be found in the postwar conventions of the subject. One point of difference which may be observed straightaway arises from the latter being premised for the most part on a quite radical moral scepticism, while one of the main purposes of the present work has been to show some of the logical difficulties with holding such a position. Following from an assumption of moral scepticism has been the belief that interpersonal comparisons of utility are not possible to be made objectively, and tied up to this belief has been the notion of the measurability or immeasurability of utility. It is this belief too, more than anything else, which seems to have motivated the entire theory of social choice; indeed the quintessential belief of the moral sceptic in economics may be that Professor Arrow’s famous theorem proved, under seemingly weak but desirable conditions of individual freedom, the impossibility of the existence of a social good (or we might say following Frege, proved the emptiness of the concept of a social good). The purpose of this chapter will be to offer a few further suggestions towards helping to dissolve some of the conceptual puzzles faced in welfare economics, or at least to clarify their possible philosophical sources. The preceding chapters have advanced a theory of economic knowledge which is at the same time objectivist and explicitly anti-absolutist or antiplatonist. Insofar as the post-war conventions of welfare
economics have been steeped in subjectivism and/or platonism, the interpretations given here will be found to be critical and even perhaps quite radical in nature. Yet Professor Arrow himself concluded his Nobel Lecture saying the philosophical implications of his theorem were not clear, and expressed a hope that his theorem would be seen ‘as a challenge rather than as a discouraging barrier’.1 It will be in such a spirit of a continuing and mutually critical tradition of scholarship that the remarks offered here are intended to be taken. 2. As the issues involved are well known to be slippery to the
grasp, it may be useful to offer a synopsis of the argument at the outset.
