ABSTRACT
After having dissected the basic structure of economic knowledge in Chapter 2, let us now discuss the methodological framework within which we will be operating. In other words, let us see which tools of analysis and reflection we as epistemologists of economics – i.e., as agents attempting to build an objective account of the practices adopted by those agents who are self-declared economists – will be using in order to understand the functioning of economics. Economic epistemology is, of necessity, a kind of meta-methodology. In other words, it is a methodology that seeks to capture the methodologies of the economists in all their variety, and with all their incompatibilities, rivalries, and contradictions. Thus, when we embark on the journey of economic epistemology, we are not setting out to do economics but, rather, to do economics of economics, or meta-economics. Of course, meta-economics itself needs a methodology of its own; it requires a “meta-paradigm” to analyze the diversity of economic paradigms and their coexistence. That is why, in the complete formula we reached at the end of the previous chapter, our whole endeavor as epistemologists was indexed by 1ps*** – our subjective, first-person perspective as epistemologists – and by 3p*** – our goal of building an objective, thirdperson epistemological understanding of how economists construct their knowledge. Clearly, when I used the collective pronoun “our” in the preceding sentence, I was committing an abuse of power by co-opting you, the reader, into my framework. But in any situation where an author is submitting to his readers his own proposal of a meta-paradigm and of a meta-methodology, such a seeming abuse is inevitable. Here, “you guys” or y’all as readers will not have the choice of which epistemological (meta)paradigm you want to use to analyze and criticize the knowledge production of economists. The methodological framework I will be outlining in this chapter is not mine personally. It has been devised by the American philosopher Ken Wilber, who himself built it up by collecting and synthesizing the methodologies of thousands of thinkers from dozens of different cultural and philosophical backgrounds (for the most recent versions see e.g., Wilber 1995, 2000, 2006). His basic idea throughout the more than three decades he has labored at this inclusive model has always been to take seriously all the partial perspectives that human beings across time and space have adopted to
build their knowledge about the world. The intention is to articulate all these partial perspectives with respect to each another, without reducing them to one another, so as to obtain a much less partial, synthetic methodology for our knowledge of the world – a kind of “multi-partial” perspective built up from all the existing partial perspectives, past and present. The result is, as you will hopefully agree, a very rich and open framework that allows us to overcome many blockages and blind alleys usually associated with the science wars and with the fight against positivism. Neverthelss, as Wilber himself acknowledges it is still only one possible paradigm. It is a map, and no map can claim to be the territory . . . There are people who disagree with Wilber, sometimes on details, sometimes more fundamentally, and who believe the framework I am going to present here is not the right meta-methodology to study human knowledge about reality. (See, for instance, the intense critical debates being waged on the website www.integralworld.com.) We cannot possibly address such critiques and debates here, since the idea is first to see what mileage we, as economists and epistemologists, can get out of Wilber’s metamethodology. Hence, in somewhat authoritarian fashion, I – impersonating 1ps*** – will impose on you, as my momentary audience A**, the use of Wilber’s framework as my paradigm π, which I will mobilize in order to objectively study – from the perspective 3p*** – the knowledge-production technologies of economists through their various paradigms p. Let us now see how Wilber builds his framework. After that, starting in the next chapter, we can use it to try and understand what it is exactly that “the economists” are doing when they claim to know things about the (economic) world. (In what follows, I shall be closely following Wilber’s own most recent presentations of his approach in Wilber 2000, 2006, 2007.)
Four perspectives on reality
Whenever you perceive reality – such as, for instance, right here and right now – you are spontaneously immersed in an internal discussion that involves three coexisting perspectives: first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives. The first-person perspective is “I,” “me,” “mine” and has to do with the person who is speaking. The second-person perspective is “you” and “yours” and has to do with the person spoken to. The third-person perspective is “he,” “him,” “she,” “her,” “they,” them,” “it,” and “its” and has to do with the person or thing spoken about. These three perspectives can be simplified into I, We, and It. These pronouns correspond to fundamental aspects or dimensions of reality. “It” has to do with objective truth, which is studied by science. “We” has to do with the way we treat one another, the way we collectively interpret reality; it refers to the good and the right. Finally, “I” has to do with self and selfexpression, connected mainly to art and aesthetics; it refers to beauty. Wilber calls these fundamental dimensions the “Big Three” and takes them to reflect the
traditional Platonic trinity underlying all philosophical questioning: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. They are not mutually exclusive dimensions. On the contrary, they are constantly co-present in our awareness whenever we let the world impact us fully and without prior restriction: there is the dimension of factual truth (What is it? How does it work?), the dimension of cultural/moral judgment (Is it acceptable? Is it right? How do we feel about it as a society?), and the dimension of aesthetic/personal experience (Is it beautiful? Does it offer a sense of expansiveness? How do I feel about it as a person?). Issues about factual truth refer to the external properties of things in the world. Issues of cultural judgment and personal experience refer to the internal aspect of those same things – “internal” in the sense that these externally studied things are not simply “there” but are also experienced by collectives and by individuals. “It” refers to Nature, “We” refers to Culture, and “I” refers to Self. Inside this trinity, we further need to subdivide the scientific-truth dimension into two subdimensions, depending on whether the questions “Is it true? How does it work?” apply to collectives or to individuals. When we adopt an external perspective on an individual (which need not be a human person and could be an organism, an automobile, or a stone), we will use the singular “It.” When we adopt an external perspective on a collective (a human group, but also an anthill, a traffic jam, or a heap of rocks), we will use the somewhat awkward plural “Its,” not as a possessive pronoun (as in “The city and its network of streets”) but as a plurality of “It”-objects. Consequently, in the end, Wilber settles for a tetra-unity of dimensions of any reality: It, Its, We, and I. Honoring these four aspects simultaneously without seeking to reduce all of them to just one or a few, is what his adjective “Integral” means. To construct an “Integrally informed” knowledge of reality means to take into account all four dimensions as they simultaneously co-arise and cooperate in our awareness.
