ABSTRACT
In his economic writings, Keynes was clearly challenging the Benthamite calculus that underpins much of orthodox economic analysis, placing particular emphasis on the often significant levels of uncertainty surrounding investment decisions. Under conditions of uncertainty decision-makers have to decide what to do on the basis of imagined images of what the future might look like, which raises the possibility that the future may be influenced by the actions of economic actors as guided by their imaginations. On the basis of this possibility some commentators have taken the view that Keynes’s contributions endorse the view that social reality is transmutable, that it is not preprogrammed and that aspects of the economic future will in part be created by human action today and in the future (although this future need not be the one intended).
