ABSTRACT
The basic difficulty in economic theory is the philosophical problem of the meaning of explanation in connection with human behaviour. So much for the methodology of economics as a science, in the straight and narrow sense of the term, as the generalized statement of verifiable coexistences and sequences in its special field. The modern psychology recognizes, and the candid student must see, that the stream of consciousness is in fact even less real than the objects. This chapter develops a point of view from which intelligent judgment of the question is possible. That point of view may be summed up in the paraphrase already proposed of Ruskin's famous dictum: "There is no Value but Value". The necessity for a thoroughgoing acceptance of this point of view has been established by an examination of the perplexities of economic methodology. Historically the doctrine described is known as psychological hedonism and is distinguished from ethical hedonism.
