No Bernard Williams, no problem? Summary of my free audit of University of Manchester student-staff economics disputes Author: Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps) Draft version: version 3 (14th January 2026, version 1 22nd September 2025) Introduction. The University of Manchester faced an intense student-led campaign to reform its economics undergraduate curriculums during much of the last decade. In 2019, the Arthur Lewis Building was covered with posters demanding change, put up by the Post-Crash Economic Society. As its name suggests, the society does not think that economics as an academic discipline has changed sufficiently after failing to predict the 2008 economic crash, the Global Financial Crisis: that is its foremost criticism. Various academic economists are of the view that the society’s actual problem with economics is that its student members do not like the mathematics and these economists argue that mathematics is essential for economics to be scientific discipline From October 2012 to September 2019, I had a desk in the economics department (or discipline area, as it is called), although I did not teach in economics. (I have a background in social anthropology and philosophy.) I wish to offer my reactions to the economics dispute below, many of which are in scattered contributions. They favour the orthodoxy, I should warn readers, though perhaps not entirely. I take the final point in this document to be the most important, but I didn’t realize it until a month or so ago. Crashes not predictable? The post-crash economic society seem to have ignored this: there is an argument within economics that economists cannot predict economic crashes. (I learnt it from David K Levine, whose introductory book was recommended to me by an economics PhD student.) If an economist who is widely assumed to be reliable appears within national media, on television say, and predicts that there will be a financial crash in one month, people will sell stocks now and thereby bring forward the crash and it will happen much sooner than predicted. There is a major problem with demanding a revolution in economics because it did not predict the crash: this argument. (I once observed an anthropologist claim that another anthropologist predicted the crash: the argument learnt from Levine can accommodate this, because the problem is with an economist widely assumed to be reliable and the successful anthropologist was probably not assumed to be this. If you want to predict crashes, you have to do so from a “marginal” position!) Slow economics and experimental science. The post-crash economics student criticizes mainstream economics for its failure to achieve certain ends (notably predicting economic crashes) and for no or slow change. But economics as it is pursued today seems constrained by a requirement of method which slows progress. (Another criticism one often hears is that economics is overly influenced by a mathematical approach of knowledge: one which specifies axioms and deduces conclusions from them. But I believe the slow development of economics in response to challenges has much to do with the methodological influence of experimental science.) As I see economics, at this stage of my development (beyond a beginner probably, but not an expert outside of one or two areas perhaps: transitivity of preferences and maybe specialization), there is/are a small number of simple models, maybe 100 to 150, which economists strive to mathematically formulate. For any given simple model, they consider problems for it and seek to develop an improved version. For example, the simple invisible hand model assumes everyone has information about what is supplied and what is demanded, enabling those who seek employment to focus on somewhere where demand is. But more complex models allow for asymmetric information, such as pioneered by Joseph Stiglitz. But economists as scientists DO NOT just produce complex models which solve problems. What they do is try to produce a model which is different in one respect only from a previous model, in a way analogous to how an experimental scientist seeks to keep all the factors fixed except one, in order to test what the significance of the varying factor is. This potentially slows down successful model-building. A LEAPING ECONOMIST might solve a problem by conceiving a new and more complex version of a model which is different in several respects from the original. But as far as I can currently see from the economic literature (how to interpret this mysterious body to the rest of the world?!), there is an incentive for economists to vary a previous model in one respect only and then tell readers the difference that this one variation makes: that is PROPER SCIENCE. The previous model may be the original simple model or a variation already introduced on it in the economic literature. (Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) Future of mainstream economics: lessons from anthropology. So mainstream economics has been under strong pressure to change because it failed to predict the 2008 financial crash. What is its future? Maybe other social sciences provide a clue. Here are two very different lessons one might take from British social anthropology. (A) The structural-functionalist school which dominated British anthropology from the 1930s (if not before) to the 1960s came in for severe criticism in the late 40s and 50s: for ignoring the histories of the peoples studied and colonial relations, depicting societies as bounded social organisms. That memorable criticism(s) does not appear to have ended its dominance. A late stage structural-functionalism developed. (It is unclear what ended the dominance. Parties interested in the question might have to just try structural-functionalism again.) Similarly, the mainstream economics will continue, despite not predicting the crash. (B) Economics might be revolutionized, but that won't mark the end of the mainstream models. Some of these models (and other things) that economists have made can float out into other disciplines and become the centre of a research literature. For example, Adam Smith on the origins of money is at the centre of a literature in social anthropology. Anthropologists don't accept the account but they continuously engage with it. (Adam Smith is not a contemporary mainstream economist, but there are models based on his account.) Less mathematics? Obvious reply. An obvious response to any desire to massively reduce the mathematics is that if someone has an economics degree, one expects them to be comfortable with mathematics: graphs, statistics, and more. The mathematics may be slightly reducible but not much, I think. (By the way, I have met students who complain about the mathematics but I have tried some of the mathematics myself and confess I find it quite enjoyable.) Less mathematics? My worry. A worry I have about the preferences of the post-crash economics society, in favour of an essayistic economics with less mathematics, is that it will suffer from a comparable problem to contemporary political theory, which is in the space between economics and philosophy. There are premise-by-premise reconstructions, which aim to specify the premises and inferences of an argument, but I find that they are often faulty, e.g. omitting premises. (See my papers listed in the references on Richard Child, Anca Gheaus, Jonathan Quong, and Christine Swanton.) Pro-economists, pro-mathematics? The protestors against economics perceive the professional mainstream economist as in favour of mathematics and introducing too much mathematics into the curriculum. I have heard economists say that the mathematics is there to reduce ambiguity and thereby ensure that economics is science. BUT an alternative perspective is that generations ago, the pro-economist started out like the protestors: “I am an economist, not a mathematician.” The massive amount of mathematics one encounters is the result of all the defeats that then followed in his battles against mathematics: “If we don’t incorporate this, the maths departments will be better at economics than we are.” Consistently demanding less maths? Protestors appear to be uncomfortable with the heavy use of mathematics on the curriculum. But is this combination of demands consistent: predict major economic crashes and reduce mathematics? I challenged the assumption that it is on Instagram, pretending to be a posh British philosopher. Why has there been no predictive system for crashes in the discipline so far? After all, economics is not such a new discipline and there was the Great Depression starting in 1929. One explanation is that it is not doable: predicting crashes. Another explanation is that it is doable but it has not been done yet because advanced mathematical tools are required, which were not available to previous generations. It seems to me that protestors who want economics to predict crashes have to open themselves up to this second explanation, but then how can they consistently demand a reduction in mathematics? Foundations of economics essays and a management puzzle. Members of the post-crash economics society have questions about the foundations of mainstream economics and would like to discuss these, including in essays, but find that economics is not discussion-oriented. I am not sure why the following was not said. "Most of you don't do pure economics; the core of the protest movement appears to be politics-philosophy-and-economics students. And we have courses in other discipline areas within the school of social sciences which allow you to discuss this. You can discuss prisoner's dilemma in ethics essays. Is this a good approach for analysing ethical situations? There is a rational actor model in words which you can discuss in political theory essays, from John Rawls. You can discuss mainstream economics versus Bourdieu in sociology." Courses could probably have been added elsewhere to further meet the students’ demands, for example Adam Smith versus anthropologists on the origins of money. Why did the school of social sciences management at the University of Manchester not take this option, given resistance from academic economists to curriculum change? (The point of discipline areas rather than departments is to reduce rigid boundaries.) Three possible reasons have occurred to me. (i) My preferred response didn't occur to management. (ii) It occurred to them in broad outline, but they simply don't know the school well enough to fill in the details. (iii) The management don't interpret the student protesters as I do, in terms of the surface appearance of their protest. ("Someone is unhappy about something, but it may well not be that the students are unhappy about the economics curriculum." What an earth could it be though?) MCQs versus essays as subjective. In the book The Econocracy, expressing post-crash economic society criticisms of mainstream economics, the following claim is made: multiple choice questions and mathematical problems are used in economics at non-elite universities to cope with large numbers of students. I quote: “Mathematical problems and multiple-choice questions have fixed ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers which can be provided to teaching assistants on a crib sheet, avoiding the need for the costly training and support that would facilitate critical group discussion.” (2016: 138) The authors favour essay writing, in which there are no fixed right and wrong answers apparently. But don’t they face a problem starting with these three propositions. (a) They are writing against multiple-choice questions using the essay genre; (b) there are no fixed right and wrong answers in this genre; and (c) someone responds to their case by writing an essay in favour of multiple-choice questions. The authors are going to have to say that the essay referred to in (c) is acceptable as well, or acceptable if it meets certain requirements of structure, background reading, referencing, etc. In which case, why can’t institutions say, “If that is acceptable, then we will implement the recommendations of that essay”? (Text largely lifted from 2022 PhilPapers paper.) Martha Nussbaum on economics. The post-crash economics society’s campaign reminds me of Martha Nussbaum’s criticisms of economics in … She writes, “If economic policy-making does not acknowledge the complexities of the inner moral life of each human being, its strivings and its perplexities, its complicated emotions, its efforts at understanding and its terror, if it does not distinguish in its descriptions between human life and a machine, then we should regard with suspicion its claim to govern a nation of human beings; and we should ask ourselves whether, having seen us as little different from inanimate objects, it might not be capable of treating us with a certain obtuseness.”(1995: p.24) This in turn reminds me of Dickens’ criticisms in Hard Times. But the line of criticism Nussbaum takes must have been much louder in Dickens’ time. One could just say, “Gradgrind,” to any economics teacher and undermine their efforts, or so I imagine. And yet economics continued along much the same path, ignoring the loud critics. Would it not have been easier to abandon their project or modify it immensely to placate the critics? And if economics managed to ignore Dickens in his pomp, with his weapons of instantly memorable caricatures, why think it would be affected by Nussbaum’s book? Nussbaum does not look into these questions in her book, but she has probably thought about the initial reception of Dickens’ novel and how she expects her book to be received by contemporary economists. Furthermore, her close social network famously includes prominent figures in economics, such as Amartya Sen and Richard Posner, with whom she can discuss these questions. Not knowing much myself, I would assume that there is some good reason for why economics ignored Dickens in his time and also that unless the reason is addressed, Nussbaum’s book is unlikely to make much impact on economics either. And I guess Nussbaum’s view on why economics was unaffected by the Dickensian satire is that there is some good reason, but she does not say this, let alone specify the reason. Her perspective on economics is probably much more complicated and balanced than it comes across. I suspect she does not state this because: what a drain on one’s mental resources to dig into how Dickens was received and give that more complicated perspective! (Text lifted from essay on PhilPapers. In an earlier academia.edu contribution, I proposed that she is eloquently presenting the perspective of a kind of student, rather than quite her own.) The readable economic essay: a dodo? The post-crash economic society are interested in writing and reading accessible essays that can expand the general public’s understanding of economics. The essays are not supposed to be micro-essays, I assume, like the one above or shorter. My worry about their desire is that aphorists emerge as competition - by which I mean writers of little microessays and witty one-liners (or two-liners or three-liners) - and people don’t read your 1500 word essays then. They read the aphorist. There seems little space between the aphorist and mathematical economics, for the leisurely essayist to comfortably occupy. (The strangeness of mainstream economists’ assumptions is a frequent complaint. If you want to share perspectives close to intuitive psychology with the general public, go Nietzsche! He seems to have figured out the best way of communicating to the public.) Public understanding and UBC Undisciplined. The post-crash economic society are concerned that there is poor public understanding of economics. I suspect standard economics perspectives are poorly incorporated outside of economics, but don’t have much evidence. But here is some. Consider the Undisciplined project, at the University of British Columbia. According to the origin story, the project was inspired by a quotation from Carrie Jenkins' 2023 book Nonmonogamy and Happiness. I confess that I have not read the book. But I want to respond to this quotation, the first sentence not being her view: 'You surely can’t be a “real” sociologist if you’re also an economist, or (god forbid) a physicist. It all feels eerily similar to the social policing of compulsory monogamy, to be honest: you can’t “really” love one discipline if you also love another.' I have various responses, one of which I would expect this network of researchers to detect by themselves - the third response. (A) Various economists, like various practitioners of other social sciences and also of philosophy, define their discipline not by questions, such as “Is trickle-down economics correct?”, but by the distinctive method which has arisen within the field: the use of rational actor models. Prisoner's dilemma, for example, is not about monetary gain but it is a rational actor model and so part of economics. What then is sociology? First definition from such an economist's perspective: it studies social occurrences or trends which cannot be explained or predicted by the method which defines economics. (Perhaps changes in fashion cannot be so understood, for example.) Second definition: same as the first definition but for industrialized societies, whereas the social anthropologist does some of this for other societies. The overall direction of definition does not allow for an overlap between economics and sociology. This is not about denying the possibility of loving two disciplines! (The methodological definition of economics “famously” leads to problems with accepting behavioural economics as economics at all, by the way.) (B) Many mainstream economists are probably in favour of a minimal capitalist state as the most efficient economic system and they are correspondingly not in favour of government promotion of monogamy (marriage only for two, etc.), let alone each academic specializing because this “suitably parallels” the requirement for monogamy. (C) Specialization has been recommended since Adam Smith. The contemporary economist often uses an island scenario, involving two persons: Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. Specialization and division of labour is argued for even if one member can do both tasks under consideration better than the other. On the basis of this model, it might be argued that one should stick to one's specialism. This is different from feeling “A change of discipline is a violation of morality, like non-monogamy.” The economist’s perspective seems unregistered. (Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) Simplifying assumptions needed. Economics students are uncomfortable with the simplifying assumptions which economists use. The standard economics replies are that without simplifying assumptions models would be too complicated to be useful and that unrealistic assumptions are not a problem if the models successfully predict. I wish to note that in various areas beyond economics (or seemingly beyond it), one cannot manage without simplifying assumptions. To illustrate: the country in which I live, the United Kingdom, is famous for television comedy sketch shows, such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Little Britain, though the format seems almost extinct. A question that is raised about them is why they are hit-and-miss. To address it, I introduced some simplifying assumptions: each sketch show takes the form of a series, with episodes around an half-an-hour length (certainly longer than 20 minutes) or longer, and composed of brief sketches; each sketch is evaluated by each possible viewer as funny/good or not funny/bad; a viewer evaluates a sketch as funny if they laugh and unfunny if they do not laugh; and for any sketch show series, all possible viewers regard half the sketches as funny and half as not funny. The assumptions are largely introduced to skip past certain questions that would otherwise preoccupy us, such as when is a sketch show hit-and-miss? (If two-thirds of its sketches are found funny and one-third not, is it hit-and-miss? If expert critics find it funny but the rest of the public find it funny for only half of its sketches, is it hit-and-miss?) Models as hypothesis-generating machines. Why do economists make these strange assumptions that they do in their models? As stated before, economists say that they need simplifying assumptions or models will be too complicated to use, making them useless, and also that unrealistic assumptions are not a problem if a model successfully predicts. But I wish to add another reason for them. When you apply the model built on them, you arrive at new hypotheses, which would not otherwise occur to you, and these you can test. The models are hypothesis-generating machines even. An economist can even say this: "Martha C. Nussbaum, you are keen on imagination. But if I take ten imaginative but realistic writers and ask them what is going on in a certain situation, they may well say much the same thing. My model generates an interesting new hypothesis - it is the real imagination, the real fancy!" (Text partly from PhilPapers.) Economics as a subversive discipline? You know how: there is a kind of person often engaging in amateur psychology with little evidence, or so it seems to us? For example, in philosophy class they will propose, “Did Descartes come up with this argument to show off how clever he is?” You may be more accustomed to their responses to the living though. I wonder whether some economists make their models to drive such a person mad: an economics model has some minimal plausibility in this person’s eyes but they will have “infinite” objections to it. For example, there is the prisoner’s dilemma model of what life would be like in the state of nature, with no government or legal system to resolve disputes. According to this model, if two individuals meet and one proceeds violently whereas the other proceeds peacefully, the other will get injured and lose their property. So the most rational thing to do is proceed violently and the model predicts a war of all against all. Where does a person of reasonable psychological sensitivity and social intelligence begin with making objections? Amateur psychology aversion. Some topics provoke discussions (or chatter) full of amateur psychology and social science. For example, there is a question raised by The Telegraph newspaper of why these female Labour politicians look so similar. (“Because brunettes are perceived as more intelligent,” “Because they are experienced as reliable mother figures,” etc.) But some people have an aversion to such discussion, which they might seek to end by saying, “What similarity?” or “Brown hair and suit: very common in this country.” I suspect the economist’s response, in this case and various others, is to allow the question but one’s responses must rely on assumptions available to a fool and not require any significant social intelligence. With this in mind, I devised a rational actor model. Our starting assumption is people with jobs want to be regarded as good at their job. Then it is rational for competent people in a field to develop a distinctive look, which they share and others do not. You observe that look and you think, “There goes a competent person in that field!” Critical thinking and the leisure-maximization assumption. The post-crash economics society charge that there is insufficient critical thinking in economics. I do have a bit of evidence that this is true, from my time in economics. An overseas Chinese PhD student told me that his model features the assumption that people want as much leisure time as possible. I asked, “Don’t some people want to work even if their leisure time can be increased? Working in an organization gives them a sense of group identity and they get to interact with colleagues and feel they are contributing to society.” It was around the time of the Brexit vote and I also said, “I think some Brexit voters prefer to work over taking in talented migrants from the European Union.” His girlfriend at the time described me as Question Baby! But this is a reasonable question, it seems. Critical thinking shut down! But recently I was thinking about the assumption and I have realized a couple of reasons for it. One reason is: what happens if you instead work with the assumption that people want to work as much as is healthy? The assumption seems as if it would lead to economic models recommending not introducing some new technology: to avoid redundancies or reduced work load. The second reason has to do with a response to the explanation that some countries are less developed because citizens there are lazy. Instead assume that everyone wants maximum leisure time and see if one can explain developmental differences nevertheless. An isolated discipline? The post-crash economic society regard economics, as currently done, as an isolated discipline in the social sciences, quite unlike the others. But I find that mainstream economics, because of its “behaviourist” definitions, is similar to parts of social anthropology and also to deconstruction. “Behaviourist” here does not refer to behavioural economics - the terms are very confusing. The mainstream neoclassical economist thinks that states of mind are not available for observation, so they focus on behaviour, for example defining preference as hypothetical choice: you prefer option A over option B if and only if you would choose A over B if given a choice of only these two. Functionalist and Strathernian social anthropology also focus on the publicly observable. And deconstructive literary criticism is famously averse to attributing intentions. No good elsewhere? Students attacking the economics discipline study other disciplines too. Are they any good elsewhere? When I read them, I worry that they should focus on improving academically before intense campaigns. I opened a chapter of The econocracy and I found an elementary oversight. It says: “All versions of liberal education reject instrumental approaches, narrowly defined as training for work.” (2016: 123) But when defining liberal citizens, many political philosophers want to be broad minded, so that only extremes are excluded: such as fascists and religious fundamentalists. Their aim is to have a constitution which can be justified to all members of the broad category of liberal citizens. They do not want to say that a person with the following view is inconsistent: “I am a liberal and the only reason for why I think the government should fund schools and universities is as a means of enabling people to work and thereby preventing poverty.” The student authors of The Econocracy should know of the preference to include such a person as liberal from their political theory courses. (This thought comes from a PhilPapers paper which I deleted, I believe.) Textbook problem. I shall make a concession to the post-crash economic society, partly based on my experience in other fields. I suspect there is a textbook problem in economics. I tried various textbooks and struggled to learn much economics, until I used Hal Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics. The first chapter was a struggle, but after that I found it most useful (from the chapters I read). But note that economics is not extremely unusual in this respect. I find Andrei Marmor’s Philosophy of Law book very helpful for learning the subject, despite certain flaws, but it is not recommended at Manchester universities, to my knowledge. Also here are some reflections on social anthropology PhD students and functionalism (text largely lifted from PhilPapers). In my youth, I had discussions with various such students. And both foreign and native students tell me that they have trouble learning old British functionalist anthropology. They can get value from Foucault, but they can't get value from these works and find them difficult to read. My hypothesis is that these students think: “There must be some high value in these old British monographs but (now that the time has past?) I am not clever enough to access this value.” Here is a different explanation for why "you" cannot access the value and some others can, a guess I suppose. The others don't use the books that you do. To get going, they use philosopher I.C. Jarvie's fun 1964 book The Revolution in Anthropology (or another Popperian book). It is flippant. It more or less opens by charging Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski with the murder of the great Cambridge don Frazer, with no adequate evidence. It has sections like "The Prophet Dun It", when explaining cargo cults. Despite this unprofessional surface, it is a very useful introduction to British functionalist anthropology. (Sarah Green told me she started off as a Popperian.) Textbook dreams. In philosophy and social anthropology, we have some attractive readable textbooks which introduce students to more advanced material and I imagine a student desiring one of these for economics. But they often have troubling omissions. There is no reference to Professor Marilyn Strathern in Alfred Gell’s The anthropology of time, notably no engagement with her influential book contribution “Artifacts of history: events and the interpretation of images.” John Turri’s Epistemology: A Guide has useful summaries of so many key contemporary texts, but strangely omits any text from leading epistemologist Crispin Wright. Michael Morris’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language omits not just Derrida, on whom he has written a paper, but also meaning holism in philosophy of science. Would a comparable book for economics also feature a troubling omission, analogous to a human anatomy book which omits reference to the fingers? I confess I have wondered whether the point of these textbooks is to send out a message to certain colleagues in a field: you are stuck until you get a textbook writer of my level in your team, because your ideas will not reach a wider audience. (A view I heard from an economics PhD student is “We do not study primary texts because everything useful from them ends up in the textbook.” But this conflicts with my findings from examining actual textbooks.) Would philosophers explain economics better? Analytic philosophers prize clarity and have produced some philosophers who can write very well for wider audiences. Would such philosophers then explain economics better than economists do? Some of them probably can but will not, because they have better things to do in their eyes. Others who at first impression seem suited to the task actually write in a way that is a bit difficult to follow without being accustomed to philosophy. I give an example in a paper and answer the question with “Probably not.” Game theory and student protests? Oxford and Yale economists Harnoon Kaur and Noam Yuchtman observe that universities are regularly the site of protests. They put this down to the fact that universities are places where future elites are educated. Universities are not for educating ordinary people; they are for future elites apparently. Students learn an ideology through their education, but protests arise when they rebel against this ideology as unsuitable for their long-term role. I am surprised that economists do not model student protests as a game, using the tools of game theory. The aim for the students is to bring about change whereas the aim for the object of protest, e.g. the economics department, is to resist all student recommendations. (Text partially lifted from PhilPapers pastiche of a Lacanian psychoanalyst. See also Sober 1998) Never an in-date criticism? I am not the only person with a background in philosophy to evaluate economics. In 2015, Anna Alexandrova and Robert Northcott published a paper entitled "Prisoner's dilemma doesn't explain much". In it, they describe how the prisoner's dilemma idea has been applied to thousands of topics but there is only one successful case, regarding an RNA virus. They aim to criticize prisoner's dilemma research, but today, having recently experienced the Covid pandemic, we might well regard this as a good return: all the effort was worth it for that success. I actually read the paper before the Covid pandemic and thought, "Wow, an RNA virus." I wonder whether Alexandrova and Northcott had that reaction as well, but decided to proceed with their planned paper against prisoner's dilemma research. (Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) The heritage conception. This is somewhat a repetition from earlier, I suppose. With my current knowledge of economics, having spent about 7 years in an economics department but not as a proper member, I have this casual impression: there are quite a limited number of simple models (e.g. Prisoner's dilemma, the Invisible Hand, Hoteling's Law, etc), a lot of effort goes into making them mathematically precise, and for any given model problems are identified with that model (e.g. "Your model predicts that everyone who desires employment is employed, but that is not so") and a more advanced version is sometimes produced which addresses the problem (e.g. "The simple model assumes that all information about demands in the market is known to all individuals, enabling them to make decisions based on where gaps are in the market, but our more advanced version does not"). How many simple models are there? In online videos, I sometimes use the number 20 or the number 30 or the number 40, but I guess it is around 100 actually. Each model strikes me as like a heritage house, trying to stay relevant by means of evolving its simple model: there is invisible hand heritage house, prisoner’s dilemma heritage house, etc. Economics is like a set of heritage houses. (Maybe this is merely economics in the provincial university? Anyway, there are things omitted in the development of models: see below. Text above partly lifted from PhilPapers paper.) Introducing specialization: a concession to the post-crash economic society. The great Scottish Enlightenment economist Adam Smith recommended specialization. You straighten out the wire, I make the head of the pin, he does something else, and there are others too, and together we make a pin more efficiently than if one of us tried to do it all. That is his example, a famous one; he believes the lesson applies to a variety of fields (or disciplines or crafts or professions or areas or just dreams: I am not sure what the best word is). But are not some people better at two specialisms than other people are at any one (fake league table - 1001 Bill Gates, 1000 Dr. Gogarty...): even "I can do what you do and I can do that too"? Smith strangely denies this: we all start with much the same talent and the appearance of superior talent in one particular area is the result of specialization in that area (presumably repeated practice). The contemporary economist does not proceed as Smith does. He introduces students to an island society (or usually does) and it is rational for the two people in it (Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday) to specialize even if one is better at both tasks under consideration. The economist does not do all this: present Adam Smith, then the objection that some can do two specialisms or more, then his island model. I would like that. BUT this is not even my main problem. From Flora Nwapa's novel Efuru, we learn of women who specialize in one business and then switch to your business to generate competition, until you have to give up. If I were in economics, I would like to know about this kind of faux specialization, as I call it. (Neatened up from a PhilPapers contribution.) Explaining lack of progress. The criticisms of the post-crash economic society may well be met with the reaction “This is the social sciences: they don’t progress much, whereas the natural sciences do” and the material placed under the philosophical theme of explaining lack of progress.” With economics, one problem is this: if I conceive a model which gives me an advantage in competitive situations, then I just act on the model rather than share it (because sharing it would reduce the advantage). "Can you give an example?" What a question! I will give an example which might not qualify as an economic model. (If it half-does, then give me credit.) Let's suppose that I am reading Kimberley Brownlee on a human right against social deprivation in The Philosophical Quarterly. She claims that the proposition "Human beings are social beings" is a conceptual truth. I wonder how, because if it is true in virtue of the very concepts involved (like "A bachelor is unmarried" is), then there would presumably not be disagreement about it: anyone who grasps the concepts involved would agree. But there is disagreement (or at least some political philosophies seem to imply disagreement). Then I find that Martha Nussbaum makes a similar error about certain freedoms. She says that they are bad by definition but strangely also acknowledges that there is much disagreement about whether they are bad. Then I develop this "model." If you find an error in a less famous philosopher, then look for the same error in a much more famous philosopher and write about the latter. Why? Assuming standard aims, there is more reward in doing that. If you send your paper identifying an error off to the journal Analysis, then they are more likely to publish it. End of example: if this model occurs to you, then are you going to tell people it? (Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) Asymmetric information, etc. I am wondering, what do protesting students think of the addition of models with asymmetric information and other measures to work with the standard axioms of economics while increasing realism? (What is asymmetric information? Some economic models are said to assume perfect information whereas others are said to take into account asymmetric information. I am tempted to think that the working economist uses the concept like this. A simple model emerges in which all individuals represented within it share certain information. But reality is not like that and this is economically significant. More complex models involve addressing the same topic, in which only some of the agents have the information everyone has in the simple model. In this situation (and only in this one), one describes a model as involving asymmetric information. Take the invisible hand model. The government mostly does not direct people to jobs where needs are. Instead it leaves that to the market. A person needs to make a living. They locate a gap in the market and try to meet the demand there. Thereby they provide a product people need. This simple model assumes that individuals know where the gaps are: where there is demand but not yet supply. But reality is not always like this. Asymmetric successor models do not assume everyone's utilities are known - as economists represent utilities. What counts as asymmetric information elsewhere might be different; it depends on what is shared in the simple model. Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) A use for rational actor models: evaluating historical sources. If you studied history in school, you probably learnt to evaluate a source of information for reliability by who (or whom) the author is. Is this a source that we can rely on? Well, who wrote it and what are their interests? I have thought of another way of coming to doubt the reliability of a source. One develops a rational actor model which conflicts with what the source says. Even if one cannot see any interest in deception, given the source's author and their background, it is still rational to doubt the reliability of a source owing to conflict with the model. I shall illustrate this other pathway to doubt by reference to the authorised biography of politician Diane Abbott (even if this biography does not yet count as history): the first black woman to be elected to the UK parliament. The biography is by Dr. Robin Bunce, a historian of the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Samara Linton, an award winning researcher who graduated from Cambridge too and University College London, worked as a junior doctor, and is a fellow black woman. I don't actually experience much doubt about the biography or Abbott. But I read this quotation from Abbott, quoted with approval I believe: "If you are a thinking working-class person, and you go to Cambridge and you are surrounded by white people who, left or right, have that massive sense of entitlement, it will turn you into a socialist." (p.57) My model of what happens is the following - I don't know if it qualifies as a proper rational actor model, by the standards of economists, but it will do to illustrate my point. Abbott is interested in history as a Cambridge undergraduate, but she is introduced to some entitled white people whose family members are historians and who are at least as good as her in history and she concludes that they are likely to be preferred over her as a historian, in any sensible historical research project, owing to their skill and their network. She then thinks about law as a career, but low-down law firms will not employ her, because she is too clever for them (they don't want to be run by her, etc.), and regarding high up ones, she is introduced to people whose family members are lawyers and who are at least as good as her in law and she concludes that they are likely to be preferred to her as a lawyer, in any sensible lawyer role. Where can she go - I mean which career field? There is clearly a need for ethnic minorities to be political representatives, so that ethnic minorities feel represented in parliament. With her skills and ambition, politics is the only rational option. This model is quite different to the story in the biography: of someone who became a passionate socialist and went into politics. Abbott has few attractive options, with her skills and ambition, so she chooses politics, as do various other ethnic minorities, and for some reason she goes left-wing. Others go right-wing. (The reason is perhaps inexplicable. I would not get involved in character judgment here, unlike local tradition.) My model is significantly different to what Abbott and the biography portray, but it seems sensible to me, leading me to reasonable doubt about these sources. (Text largely lifted from PhilPapers.) *Curriculum protests irrational? Is it rational for students to protest against the economics curriculum? Rational actor models dominate: these are hypothetical situations in which the preferences of individuals are specified and one can then deduce what they will do. Their preferences are typically ones which draw upon no more advanced psychology than a little child has. But most people cannot restrict themselves to this narrow psychological knowledge and make models which predict or explain. It requires imagination to do this, of a not so common kind. The focus on rational actor models favours the academically gifted and keeps out the school bully, so how can students at university rationally protest against this curriculum? To illustrate the kind of imagination involved, consider a question recently raised by a newspaper: why do all these prominent female labour politicians look so similar - hairstyle, dress, etc.? Non-economists may well say they are evoking the image of Cleopatra or brunettes are regarded as smarter in this society. A rational actor explanation is that everyone wants to be regarded as competent at their job, even to non-experts, so whatever freedom to dress individualistically people have it is rational for individuals in a type of role to develop a common and distinctive look, which the public comes to associate with competence in that role. The psychological motivation here is one even a little child would agree with: the desire to be regarded as competent. But it can be used to explain. References Anderlini, L. and Sabourian, H. 1992. Some notes on the economics of barter, money, and credit. In C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones (eds.), Barter, Exchange, and Value: An anthropological approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brownlee, K. 2013. A human right against social deprivation. The Philosophical Quarterly 63(251): 199-222. Dickens, C. 1854. Hard Times. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/786/786-h/786-h.htm Earle, J., Moran, C., and Ward-Perkins, Z. 2016. The econocracy. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Edward, T.R. 2016. Does Marilyn Strathern Argue that the Concept of Nature Is a Social Construction? Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 3 (4):437-442. Edward, T.R. 2021 (version 10). A flawed argument reconstruction in political philosophy. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2022. Ifs and buts: Anca Gheaus’s flawed argument reconstruction. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2022. More on the value of disciplines to the social sciences: social anthropology. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2022. A gain from “faux specialization,” from Flora Nwapa’s Efuru. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2022. Traditional Literary Interpretation Versus Subversive Interpretation. Asian Journal of Advances in Research 16(3): 34-39. Edward, T.R. 2022. Relativism issues: The econocracy against multiple-choice questions. Available at PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2022. The problem of the uneven player: Derrida in analytic philosophy as a case study. Formerly available on PhilPapers. Deleted by me, I believe. Edward, T.R. 2023. Why do economists make these strange assumptions? Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. On Andrei Marmor’s presentation of the service conception of authority. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. Andrei Marmor’s reconstruction of Ronald Dworkin. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. Jonathan Quong’s reconstruction of G.A. Cohen. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. 46% tax? Jonathan Quong’s reconstruction of Jeremy Waldron. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. On Christine Swanton's rational reconstruction of an anti-intuitionist argument. Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2023. Would philosophers explain economics better? Probably not. Available on researchgate.net Edward, T.R. 2025. "Where can we discuss the foundations of economics at UoM?" (And some cake.) Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025 A paper you cannot write after Covid, Alexandrova and Northcott. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. The real fancy: a subversive response to Martha Nussbaum on economics !!! Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. On lack of progress in economics. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. I.C. Jarvie and "Why can't I learn old British functionalist social anthropology?" Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. Mainstream economics under pressure: two lessons from British social anthropology. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. Plug without earth wire: sociology, economics, and a response to UBC Undisciplined. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. Specialization, and a concession to the post-crash economic society? Available on PhilPapers. Edward. T.R. 2025. Hysterical violence in the state of nature (imitation of a Lacanian sociologist, my apologies). Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. Inquiry into the future of the non-mathematical economic essay (not micro-essay). Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. When is a "rational actor model" model mine? Featuring the musical chairs model (and three others of mine). Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. On Professor Anca Gheaus’s premise-by-premise reconstruction of a defence of the family. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. On the slow development of mathematical economic models: an imitation of experimental science? Available on PhilPapers. Edward. T.R. 2025. H. BEEBEE STYLE: why are television comedy sketch shows hit and miss? Available on PhilPapers and academia.edu. Edward, T.R. 2025. Amateur psychology and its enemies. Available on PhilPapers and academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2025. Why don’t they write “The world as I see it”? Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. What is asymmetric information? Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. A use for rational actor models: the evaluation of historical sources. Available on PhilPapers. Edward, T.R. 2025. The economic view on textbooks versus mine (and fair equality of opportunity). Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2025. What does Martha Nussbaum actually think of mainstream economics? Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2025. Robert J Samuelson (1945-2025) and can there be rational protests against the university economics curriculum? Available on academia.edu Edward, T.R. 2025. Reasons for the leisure-maximization assumption. Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DO1tr6RFJIU/ (There are other relevant Instagram videos of mine, by the way.) Edward, T.R. 2025. How did economics and mathematics get together? Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DNjOdw6Ca52/ Edward, T.R. 2025. Consistently reducing the mathematics in economics? Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO9O3AnjKMv/ Gell, A. 1992. 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Strathern, M. 1990. Artifacts of History: Events and the Interpretation of Images. In J. Sikkala (ed.), Culture and History in the Pacific. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society. Turri, J. 2014. Epistemology: A Guide. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. University of British Columbia. 2024. About - The Undisciplined Project. Available at: https://www.theundisciplinedproject.net/about Varian, H.R. 2010. Intermediate Micro Economics. New York: W.W. Norton.