by From Ikonoclast . . . my ontology is quite different from the ontology of conventional economics. The ontology of conventional economics is implicitly that of Cartesian dualism; meaning mechanical and deterministic in the realm of res extensa (extended thing(s), the physical) and spiritually animated in the realm of res cogitans (thought or thinking). A consequent product of thinking that ideas are pure and immaterial (in the Platonic sense) is the belief that ideas may refer to directly to the ideal and the ideal itself is somehow hyper-real or “more real then the real”. If the mind can construct the ideal (like a DSGE model) then the physical reality, and even the social and biosphere realities, can be ordered (in both senses of “order”) to match the ideal. This is the standpoint
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from Ikonoclast
. . . my ontology is quite different from the ontology of conventional economics. The ontology of conventional economics is implicitly that of Cartesian dualism; meaning mechanical and deterministic in the realm of res extensa (extended thing(s), the physical) and spiritually animated in the realm of res cogitans (thought or thinking). A consequent product of thinking that ideas are pure and immaterial (in the Platonic sense) is the belief that ideas may refer to directly to the ideal and the ideal itself is somehow hyper-real or “more real then the real”. If the mind can construct the ideal (like a DSGE model) then the physical reality, and even the social and biosphere realities, can be ordered (in both senses of “order”) to match the ideal. This is the standpoint from which conventional economics operates. It is a profoundly normative and hence un-empirical approach. This un-empirical nature is the issue that Frank Salter points to (I believe) in calling for an analysis from empirical first principles.
I could say a lot more but I will content myself with this. The implicit ontology of conventional economics is not even worthy of the term “ontology”. It is not a coherent ontology, nor is it a science-congruent ontology, at least not since Darwin and Einstein and all of science and a great deal of philosophy since their time. Conventional economics takes the prize as the last unreconstructed major discipline of the modern era. https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/06/22/user-guides-to-models/