by From Paul Davidson Knight and Keynes have very different concepts of uncertainty. Knight believes that uncertainty is epistemological problem where humans do not have the mental ability to see the future even if it actually knowable currently. Keynes argued the future can not be derived from analyzing the past and current relationships. On page 210 of his book Knight writes that the future “universe may not be knowable ,,,[but] objective phenomenon… is certainly knowable to a degree so far beyond our actual powers….[and therefore] any limitation of knowledge due to a lack of real consistency [i.e., what I would call this lack a nonergodic system] in the cosmos may be ignored.” In other words, Knight’s view of uncertainty is a failure of human capability –and not a lack of consistent
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from Paul Davidson
Knight and Keynes have very different concepts of uncertainty. Knight believes that uncertainty is epistemological problem where humans do not have the mental ability to see the future even if it actually knowable currently. Keynes argued the future can not be derived from analyzing the past and current relationships.
On page 210 of his book Knight writes that the future “universe may not be knowable ,,,[but] objective phenomenon… is certainly knowable to a degree so far beyond our actual powers….[and therefore] any limitation of knowledge due to a lack of real consistency [i.e., what I would call this lack a nonergodic system] in the cosmos may be ignored.”
In other words, Knight’s view of uncertainty is a failure of human capability –and not a lack of consistent probabilistic relationships over time.
Keynes, on the other hand in his paper on Mr. Tinbergen’s methodology stress his belief that past probabilities of relationships will not be unchanging in the future– and so there is no evidence available today that can be reliably used to predict the future.
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/04/13/radical-uncertainty-a-question-of-economic-methodology/#comments