Introduction

Abstract

Since the inauguration of systematic studies in economics by the moral philosopher Adam Smith, philosophers and social scientists have engaged in an unflagging controversy regarding the proper method of inquiry to adopt in the construction of economic science. On the one hand, economic theory has been conceived as an essentially normative discipline which, by applying fundamental ethical concepts and principles, prescribes the canons according to which agents ought to engage in the production and exchange of material commodities. On the other hand, it has been argued that economics consists of a set of purely descriptive hypotheses explaining de facto regularities in the behaviour of producers and consumers, rather than a set of norms recommending justifiable forms of such activity. However, under the persistent influence of “positivist” doctrines of scientific method, in particular those advocating the disparate character of “values” in contrast to “facts”, the latter interpretation has become the orthodoxy among economic methodologists. Hence the prevailing wisdom concludes that economic theory incorporates no categorical moral imperatives stating what an agent ought, on moral grounds, to do. Rather, to the extent that economics is concerned at all with ethical questions, only prudential imperatives are countenanced: such directives take ethical goals and values in the realm of economic action as given, and simply recommend optimal means for realizing these ends. But, somehow, economic theory itself comprises a body of “positive” knowledge, entirely “neutral” with respect to such external value considerations.