Abstract
The principles of political economy born before utilitarianism seized power in economics were entirely irrelevant to the kind of utility maximization. Utilitarianism made economists share a unique definite purpose for the art of life, thus becoming to play the crucial role in arguing economics almost everywhere. We can easily find our main prototype of modern economic ideas from the classical source of literatures of utilitarianism, in particular, James Mill who suggested the “Art of Life”, whose ultimate end is happiness in the society. Put another way, utilitarianism is a kind of art which has ultimately recourse to the sole value judgment on happiness either personally or interpersonally.
Reprinted from Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 13(1), Aruka, Y., Exploring the Limitations of Utilitarian Epistemology to Economic Science in View of Interacting Heterogeneity, 27–44 (2004). With kind permission from Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, Tokyo.
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Notes
- 1.
I know directly, and of my own knowledge, that I was vexed yesterday, or that I am hungry today. The knowledge that we have such and such an emotion … precedes our reasoning about the mental phenomena in question (Riley 1988, p. 35).
- 2.
Experimental economists who anticipate the derivation of rational choice axioms from conducting human experiments.
- 3.
See for example, Hildenbrand and Kirman (1988).
- 4.
Although theory is required to interpret the facts of our experience, it does not follow that our minds create the theory a priori, before we see the facts.
- 5.
I must either believe them to be alive, or to be automatons: and by believing them to be alive, that is, by supposing the link to be of the same nature as in the case of which I have experience, and which is in all other respects similar, I bring other human beings, as phenomena, under the same generalizations which I know by experience to be the true theory of my own experience. Cited from J. S. Mill (1865) by Riley (1988, p. 154).
- 6.
Subgroups may be interpreted as income classes in the society; fitness of the subgroup may be measured in terms of spending on consumer goods. In the context of evolutionary economics, on the other hand, we can use variances and covariances to argue cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes, and large-scale cooperation in line with George Price’s equation (Price 1972) in biology. See Aruka (2004).
- 7.
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Aruka, Y. (2011). Exploring the Limitations of Utilitarian Epistemology to Economic Science in View of Interacting Heterogeneity. In: Aruka, Y. (eds) Complexities of Production and Interacting Human Behaviour. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2618-0_7
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