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Comment on Kaye-Blake We are writing to comment on “Economics is a Structured Like a Language”
(William Kaye-Blake, post-autistic economics review, issue no. 36, 24
February 2006, pp. 25-33) http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue36/KayeBlake36.htm.
Kaye-Blake argues that Lawson’s critical realism and Ruccio’s postmodern ontologies are closed, though they claim to be open.
Their appearance of openness is dismissed as complexity: “There is a problem
with both of these formulations of openness. They reflect complexity: multiple forces acting
either on the surface of society or surging up from its depths; they are
still deterministic.” In order to offer indeterminacy, Kaye-Blake presents an
ontological formulation stylized by the linguistic ideas of Saussure. According to Saussure, meaning influences
meaning. Aside from this influence, the relationship between the signifier
and signified is arbitrary – leaving only synchronicity, i.e. the mere act of
understanding – to encapsulate meaning. Otherwise meaning is to be achieved
at the end of time, or at the end of the chain of meaning. Approaching
economic questions with a similar ontology permits indeterminacy because
causality can only be explained after the event, or at the end of time.
Kaye-Blake explains, “the present is thus open not because of the past but
because of the future.” Complexity science handles indeterminacy by means of bifurcation.
Complexity agrees that cumulative causation shapes a system trajectory, supporting
Kaye-Blake’s critique quoted above, but if the parameters of a system are
changed, however, attractor basins (or the initial conditions that lead to a
particular final state) may appear or disappear. The system itself lacks the
vitality to jump from one dependent path to another, but a system
reconfiguration may cause bifurcation, thus permitting openness (Allen 2001).
Reference Allen, Peter M. (2001) Knowledge, ignorance, and the evolution of
complex systems. In John Foster and J. Stanley Metcalfe (Eds.), Frontiers
of Evolutionary Economics: Competition, Self-Organization and Innovation
Policy. (pp. 313-351). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Concetta Balestra Frank Fagan University of Bologna Author contact: fjfagan@gmail.com ___________________________ SUGGESTED CITATION: |