著者

鈴木 英規

出版者

経済理論学会

雑誌

季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.43, no.1, pp.57-67, 2006-04-20 (Released:2017-04-25)

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Whilst different kinds of 'incommensurability' were argued in the 'the socialist calculation debate', which made the debate unexpectedly fruitful, there has never been a research for reconstructing the debate in respect of 'incommensurability'. This paper, therefore, aims to reconsider the debate by focusing on 'incommensurability', and to defend an argument by Otto Neurath, an Austrian socialist, in the debate. Incommensurability is defined as a lack of measurement: two items or options are commensurable if they can, and incommensurable if they cannot, be measured. According to John O'Neill's recent studies on the debate, whilst Neurath and Hayek similarly argue on 'incommensurability', they don't reach an agreement because the locus of their 'incommensurability' are different: Neurath's incommensurability exists in between values themselves whereas Hayek's one is in between different beliefs about what is of value. In other words, Neurath's incommensurability derives from value pluralism, whereas Hayek's one derives from epistemic relativism. Exploring the difference paves the way for rediscovering importance of the debate, and especially for defending Neurath's standpoint, which was supposed to be inferior to others' one. After summarizing O'Neill's argument on the debate, we firstly reconsider the debate by Mises, Neurath, Hayek and Lange, respectively, by focusing on their different aspects on 'incommensurability'. Second, we support a, so-called, 'weak claim' that O'Neill holds, namely 'even though Hayek is right, Neurath is defensible'. Unlike O'Neill's approach, however, we try it from a perspective of critical realism. Critical realism is a philosophical and methodological perspective currently argued in the U.K. and holds that there is more to 'what is' than 'what is known'. The former framework of questioning is called ontology, namely the philosophical investigation about nature of being or existence. In contrast, the latter one is called epistemology, namely the philosophical investigation about knowledge of being or existence and about how knowledge of being is obtained. Ontology has, for many years, tended to be overlooked and has often been eclipsed by its relative epistemology. This has, almost inevitably, led to ontological confusion right across the spectrum of social science in general and in the analysis of money/market in particular. Through 'philosophical under-labouring' for Neurath's argument from a critical realist perspective, this paper tries to avoid the ontological confusion encouraging the practice of collapsing value pluralism into epistemic relativism.