Diversity for the Common Good? Philosophical Inquiries into Pluralism in Economics

This dissertation examines the recent demands for diversifying economics, often forwarded under the rubric of pluralism. The dissertation aims at illuminating questions that are foundational to this debate and thereby advancing the resolution of the disagreements. The focus is on the question whether economics should be open to a wide range of methodological approaches, theoretical frameworks, schools of thought, or such, in a way that would make the current relatively uniform mainstream approach one approach to economics among others. The question is approached from the perspective of empirically informed philosophy of science. This approach combines the traditional tools of philosophy, such as critical examination of arguments and concepts, with a multifaceted understanding of science achieved by drawing on sociological, historical, and economic research on science. The dissertation consists of four research articles and an introductory essay. Three of these articles examine three respective epistemic benefits that increased diversity of approaches and perspectives may be expected to produce. These benefits are labeled the stimulation of inquiry, the reliability of produced knowledge, and the comprehensiveness of attainable knowledge. Each benefit may be used as a premise in an argument to the effect that economics should be more diverse than it currently is. Of these three articles, two use Helen Longino’s Critical Contextual Empiricism as the theoretical framework. The fourth article examines the flipside of the benefits, namely the various costs that securing the benefits may require or that may emerge as side-effects of diversity. This study finds that all the examined lines of argumentation for pluralism face challenges. The most pressing challenge is that the arguments for pluralism often presuppose views about the goals of economics without explicitly arguing for them. While plurality may have certain effects for the knowledge produced by economics, whether these effects are desirable depends on what kinds of epistemic outputs one thinks economics should deliver. However, there is no universal agreement on this. There is no uncontested Common Good against which to measure which changes are improvements. Arguments which do not confront this reality are unlikely to gain wide support. Thus this study highlights the urgency of openly discussing the research agenda and overall aims of the discipline. This study also helps articulate the views involved in such a discussion by developing suitable conceptual tools. Nevertheless, the most substantial challenges are only faced by views according to which fundamental reform in economics is needed; it is plausible that economics would benefit from a moderate shift towards openness to non-mainstream approaches and perspectives. At the end, the desirability of a shift towards more intellectual diversity in economics is a matter of costs and benefits. The more modest variations of pluralism one considers, the more likely it is that the benefits outweigh the costs.