How Economists Think: A Kantian Interpretation of Mainstream Economics

Many philosophers today take the empiricist or rationalist stance that mainstream economics is self-centered and naïve. For their part too, most economists don’t know much formal philosophy.

The purpose of the present book is to help bridge this great divide between philosopher and economist. Arguing for the person-centered mainstream economics over what would be an objects-centered scientific one, it makes a systematic case that the epistemology of the economics used in research and teaching today derives from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. On these grounds it is shown that understanding modern economics is a matter of becoming familiar with Kant’s interpretative forms of perception, judgment, and reason.

It will be vital reading for philosophers, economists, and others interested in these two critical professions.

Steven Buccola is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at Oregon State University where his research has focused on the economics of science and technology and his teaching on graduate-level microeconomic theory. He is a Distinguished Fellow and Past President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, was Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, a Wade Awardee for Excellence in Teaching at Oregon State University, and a committee member with the National Research Council, National Academies, Washington D.C., in a review of USDA-funded research.