The Rhetoric of Economics Author(S): Donald N
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American Economic Association The Rhetoric of Economics Author(s): Donald N. McCloskey Source: Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 481-517 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2724987 Accessed: 24/10/2009 16:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aea. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Economic Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Economic Literature. http://www.jstor.org Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XXI (June 1983), pp. 481-517 The Rhetoric of Economics By DONALD N. MCCLOSKEY The Universityof Iowa The length of the acknowledgments here testifies to an unexplored feature of the rhetoric of economics, the role of the audience: like oratory, scholarship depends for its virtues on the virtues of its audience. I have been fortunate in mine. I must apologize for my amateurish understanding of what is happening in philosophy, mathematics, literary criticism, rhetorical studies, and other places beyond my competence, and ask that practitioners in these fields assist in my further education. For their early attempts I thank Evan Fales, Paul Hernadi, John Lyne, Michael McGee,Allan Megill, John Nelson, and Jay Semel of the Colloquium on Applied Rhetoric at The University of Iowa; Wayne Booth, Ira Katznelson, and others at the University of Chicago in the program in Politics, Rhetoric and Law, before which the earliest version was delivered; Robert Boynton, Bernard Cohn,John Comaroff;Otis Dudley Duncan, James 0. Freedman, Clifford Geertz, William Kruskal, Donald Levine, Laura McCloskey,Richard Rorty, Renato Rosaldo; and the Humani- ties Society at the University of Iowa. That the economists on whom I have inflicted the argument have reacted with such intelligent skepticism and generous encouragement suggests, as the paper does, that we are better scholars than our methodology would allow. I thank my colleagues in economics at Iowa, especially the Sanctuary Seminar in Economic Argument; Seminars at the World Bank and the National Science Foundation; my colleagues at the Institute of Advanced Studies and the Faculty of Economics at the Australian National University; seminars at the universities of Adelaide, Auck- land, Melbourne, New South Wales, Tasmania and WesternAustra- lia; at Monash, and Iowa State universities; Victoria University of Wellington; and an assemblage of economists elsewhere: William Breit, Ronald Coase,Arthur Diamond, Stanley Engerman, J. M. Fin- ger, Milton Friedman, Allan Gibbard, Robert Goodin, Gary Hawke, Robert Higgs, Albert Hirschman, Eric Jones, Arjo Klamer, Harvey Leibenstein, David Levy, Peter Lindert, Neil de Marchi, Michael McPherson, Amartya Sen, Robert Solow, Larry Westphal, Gordon Winston, and Gavin Wright. Thomas Mayer's encouragement at an early stage and his detailed comments as refereefor this Journal at a later stage were exceptionally heartening and useful. 481 482 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXI (June 1983) ECONOMISTS DO NOT FOLLOW the laws ism labels such issues "meaningless" or of enquiry their methodologies lay "nonscientific" or "just matters of opin- down. A good thing, too. If they did they ion." Yet even positivists actually behave would stand silent on human capital, the as though the matters are discussable. In law of demand, random walks down Wall fact, most discussion in most sciences, and Street, the elasticity of demand for gaso- especially in economics, arises from them. line, and most other matters about which Nothing is gained from clinging to the Sci- they commonly speak. In view of the volu- entific Method, or to any methodology ex- bility of economists the many official cept honesty, clarity, and tolerance. Noth- methodologies are apparently not the ing is gained because the methodology grounds for their scientific conviction. does not describe the sciences it was once Economists in fact argue on wider thought to describe, such as physics or grounds, and should. Their genuine, mathematics; and because physics and workaday rhetoric, the way they argue in- mathematics are not good models for eco- side their heads or their seminar rooms, nomics anyway; and because the method- diverges from the official rhetoric. Econo- ology is now seen by many philosophers mists should become more self-conscious themselves to be uncompelling; and be- about their rhetoric, because they will cause economic science would stop pro- then better know why they agree or dis- gressing if the methodology were in fact agree, and will find it less easy to dismiss used; and, most important, because eco- contrary arguments on merely methodo- nomics, like any field, should get its stan- logical grounds. Philosophy as a set of nar- dards of argument from itself, not from rowing rules of evidence should be set the legislation of philosopher kings. The aside in scientific argument, as even many real arguments would then be joined. philosophers have been saying now for fifty years. I. Rhetoric Is Disciplined Conversation Economics will not change much in sub- stance, of course, when economists recog- These points, elaborated below, amount nize that the economic emperor has posi- to an appeal to examine the rhetoric of tively no clothes. He is the same fellow economics. By "rhetoric" is not meant a whether philosophically naked or clothed, verbal shell game, as in "empty rhetoric" in reasonably good health aside from his or "mere rhetoric" (although form is not sartorial delusion. But the temper of argu- trivial, either: disdain for the form of ment among economists would improve words is evidence of a mind closed to the if they recognized on what grounds they varieties of argument). In Modern Dogma were arguing. They claim to be arguing and the Rhetoric of Assent Wayne Booth on grounds of certain limited matters of gives many useful definitions. Rhetoric is statistical inference, on grounds of posi- "the art of probing what men believe they tive economics, operationalism, behavior- ought to believe, rather than proving ism, and other positivistic enthusiasms of what is true according to abstract meth- the 1930s and 1940s. They believe that ods"; it is "the art of discovering good rea- these are the only grounds for science. But sons, finding what really warrants assent, in their actual scientific work they argue because any reasonable person ought to about the aptness of economic metaphors, be persuaded"; it is "careful weighing of the relevance of historical precedents, more-or-less good reasons to arrive at the persuasiveness of introspections, the more-or-less probable or plausible conclu- power of authority, the charm of symme- sions-none too secure but better than try, the claims of morality. Crude positiv- would be arrived at by chance or unthink- McCloskey: The Rhetoric of Economics 483 ing impulse"; it is the "art of discovering century after Descartes rose from the warrantable beliefs and improving those dead. The faith built on these miracles is beliefs in shared discourse"; its purpose known in literary studies as the New Rhet- must not be "to talk someone else into a oric, new in the 1930s and 1940s from preconceived view; rather, it must be to the hands of I. A. Richards in Britain and engage in mutual inquiry" (Booth, 1974, Kenneth Burke in America (Richards, pp. xiii, xiv, 59, 137). It is what economists, 1936; Burke, 1950). In philosophy John like other dealers in ideas, do anyway: as Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein had al- Booth says elsewhere, "We believe in mu- ready begun to criticize Descartes' pro- tual persuasion as a way of life; we live gram of erecting belief on a foundation from conference to conference" (Booth, of skepticism. More recently Karl Popper, 1967, p. 13). Rhetoric is exploring thought Thomas Kuhn, and Imre Lakatos among by conversation. others have undermined the positivist The word "rhetoric"is doubtless an ob- supposition that scientific progress does in stacle to understanding the point, so de- fact follow Descartes' doubting rules of based has it become in common parlance. method. The literary, epistemological, If "pragmatism"and "anarchism"had not and methodological strands have not yet already suffered as much, unable to keep wound into one cord, but they belong to- clear of irrelevant associations with the gether. On the eve of the Cartesian revo- bottom line or the bomb, the title might lution the French philosopher and educa- better have been "Pragmatism'sConcep- tional reformer, Peter Ramus (fi. 1550), tion of Truth in Economics" or "Outline brought to completion a medieval ten- of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge dency to relegate rhetoric to mere elo- in Economics" (WilliamJames, 1907; Paul quence, leaving logic in charge of reason. Feyerabend, 1975). But the enemies of so- In the textbooks that Descartes himself phisticated pragmatism and gentle anar- read as a boy probable argument was chism, as of honest rhetoric, have used the made thus for the first time wholly subser- weapons at hand.