Between Scylla and Charybdis? On the place of economic methods in sustainability science
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
The flaws of mainstream economic methodology are becoming widely acknowledged. Should we, therefore, reject all of its concepts within the quest for sustainability? A predicament looms: neither would it make sense to
neglect useful tools, nor to redundantly replicate the mainstream’s narrow perspective on sustainability problems. We argue that avoiding both fallacies is possible because power of judgment facilitates non-dogmatic methodological decisions: the scientists’ judgment, that is, the capacity to apply general concepts to specific situations, supports their decisions concerning which methods are suitable for tackling a given sustainability problem. The intersubjective quality of judgment prevents the resulting methodological pluralism from drifting toward arbitrariness.
neglect useful tools, nor to redundantly replicate the mainstream’s narrow perspective on sustainability problems. We argue that avoiding both fallacies is possible because power of judgment facilitates non-dogmatic methodological decisions: the scientists’ judgment, that is, the capacity to apply general concepts to specific situations, supports their decisions concerning which methods are suitable for tackling a given sustainability problem. The intersubjective quality of judgment prevents the resulting methodological pluralism from drifting toward arbitrariness.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 421-432 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Sustainability Science |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
Scopus | 84991811314 |
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ORCID | /0000-0002-2688-8947/work/142244297 |
Keywords
Research priority areas of TU Dresden
Keywords
- Economic methods, Power of judgment, Sustainability, Methodological pluralism, Ontology, Sustainability