1 Introduction

1 Philosophy and social science are quite different kinds of conceptual endeavors, but presumably are nonetheless engaged with one another in some manner. This invites the question, what is the nature of their engagement? Addressing this even broadly would require a treatise, so instead I confine discussion to the nature of engagement between philosophy and only one social science, economics, and approach this from the vantage point of the philosophy of economics, the field in economics directly concerned with philosophical reasoning and most engaged with philosophy. It can be argued, of course, that philosophical reasoning regarding economics is different from philosophical reasoning in other social sciences, but I put this aside here to address one way in which economics and philosophy of economics have become increasingly engaged with philosophy – particularly in light of the recently changed character of philosophy of economics.

2 Drawing on my fifteen years co-editing the Journal of Economic Methodology with Wade Hands, I have argued that the philosophy of economics, recognized as a distinct field in economics since the 1980s (then known as methodology of economics), has evolved in a relatively short period of time from close association with economics to a closer association with philosophy [3]. A complication this evolution creates for assessing philosophy’s engagement with economics via the philosophy of economics lies in determining what from economics’ distinctive concerns remains essential to current philosophy of economics and how this affects economics’engagement with philosophy. I address this issue first in section 2.

3 There is a second complication. This is that not only in current economics but also current philosophy of economics there is a divide between what are generally referred to as mainstream and heterodox/non-mainstream thinking. Mainstream refers to dominant thinking in economics with origins in neoclassical economics [4]. Mainstream philosophy of economics investigates the principle theoretical commitments of mainstream economics. Heterodox economics refers to longer-standing dissident economic approaches such as Veblenian institutionalism, Marxism, post-Keynesianism, stratification economics, Austrian economics, social economics, feminist economics, and environmentalism. Non-mainstream economics (not usually termed heterodox) refers to more recent dissident or non-standard economic approaches such as behavioral economics, capability approaches, complexity theory, and experimentalism [5]. Heterodox philosophy of economics investigates the principle commitments of heterodox economics, and the non-mainstream philosophy of economics investigates the principle commitments of these recent alternative approaches.

4 One might be tempted to think that this divide lines up with the divide between the analytic and continental philosophy traditions, pairing mainstream philosophy of economics with analytic philosophy and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics with the continental philosophy. However, both mainstream and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics operate within the analytic tradition. Contrary to the idea that heterodox/ non-mainstream philosophy of economics might be paired with the continental philosophy tradition, its philosophical concerns raise quite standard epistemological and ontological issues in analytic philosophy.

5 How mainstream and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics each draw on the analytic tradition in philosophy is the subject of section 3. One thing that especially distinguishes mainstream and the heterodox/non-mainstream economic approaches is the latter’s critical appraisal of the former, particularly as regards rationality theory. This then carries over to what distinguishes mainstream and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics. After discussing this, I go on to argue that the recent evolution of philosophy of economics toward greater association with philosophy is particularly strong in heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics as a product of its increasing adoption of analytical philosophy reasoning to advance its critical appraisals of mainstream economics’ foundations in rationality theory. In contrast, mainstream philosophy of economics has changed relatively little in the postwar period with most developments aimed at refining those foundations.

6 Thus, the divide between mainstream and heterodox/non-mainstream economics and in philosophy of economics points towards two different engagements with the analytic philosophy tradition, and thus potentially with two different sets of arguments in the latter. Here I argue from the point of view of heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics there are two fundamental philosophical concerns: the nature of individual agency and the foundations of ethical thinking. Mainstream philosophy of economics emphasizes neither and arguably has little to say about both. Yet both have become increasingly important to heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics’ critical evaluation of mainstream thinking. Thus, the evolution of the field of philosophy of economics toward closer association with philosophy – discussed in section 2 – has also made these two concerns central to an emerging engagement between philosophy and philosophy of economics. Section 4 turns to the nature of individual agency. In philosophy, the issue of individual agency is connected to the issue of personal identity. In heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics, it is connected to the issue of individual identity. For the former, I discuss Derek Parfit’s influential Reasons and Persons (1984) view. For the latter, I discuss the thinking of an influential figure in economics, Herbert Simon. Simon, though prestigious and respected by many in the mainstream – he was a Nobel laureate – advanced arguments critical of its conception of individual agency that have come to be seen as pivotal for many in both heterodox and non-mainstream economics and philosophy of economics. Essentially I argue that Parfit’s and Simon’s views regarding individual agency exhibit a convergence in thinking that offers one possible bridge between philosophy and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics that mainstream philosophy of economics, neglecting the issue, does not address.

7 Section 5 addresses the foundations of ethical thinking. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons was followed by his On What Matters (2011, 2016) where he re-assessed the foundations of moral philosophy in light of his thinking about identity. This project was also undertaken in economics by Amartya Sen, who like Simon, while prestigious and respected by many in the mainstream – and also a Nobel laureate – rejected the subjectivist foundations of mainstream economics, and offered an alternative basis for ethics and economics that has become influential for many in both heterodox/non-mainstream economics and philosophy of economics. Here also I argue there is a convergence in thinking that offers another possible bridge between philosophy and heterodox/ non-mainstream philosophy of economics unavailable to mainstream philosophy of economics.

8 The closing section 6 returns to the general issue of the engagement between philosophy and philosophy of economics to ask whether common ground between them might lie on side of a major fault line in philosophical thinking. The candidate fault line I address concerns the nature of time, or more specifically, the epistemic nature of temporal sequences, a matter famously raised by Aristotle in his sea battle tomorrow thought experiment. The issue of how we should think about time or temporal sequences arises in connection with heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics’ distinctive concerns regarding the nature of economics as a social science. To the extent, then, that what we see in comparing Parfit and Simon and Parfit and Sen privileges one of the two conceptions of temporal sequences, we may have a basis for identifying a potential emerging common ground between philosophy and heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics.

2 From the methodology of economics to the philosophy of economics

9 While philosophical reasoning regarding economic life has a long history dating back to th e Greeks, economics’ engagement with philosophy took on especially concrete form with the emergence of the methodology of economics as a distinct field in economics, as first associated with the appearance of Economics and Philosophy in 1985, Methodus in 1989, and Journal of Economic Methodology in 1994, and then with the subsequent early development of that field [6]. The field was originally seen as a subfield of the field of history of economic thought that was primarily concerned with epistemological issues in the history of economics. It then broadened into more general issues in the philosophy of science by comparing economics as a science to the natural sciences, physics foremost [7], and then took on a wider range of epistemological issues involved in economics’ full landscape [8].

10 The main point of contact with philosophy at this time was the critique of logical positivist/logical empiricist thinking – the so-called ‘Received View’ [9] – and the arguments of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and others [10]. Economic methodologists, especially in the field of history of economics, quickly became acquainted with twentieth-century history of philosophy, and extended philosophers’ arguments to neoclassical economics, arguing it was based on logical positivist/logical empiricist thinking [11]. There had been important philosophical contributions in economics dating back at least to J.S. Mill [12], but the 1980s emergence of methodology as a distinct field in economics was stimulated by this post-logical positivist movement in philosophy.

11 Yet this focus ran its course and gave way to a number of new philosophical initiatives: realism, sociology of scientific knowledge, discourse analysis, the economics of scientific knowledge, etc [13]. Economic methodology consequently slowly evolved into the philosophy of economics in virtue of this wider philosophical scope. This deepened the field but also had two other consequences: it was less clear what the field was about and its early close association with the history of economics weakened. Most contributors in the field were still trained in economics and many in the history of economics, but its wider scope opened the door to individuals trained in philosophy and less versed in economics and the history of economics.

12 This is reflected in a more recent journal in the field, the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics dating from 2008 and new philosophy of economics handbooks in the field [14]. An additional stimulus for this shift from a history of economics-methodology of economics focus to wider concern with philosophical issues in economics was the 1990s emergence of behavioral reasoning in economics and vigorous debate over rationality theory. If the earlier focus addressed how economics evolved philosophically, the debate over rationality theory generated a new series of questions directed at what sort of social science economics is and what its lateral social science disciplinary relationships might be, psychology in particular.

13 There were two other developments affecting the field’s original history of economics connection. First, fewer people were being trained in the history of economics, especially in the U.S., where most had been trained, due to economics doctoral programs giving greater weight to quantitative methods and eliminating history of economics training. Second, since there were by this time a number of journals specialized in methodology of economics/ philosophy of economics issues, history of economics journals were decreasingly likely to publish philosophy of economics research.

14 This shift in the nature of the field opened up a new set of previously, relatively unexplored topics in philosophy of economics. The recent The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics [15] clearly shows this. The book includes thirty-five chapters divided into eight categories: rationality, cooperation and interaction, methodology, values, causality and explanation, experimentation and simulation, evidence, and policy. As reviewer Wade Hands comments, the scope of the field has become large and wide-ranging [16]. Thus, if when the field was seen as the methodology of economics, philosophical issues were investigated in connection with particular economic theories in the history of economics, in The Routledge Handbook the issues addressed shift toward what philosophy contributes to the philosophy of economics.

15 This makes for an increasing engagement between philosophy and economics via the philosophy of economics, but also raises questions regarding attention to economics’ distinctive concerns as a social science. Philosophy, many would say, investigates fundamental issues in human thought. Economics and the social sciences are less ambitious and more pragmatically motivated in aiming to generate what their consumers see as ‘useful’ knowledge. Usefulness has many dimensions, but one important one pertains to policy formulation based on scientific knowledge. Philosophy also has this responsibility, for example with respect to ethics and the nature of scientific knowledge, but arguably more indirectly than the sciences.

16 What, then, are economics’ distinctive concerns? The history of economics investigates how perception of the ‘useful’ knowledge-policy link has varied over time according to how economies change in their nature and structure over time. The history of economics is not a mere recording of ideas advanced in the past but a pursuit of explanations about how the passage of time operates upon and affects economic ideas. That is, explanations in the history of economics employ historical reasoning – a specific type of philosophical reasoning.

17 One might conclude from this that historical reasoning must also underlie economics itself, but this is not really the case with its increasing postwar mathematization and greater formalism. Nonetheless, historical thinking still characterizes heterodox/non-mainstream economics and philosophy of economics even if it does not characterize mainstream economics and philosophy of economics. I turn to this in the following section.

3 Heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics

18 While heterodox/non-mainstream economics is made up of a collection of quite different theoretical approaches, all are critical of rationality theory as the foundation of mainstream thinking. Though they differ regarding what they find objectionable in the theory, generally they reject the behavioral basis of the theory’s conception of economic agents as independent, essentially self-interested agents [17]. In rationality theory, in philosophical terms, agents are beings able to act on their ‘own’ individual intentions, more specifically their preferences as represented by their utility functions, to bring about actions. The mainstream theory’s explanation of this preferences-actions link rests on a set of axioms or postulates characterizing agents’ preferences that were developed to ensure agents’ choices are rational in the sense of consistently responding in the best way possible (or ‘efficiently’) to a world of scarcity. That is, the logic of reasoning is that in order to show that agents act rationally, certain presumably reasonable axioms or postulates must be assumed to be true characterizations of individuals’ preferences. Were they not, individuals’ actions could then be seen to be guided by a variety of motives, as shown by behavioral economists who have argued there is much evidence that the axioms, particularly the independence axioms that require context of choice not matter, do not correctly characterize people’s preferences.

19 The rationality framework, then, is the basis for the mainstream theory of agents’ interaction in markets which, given the restrictions on the nature of preferences, is argued to produce stable market equilibrium outcomes governing economies. Thus, there is nothing in the behavior of rational agents and the functioning of markets that produces non-equilibrium states of affairs. These supposedly stable equilibrium states can only be upset by shocks ‘external’ to the market process associated with changes in technologies and unexpected events (wars, natural disasters, etc.). Further, when such shocks occur, rational behavior inevitably ensures that markets move to new stable equilibrium states. Thus, for the mainstream rationality theory and equilibrium theory go hand-in-hand.

20 Heterodox/non-mainstream economics rejects this vision of the economy, its representation of the market as a naturally adjusting mechanism – Adam Smith’s harmonious ‘invisible hand’ idea – and its rationality theory foundation with its conception of economic agents as independent, essentially self-interested beings. Heterodox/non-mainstream approaches, though they are all critical of the rationality theory-equilibrium theory connection, can also be differentiated according to whether they primarily target rationality theory or equilibrium theory. For example, post-Keynesians and complexity theorists target equilibrium theory and behavioral economists and institutionalist economists target rationality theory.

21 These different critiques, however, are ultimately connected, since if one of the two theories fails, often so does the other. Consider rationality theory. Agents act on the basis of expectations about the future, but the future is uncertain so what are these expectations based upon? Standard rationality theory explains uncertainty strictly in Bayesian terms whereby ‘facts’ are seen as an adequate basis for determining how the future plays out. Since all agents act on this basis, their actions effectively synchronize with one another to produce equilibrium outcomes. Yet since Bayesianism is questionable on many grounds, so also is an equilibrium representation of the economy. Or consider equilibrium theory. Equilibria can be upset by ‘shocks’ external to the market process, and agents are believed to act only on their ‘own’ individual preferences in ways that move economies to new equilibria. However, behavioral economics research shows system-wide ‘shocks’ can have herding effects on people, hence producing group behaviors that overwhelm individuals’ ‘independent’ choices. So markets need not move in an automatic way to new or predictable equilibria [18].

22 But how then do markets move? What processes of change operate in them if not only equilibrium processes? Heterodox/non-mainstream economics, for example, post-Keynesianism, complexity theory, and stratification economics, offer different theories of this, but what they arguably share is an emphasis on historical reasoning. Above I described the type of reasoning employed in the history of economics as historical reasoning, and suggested it involves a specific type of philosophical reasoning. We can identify what this involves, in part, by contrasting it with the highly deductive mainstream logical reasoning that ties explanations of behavior to sets of axioms or postulates held to always be true. By contrast, historical reasoning proceeds more inductively, allowing central assumptions we make about behavior to change as the evidence we have about it changes.

23 We can also identify what historical reasoning involves in a more direct way. Allowing central assumptions to change involves rejecting closed, logically tight types of explanations and committing to open, epistemologically mixed types of explanations that combine logical reasoning and empirical evidence. The rationale for this is that accommodating how the passage of time operates on our philosophical and scientific thinking requires we recognize there exist inherent limits on what our thinking can achieve at any given point in time [19].

24 In the closing section 6, where I address the engagement of philosophy and philosophy of economics (and economics), I say more about the different ways time enters into our thinking in economics and science in connection with philosophy’s distinction between two concepts of a temporal sequence. Here I only note that historical reasoning as associated with the history of economics field was the original basis on which the methodology of economics emerged as a field in the 1980s. For those who pursue a heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics, historical reasoning in this sense is one thing that remains distinctive of economics.

25 The following two sections turn to what is central to heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics, the nature of individual agency and the foundations of ethical thinking. To address its engagement with philosophy, I examine possible bridges between, on the one hand, Parfit and the philosophical thinking of Simon and, on the other, Parfit and the philosophical thinking of Sen.

4 Parfit and Simon

26 Why Parfit and Simon? Both played pivotal roles in their fields by criticizing established views and became influential thinkers in doing so, Parfit in connection with the philosophical problem of personal identity, and Simon in initiating behavioral economics. Where their thinking converges, I will argue, is on the nature of individual agency, interpreted in terms of the idea of what matters to agents, and how from this vantage point it produces related positions regarding individual/personal identity. I begin with Simon in order to introduce an issue indirectly emphasized by Parfit but fundamental for Simon, the relationship between states and processes.

5 Parfit and Sen

41 Why Parfit and Sen? Sen, like Parfit and Simon, questioned established views and initiated new ways of thinking. Whereas with Parfit and Simon I focused on the nature of individual agency, interpreted in terms of the idea of what matters to agents, with Parfit and Sen I focus on the latter part of this, what matters to agents, and the implications of this for moral philosophy. Indeed, Parfit’s critiques of the self-interest motive, subjectivism, and utilitarian consequentialism have parallels in Sen’s critiques of those ideas. This builds on the Parfit and Simon’s thinking about agency since the normative goals we aspire to reflect our nature as individual agents. Parfit emphasizes that we do not need a theory of personal identity to advance reasonable ethical views. Sen, we will see, allows people have in effect different selves according to the sorts of choices they make. I begin with Parfit’s views about moral philosophy, and then discuss the similar thinking we find in Sen.

6 Philosophy and philosophy of economics’ engagement

50 I have compared Parfit and Simon and Parfit and Sen to argue that common ground between them on these two issues discussed creates bridges between philosophy and heterodox/ non-mainstream philosophy of economics unavailable with mainstream philosophy of economics. Here I attempt to say more about this engagement by outlining how it falls on one side of a major fault line in philosophical thinking regarding the nature of time, or more specifically about how temporal sequences should be philosophically understood in social science. Why I adopt this focus lies in my view that heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics is motivated to maintain ties to the history of economics because it sees its historical form of reasoning as distinctive of economics. That historical form of reasoning, I argue here, depends on employing one of the two conceptions of temporal sequences debated in philosophy since Aristotle. To the extent, then, that heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics can be said to rely increasingly on analytical philosophy reasoning, one way this can be shown is in how its recourse to that conception of a temporal sequence makes historical reasoning central to the philosophy of economics and provides additional resources for a critique of mainstream philosophy of economics and its commitment to rationality theory.

51 The two conceptions of temporal sequences philosophy employs are the past-present-future sequence and the before-after sequence [33]. The past-present-future sequence and the before-after sequence – often termed the A-series and B-series [34] – differ according to whether the truth of truth statements depends on when they are made or is independent of when they are made. Thus, truth statements in the A-series case are ‘tensed’ in that their truth depends on when they are made. This is known as a dynamic temporal idea. Truth statements in the B-series case are ‘tenseless’ in that their truth holds irrespective of when they are made. This is known as a static temporal idea [35].

52 Note, then, that rationality theory employs before-after, tenseless, static temporal thinking. If it is true that individuals behave rationally at any point in time, it must also be true later that they did. One might argue that people’s expectations about the future can be mistaken, and so it could turn out later that they failed to act rationally. However, Bayesianism holds that on average people are not mistaken about their expectations. Thus, people are rational even with respect to the uncertain future [36].

53 Consider now Simon and Parfit. Simon rejected rationality theory and argued economic agents only satisfice with respect to broad goal aspiration levels, and then adjust their subsequent choices according to their degrees of achievement. They then see successive periods in their lives much as Parfit described what matters to people, namely, in terms of their psychological connectedness over important segments of their lives (his Relation R and overlapping chains of strong psychological connectedness). For both, the before-after tenseless relation does not capture this because what people care about is the sequence of choices they make, where what is true is tensed in that what counts as an achievement changes over successive periods of time. Thus, the temporal sequence they employ is the past-present-future sequence.

54 Rationality theory and mainstream equilibrium theory, we saw, go hand-in-hand. Markets always settle to equilibrium because people behave rationally, and this produces what the mainstream refers to as a Pareto efficient state of affairs, where people are as well off as they can be when we explain welfare or well-being as preference satisfaction. Thus, mainstream normative economics is both utilitarian-consequentialist and framed in before-after terms where what is true is tenselessly true. Whenever external ‘shocks’ disturb market equilibria, rational behavior of many individuals always moves markets back to equilibrium and produces Pareto efficient states of affairs.

55 Consider now Parfit and Sen. Both reject the subjectivist foundations of rationality theory and the limitation of normative thinking to utilitarian-consequentialism. Parfit’s ‘triple theory’ combines Kantian duty thinking, rule consequentialism, and contractualism. Sen’s view that we can ask ourselves “what we should want and how” makes a place for values other than good outcomes such as duty and justice in our moral choices. Thus, what we ought to do is not always the same over time but depends on the state of the world and the different ethical matters at hand in regard to which combination of moral values we adopt. Therefore, the temporal sequence employed is the past-present-future sequence.

56 I suggested above, then, that philosophy’s engagement with philosophy of economics can be understood in terms of how they both orient upon this major fault line in philosophical thinking regarding the nature of time or temporal sequence. Recent philosophy, of course, cannot be summarized by the thinking of one person, but a case can be made that single individuals are sometimes highly influential, as the history of philosophy shows. Given his influence, Parfit appears to be such a figure. Similarly, neither can economics and philosophy of economics be summarized in terms of the thinking of single individuals. Yet, given their influence, both Simon and Sen appear to be such figures.

57 Parfit, Simon, and Sen, then, all have been critics of dominant thinking in their fields. Perhaps it is too strong to say Parfit was unorthodox. Simon and Sen also are not always, though often, regarded as heterodox/non-mainstream. The view I have adopted in this paper, then, is that one increasing engagement between philosophy and philosophy of economics seems to be especially driven by heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics. Further, that engagement seems, particularly when we look at Parfit, Simon, and Sen in relation to one another, to be a function of their critiques of dominant thinking, Parfit on identity and moral philosophy, Simon and Sen on rationality theory and normative thinking in economics. To the extent, then, that the philosophy of economics has increasingly drawn on philosophy’s analytic tradition, this seems in part to be a product of heterodox/non-mainstream philosophy of economics efforts to advance its critiques of mainstream economics rationality and equilibrium theory.

58 If this is sustained in the future, what might we look for in shared common ground? Heterodox economics generally employs historical reasoning and thus incorporates the past-present-future temporal sequence. Rejecting the rationality-equilibrium framework, it asks how economies change over time according to the types of behavior we can observe in economic agents. That is, it addresses how economies evolve and change over time, upend beliefs we have held about them in the past, and create new and different opportunities and challenges for the future.

59 As in thinking in the history of economics, on this view the passage of time matters to what economists believe to be true. Can this historical type of thinking, with its reasoning based on both deductive and empirical thinking, also be seen as central to the development of analytic philosophy, for example, perhaps in the twentieth-century development of ordinary language analysis? I leave this question and like questions to philosophers and historians of philosophy, and only suggest here that philosophy’s engagement with one social science, economics, might identify a possible shared common ground in thinking that employs a distinctive concern in heterodox/non-mainstream economics and philosophy of economics with how time matters.