Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- 1 From Hume to Hayek Economic philosophy and the role of ideas in social action
- 2 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, I Physicalism and the birth of the ‘man–machine’ doctrine: La Mettrie
- 3 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, II Economics and the rise of ‘economic man’: Jevons and Edgeworth
- 4 Economic man and man–machine Some logical parallels and contrasts between the two concepts
- 5 The logic of the economic situation Complex societies and the choice of conduct–enforcing mechanisms
- 6 The passions of the imagination, I Hume and Adam Smith on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 7 The passions of the imagination, II Hume and Adam Smith on the psychology of the economic agent
- Conclusion to part I
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The passions of the imagination, I Hume and Adam Smith on the sub–rational determinants of belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE WAR OF IDEAS
- 1 From Hume to Hayek Economic philosophy and the role of ideas in social action
- 2 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, I Physicalism and the birth of the ‘man–machine’ doctrine: La Mettrie
- 3 The scientific challenge to economic philosophy, II Economics and the rise of ‘economic man’: Jevons and Edgeworth
- 4 Economic man and man–machine Some logical parallels and contrasts between the two concepts
- 5 The logic of the economic situation Complex societies and the choice of conduct–enforcing mechanisms
- 6 The passions of the imagination, I Hume and Adam Smith on the sub–rational determinants of belief
- 7 The passions of the imagination, II Hume and Adam Smith on the psychology of the economic agent
- Conclusion to part I
- PART II PATTERNS OF MISUNDERSTANDING
- Conclusion to part II
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the last chapter, I attempted to show how the economic process in any complex society takes its toll in terms of the individual agent's autonomy or ‘freedom to do’. There is some scope for choice as regards the co–ordination system adopted and whether to economize or not on the use of conduct–enforcing mechanisms. Changes in the rules of the economic game may be thought worth having, so as to try to rule out the occurrence of certain undesirable outcomes. But in any case there will be large areas of behaviour in economic life which lie outside the sphere of ‘ideas’. In these areas, the agent's beliefs and opinions turn out to be of little or no significance in so far as his outward, observable conduct in the system is concerned.
In this chapter, I shall draw attention to the existence of powerful internal or psychological constraints on the autonomy of the individual agent. Drawing on the philosophy of action put forward by Hume and Adam Smith, I will suggest that agents act on the basis of what they believe is in their own interest, but that this opinion of interest is largely the work of their sub–rational (meaning non–rational rather than irrational) dispositions and motivations. An important step in this argument will be the attempt to elucidate the eighteenth–century concept of passion.
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- Beliefs in ActionEconomic Philosophy and Social Change, pp. 81 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991