1
Parametric Strategies, Strategic Parameters
Realism, Rhetoric, Postmodernism and the Philosophy in Economics1
Philosophy is an exercise in frustration. Its discursive practice is governed by a dialectic of
triviality and tendentiousness, of intuition and motivated misinterpretation. This is a result, on
the one hand, of substantive, ethical-political, differences. On the other hand, it is due to the
inherent and systematic ambiguities of language – ambiguities that Kant described as the
transcendent (rather than transcendental) use of reason2. For this reason, the business of
philosophy can only be aporetic – directed first at the opening, not the solving of problems.
Which problems one will open, and how, is the essential choice, as the kind of question one
asks determines the kind of answer one must give. Resolution, closure, is possible only
hypothetically, not categorically – which is to say, through acts.
In contemporary debate on the philosophy of economics this dialectic is expressed as the
clash of realism and rhetoric. I wish here to reinterpret this debate, and to hypothesize a
resolution. I want to re-pose (and hopefully de-pose) the question of realism and rhetoric, to
re-open it, that it might be re-solved. I propose to treat the realism and rhetoric projects
within the philosophy of economics as contending strategies, and to put their objectives in
question. As does Masahiko Aoki, in discussing institutions3, I want to suggest a way of
theorizing the endogenous rules of the game. That way of theorizing has a name, in
contemporary intellectual discourse, and that name is postmodernism.
I propose to proceed by taking up this question in terms of parametric and strategic reason,
categories I take from Elster (1979). “The parametrically rational actor treats his environment
as a constant” – as fixed, independent, exogenous. The actor’s behaviour may vary, as it
calculates payoffs on these parameters, but nothing else does. “[T]he strategically rational
actor takes account of the fact that the environment is made up of other actors, and that he is
part of their environment, and that they know this, etc.” The environment is variable,
dependent, endogenous. All actant’s behaviours can vary, as they ‘calculate payoffs’ in
varying ways, and no element is strictly fixed. Equilibration may be possible, on the basis of
recursive expectations, but cannot be assured, and must, in any case, be determined within the
play of the game4.
The Realism Project: The Strategy of Parameters
Questions of “realism” turn on the question of dependence and independence. What, exactly,
a particular x in dispute is dependent or independent of can vary, and the variety of “realism”
likewise. But, the premise of the realist project – its distinctive strategy – is that the “real” is
to be equated with the independent, with what is parametric for reason. A determinate real
may be dependent upon other reals, of course. Indeed, such is precisely the realist construal
of “science”, the relations of dependence amongst reals, where each real and all its relations
1
I owe this essay to a year spent in residence at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, and particularly to extended conversations with Uskali Mäki and Arjo Klamer, as well as
one particularly memorable exchange with Mark Blaug. I am in their debt. I also owe thanks to Jack Vromen for
drawing my attention to a quirk in my usage, and to Dierdre McCloskey and the members of Klamer’s Culture
of Economics Seminar for their probing questions. They are, of course, in no way accountable for the
conclusions I draw, with much of which they no doubt disagree.
2
Kant, [1781/1787] 1996.
3
Aoki, 2000, 2001.
4
Elster, 1979, pp. 6-7, 18-19.
1
2
is understood, taken, parametrically. But, the real must be independent of reason. In this way,
we may speak of realism as the strategy of parameters.
The realist strategy wishes to preclude taking the real strategically. This has two sides. First,
what is precluded is the strategic apprehension of the real. War, said Sun Tzu, is deception.
Opportunism is always to be feared. Strategic reason is reason guided by an evaluation of
payoffs, of conformity to one’s own goals. As the very formulation of this in terms of
“opportunism” suggests, it is presumed that such goals can always be something other than
optimal, as measured from some typically implicit, but presumptively “social”, point of view.
In this sense, the realist strategy is an attempt to elicit a precommitment5, to impose bonding
costs6, upon scientific agents, to bind them to some principal’s interest, presumptively that of
“science” and “truth”. Second, what is precluded is apprehension of the real as strategic.
This, we are told, is a fallacy – animism, anthropomorphism, mysticism, mystery, teleology,
metaphysics. To suggest that objects of inquiry have purposes of their own, purposes that
may even conflict with those of the inquirer, is to be ruled ultra vires of the court of science.
This raises an obvious problem for social science, where it is taken for granted that the
objects of inquiry are anthropomorphs with purposes of their own. This realist injunction can
clearly be seen to operate in economics, where preferences are typically taken as beyond
investigation, and survey research – asking people things – is treated with suspicion, if not
with contempt7.
These two sides may be brought together by speaking of the strategy as the exclusion of
“values” – the goals of the inquirer, the goals of the inquiree. “Values”, of course, might be
“real”. A realist strategy with respect to them is, most certainly, conceivable, and those
committed to the strategy dispute whether its terms of reference necessarily preclude them
(they clearly depend, in some sense, on “us”) or can be taken to include them (they clearly
can be taken as independent of some senses of “us”). But, “real” or no, they are strategic
when they are not, themselves, the object of inquiry. They can always be in conflict with the
one goal, the one value, that is permitted in the realist strategy – the underspecified
principal’s interest, identified with that of “science” and “truth” itself.
Let us consider further the problem of this principal, the reason for which realism is a
strategy. As with any strategy, its reason must be found in its payoff. Here we have a clear
answer, endorsed by realist writings themselves – parametric apprehension permits
determination of the parameters for strategy. Strategies are selected according to payoffs – to
goals. But it is the parameters, the rules of the game, that set the payoff matrix, and hence
determine which strategy is the efficient strategy to achieve an agent’s ends. In simple gametheoretic models it may be permissible to assume that players know the form of the game, but
otherwise parameters need to be learned8. This is the task the realist strategy takes upon itself
– to determine the parameters on strategic action, without regard to determinate ends, such
that efficient strategies can be identified.
The key, of course, lies in the familiar economic notion of efficiency. Putatively defined and
operationalized without specification to a determinate end, the concept holds out the promise
of an escape from normativity into a pure positivity, a pure performativity, in which it is
possible to specify “optimal” constitutions, institutions and policies independent of anyone’s
5
Elster, 1998 (i.a.), Frank, 1988.
Jensen & Meckling, 1976.
7
Cf. Friedman, 1953.
8
Cf. Brenner, 1998, Fudenberg &Levine, 1998, Sobel, 2000.
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(and everyone’s) preferences. In effect, the world will tell us how to live, without our
(contested) values getting in the way. All ways of life are “permitted”, and the contest
between them is resolved not by “us”, by strategic contention and cooperation towards joint
ends, but by a parametric world that determines the real costs of our preferences and ensures
we bear them proportionately. Knowledge, in the old phrase, is power9. We can do whatever
we might wish to do. Once we know the means, it remains only to choose the end. Which
attitude is summed up in terms of science’s so-called “policy relevance” for the “real world”
– where the “real world” means the parametric social world, the status quo of
institutionalized power.
The Rhetoric Project: The Parameter of Strategy
Questions of rhetoric are inevitably questions of strategy. As Klamer repeatedly stresses, the
issue is, what does a text do?10 There is a very long history of discussing rhetoric in terms of
persuasion11, which is not unreasonable when “persuasion” is understood in terms of
producing some kind (any kind) of behaviour in others. Nonetheless, in contemporary texts, it
is more common to speak of rhetoric in terms of the production of effects. There is a wide,
perhaps endless, variety of effects that texts can produce – distance, self-consciousness, and
doubt just as much as engagement, passion, and conviction. More, there is a wide, arguably
infinite, variety of effects that a given text can produce, as it is juxtaposed with different
experiences, contexts, points of view, and so on. Precisely for that reason, the author of a text
has only a limited amount of control over the effects produced by a text, and need not intend,
or have even the slightest idea about, any particular effect produced by the text12. Of course, a
consequence of this is that the identification of deployed strategies is itself a strategic matter,
and no party’s intervention can be taken as author-itative. In any case, where realism focused
on the parametric, rhetoric puts the strategic in the centre of its attention, demanding
recognition that strategy is, itself, a parameter of human action. Inquiry being one such
action, rhetoric holds an appropriate construal of “science” – not as the relations between
objects, but between inquiring subjects: the discursive (or, more broadly, “textual”) relations
amongst scientists, the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of (disciplined)
effects.
Precisely what the rhetoric strategy wishes to preclude is ignorance of the strategic. This,
again, has two sides. First, it wishes to preclude ignorance of the strategic. War, as Sun Tzu
said, is deception. Opportunism is always to be feared. Accordingly, every project should be
evaluated as to the goals, the pay offs, it pursues. Even, perhaps especially, those projects
which claim to have naught but the general and “social” interest in mind, the disinterested
service of “science” and “truth”. And, not least since so very many, very different, projects
all make that same claim. Rhetorical analysis presumes that the “optimal” in inquiry is both
simpler, and more difficult, than is often suggested. If we think of realism as trying to impose
bonding costs, to tie agents to a principal, then we can think of rhetoric as questioning the
9
Bacon [1629] 1986.
E.g., Seminar Notes, “The Culture of Economics”, 14 April 2004.
11
“Rhetoric is knowledge of the available means of persuasion”, Aristotle [xxxx].
12
This claim is often taken as (descriptively) highly counterintuitive and (normatively) a license for
irresponsibility. But, the essential point should be familiar. Offering a beer, for example, to someone who is
(unbeknownst to you) a recovering alcoholic is going to produce very different effects from the same offer to
someone who is not. The (most likely unfortunate, in one way or another) effects in the first case will be directly
contrary to your intention – a threat, rather than hospitality and camaraderie. Then there are familiar examples,
such as the “jokes” many men resort to around women, who are, in turn, most likely to classify the “jokes” as
sexual harassment. Many more such examples are possible, the point should be clear.
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principal – and not forgetting to consider the residual losses (and rents!). Second, what is
precluded is ignor(e)-ance of the strategic. This, we are told, is nihilistic13, decontextualizing,
disembodying, idealizing, dehumanizing, abstracting – in short, falsifying. Humans, we want
to say, most certainly have purposes of their own, and there seems no serious reason to doubt
that the same applies to other animals, plants, indeed, to all living things (for all that their
purposes may be very rudimentary). We may resist attributing purposes to rocks, water, stars
and similar masses – which raises problems for, and places special demands on, rhetorical
approaches to strict physics – but, even there, we do most certainly want to say that they have
“their own business”, that they are autonomous from us, and are not there solely at our whim
or to serve our purposes. Whatever the Universe may be up to, there is no reason to presume
(and much reason to doubt) that it is docilely accommodating, telling inquirers whatever they
might wish to know. And, in the social sciences, in particular, the “objects” of inquiry are
clearly subjects, with their own views on the matters at issue, and only a suspicious deference
to those purporting to know “better” – if not an open contempt14.
These two sides can, predictably, be brought together by speaking of the rhetorical strategy as
the inclusion of “values” – the goals of the inquirer, the goals of the inquiree. “Values” are,
most certainly, strategic. There is no necessity that the values at stake are “optimal”, i.e., are
desirable for anyone other than the inquirer(s) involved. A rhetorical strategy does not
presume that all values (preferences) are equally valid, differing only in the efficiency with
which they can be fulfilled, nor does it presume that the value and optimal strategy of science
is given, or even known. Rather, it insists that constant debate over science’s value, values
and strategy is central to the actual practice of science, and essential to whatever desirability
it may have. But, whether desirable ones or no, rhetoric demands recognition that values,
strategies, are all-pervasive and unavoidable.
If, this time, we have a strategy of inquiry that is a strategy of strategic apprehension, then
we must expect that it permits determination of the parameters of strategy. Where the
parameters “for” strategy, considered above, were exogenous rules of the game and
determined the efficiency of different strategies, here the parameters “of” strategy can be
conceived as the rules of the metagame, in which those exogenous rules become
endogenously-determined solutions. For strategic apprehension, the parameters are the rules
of the strategic encounter of strategies, rather than the rules of the strategic deployment of
parameters. This is a very special learning task, seeing as it has values, preferences, amongst
its outcomes, and not only amongst its inputs15. “Efficiency” has only a problematic meaning
when changing ends is the end in view. Yet, this is the task the rhetorical strategy takes upon
itself – to determine the parameters of strategies themselves, precisely with regard to their
determinate ends, such that it becomes possible to rationally strategize about ends.
13
Given that this term is often thrown around quite casually, and is commonly used to mean precisely the
opposite of what its great theorists (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze) meant by it, I should note that I am using it
here in precisely its Nietzschean sense – since that means I am using it in precisely the opposite sense of what it
is most commonly used to mean. Cf. Nietzsche, [1883-8] 1967, Deleuze, 1983.
14
N. Gregory Mankiw, Chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers and #42 on Tom Coupé’s list of the top
1000 most cited economists, 1975-2000, offered an excellent case in point recently, when he claimed in the
CEA’s annual Report that – as orthodox doctrine purports to have “proven” – the current shift of jobs out of the
U.S. will, in fact, prove beneficial to the U.S. (as it presumes that those jobs will be replaced with higher-skill,
higher-quality, higher-value-added ones). His claim was not well received in an election year. Cf. Crutsinger,
2004.
15
Cf. Sen, 1977, Brenner, 1998, Bowles, 1998.
5
Postmodernism: Parameters as Strategies
It is perhaps only appropriate that I introduce the issue of postmodernism with an anecdote.
Arjo Klamer described a consultation he did for the Dutch province of Zeeland. An
investment was proposed, to build a large new port facility in the province, and there was a
great deal of public controversy about the proposal. He was brought in to provide an
economist’s point of view. His contribution was to ask, “What story do you want to tell about
Zeeland?” and “Does the proposed facility fit into that story?” These are very good questions,
and much wiser than the advice usually on offer from economists. But what stood out in this
anecdote, for me, was the “moral”. His point was that one has to stabilize an identity, that
decision depended upon stability, and, “therefore”, postmodernism – taken to preclude
stabilities – could not be right. Instead, he averred, one must take some sort of “neotraditionalist” point of view.
Now, there are all sorts of ironies attached to a “neo” variety of “traditionalism” – most
particularly, in this case, the roundabout return of essentialism (realism) in the rhetorician.
But that’s nothing particular to the anecdote. What stood out about the claim about “stability”
in this case is that this is precisely the kind of case that a postmodernist would cite as
evidence of the instability of identity – of identity’s contested, constructed, and always
provisional, character. Would the question need to be asked were there not controversy as to
the answer? Is not any attempt to give an answer to the question, to bring about some
“stability”, an act – a matter of stabilizing, in the absence of stability? Is not the product of
such questioning, the answer, a product, a construct, and not anything given? More, is not
any answer a selection from amongst the contending stories, and their elements – a selection
that necessarily is more to the liking of some than of others, a distribution of costs and
benefits, and likely to be challenged (sooner or later) on just such grounds? In what sense are
we left speaking of this as a “stability”? What kind of “stability” does it have? At best:
strategic stability.
This anecdote is an excellent example of a social choice problem. It is susceptible to solution
by means of imposition (“dictatorship”), or by full consensus, through bargaining and
coalition-formation, or through some kind of “tournament” of “votes” with elimination16.
But, barring the (only vanishingly likely) possibility of full consensus – the identity of all
stories – then there can be, as Arrow showed17, no truly stable identity, only various possible
provisional, contested, asymmetrically desirable, constructed identities, brought about
through the greater or lesser, more or less direct, application of power. This kind of analysis –
the analysis of problematic and hypothetical choices, in the face of the impossibility of
categorical choice – is the heart of the postmodern18.
It is not for nothing that economists, saturated in the tenets of technocratic modernism, react
with horror to the prospect of a consideration of the formation of preferences, an
endogenization of the objective function. One can always derive a clear answer (“prediction”)
from an exogenous objective function that meets the formal protocols of “rationality”
(completeness, consistency, continuity) and an exogenous constraint. Were such functions
possible, even if only over lotteries of outcomes and not outcomes per se, categorical choice
– “rational choice” – would be possible. But, as has been shown by many hands in Arrow’s
wake, and at an ever-increasing rate as postmodernity came surging to the fore, such
16
Cf. Sen, 1985, Kavka, 1991, Schofield, 1996.
Arrow, 1951.
18
Cf. Laclau & Mouffe, 1985.
17
6
functions are not possible, whether in organizations (“firms”)19, or households20, or even
(most troublingly) in individuals21.
To meet modernism’s technocratic fantasies/promises/demands requires of science that it
give determinate, uniquely best solutions. When its practice began systematically returning
indeterminate, multiple, and not-always-optimal solutions, modernism panicked. The debate
over “postmodernism” gave a name to that panic. It is crucial to remember that Lyotard’s The
Postmodern Condition was A Report on Knowledge, as the subtitle put it, for a government
agency. Lyotard, while arguing that something important and valuable had occurred, was
attempting to summarize the results of his reading – across the fields of genetics, computer
science, economics, psychology, linguistics and so on – to describe what was, in fact, already
happening at the leading edge of contemporary science. His recognition, and endorsement, of
the displacement of the “progressive” metanarrative in science has been widely held against
him. But, whether he endorsed it or no, it was a recognition of what was already the case,
and not merely some politically-motivated polemic, as seems often to be assumed. Indeed,
what is so peculiar is that his exposition of the current state of science is often taken to be
anti-science. This is the best evidence of modernism’s panic. Its own results are now treated
as foreign and hostile22.
Reconceptualizing parameters to recognize these instabilities, however, entails recognizing
that parameters are one and all strategic – in Aoki’s terms, they are institutions – objectives
constructed to achieve determinable purposes, for determinable coalitions. Indeed, each
parameter can be treated as being itself a strategy, in one metagame or another. This in no
way precludes taking them parametrically. But it does problematize them. Such a strategic
apprehension of parameters permits one to open up and reconsider what appear as parametric
solutions – to put in question the strategies and strategic compromises each such solution,
each given identity, embodies. No strategic encounter can be arranged until and unless such
embodied, automated, strategies are forced to appear as strategies. And, arranging such
strategic encounters is precisely the self-conscious strategic imperative of postmodern
theorizing.
Strategies as Parameters: In Lieu of a Conclusion
It will have been noted that both realism and rhetoric took it as their tasks to preclude certain
possibilities. In the one case, it was strategic apprehension that was to be excluded. In the
other, it was ignorance of strategic apprehension. In each case, the exclusion had two sides,
corresponding to the goals of the inquirer and the inquiree. In each case, the threat on the side
of the inquirer was the threat of opportunism. On the side of the inquiree, it was the threat of
19
Cf. (i.a.) Cyert & March, 1963, Alchian & Demsetz, 1972, Ross, 1973, Jensen & Meckling, 1976,
Williamson, 2000.
20
Cf. (i.a.) Manser & Brown, 1980, McElroy & Horney, 1981, Vermeulen, 2002.
21
Cf. (i.a.) Frankfurt, 1971, Sen, 1977, the contents of Elster, 1985, especially Steedman & Krause, 1985,
Kavka, 1991, Davis, 2003.
22
As Dimand, 2000, shows, and Mirowski, 2002, explores at length, much of economics’ development over the
last 50 years can be interpreted as attempts to avoid the instabilities, multiple equilibria and (worst) proliferation
of solution-concepts found in Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944. Mirowski goes so far as to take recourse to
the Nash equilibrium-concept as the litmus test of progressive and degenerative research programs (if one may
invoke some Lakatosianisms) in contemporary economics. Dimand quotes Schotter (p. 218) to the effect that,
“For Morgenstern, indeterminacy was not something to run from but rather to embrace”. For another important
case of proto-postmodernism, one moving more firmly into the camp, see the Nobel lecture by Stiglitz, 2002,
and particularly his treatment of equilibria.
7
assimilation, appropriation. But, where the first answered the threat of opportunism by
seeking precommitments that disqualified such purposes, the second answered it by making
strategic purposes its principal field. Where the former understood the threat of assimilation
to lie in the attribution of purposes and, accordingly, answered that threat by forbidding such
attribution, the latter understood the threat to lie in the denial of purposes and answered it by
insisting on the inquiree’s autonomy. Indeed, the strategic concern for autonomy and the
parametric concern for independence amount to a shared, if bifurcated, concern. Realism and
rhetoric may be different strategies, and competitors, but it is worth considering the
significance of their shared, if bifurcated, concerns. What does their identity imply, and what
their difference?
If the initial presentations of realism and rhetoric were intended to re-pose the question of
their relation, this last consideration suggests a way to de-pose them of their distinction. Once
we allow, as even the realist does, that the apprehension of categories is endogenously
determined, even when exogenously experienced, we are left to theorize the endogenous
production of exogeneity – the strategic construction of parameters. But, endogeneity is only
susceptible to modeling if it can be analyzed into an interacting plurality. In doing so, one
imports the problem of closure – Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem – the problem which scares
so many under the name of postmodernism.
(3373 words)
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