Talk:Philosophy and economics

Recreation of this article in January 2006
See talk at Philosophy of Social Science, to which this article originally redirected. I'm not an expert in this field, but a wide and urgent consensus emerged that the stuff written under Philosophy of Social Science was pure rubbish and had to be got rid of. Hopefully an expert will come along and flesh this out. Caravaca 11:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for change of article title to 'Philosophy and economics' in a month
The current title "Philosophy of economics" has about 4,000 Google scholar hits compared with "Philosophy and economics" 4,500 hits and "Economics and philosophy" 10,000 hits.

"Philosophy of economics" is a great title for a philosopher writing or teaching on the subject but less good for economists for the reason that they may claim no great expertise in philosophy even if writing on the subject. "Philosophy and economics" is a more neutral way of expressing the subject that should be acceptable to both groups and is somewhat more used. "Econ & philosophy" has the advantage of greater usage. But, from the clear writing style of the article, it is obvious that philosophers are mostly responsible for the text of the article. So, Phil. should be named first. If there is no consensus otherwise, I'd propose enacting the change in a month. Comments welcome. --Thomasmeeks (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Change of article title per above completed. Thank you for your tolerance.  --Thomasmeeks (talk) 18:49, 26 August 2010 (UTC) --Thomasmeeks (talk)

Who wrote this?
It is written so simplistically, it is almost like a teacher reading to a group of young students. For example, under the Epistemology section the author first gives us the definition of epistemology. I think this is all unnecessary. The article should be more concise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.227.170.120 (talk) 00:55, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for change of article title back to 'Philosophy of economics'
Although I note the reasons for Thomasmeeks changing this article name to "Philosophy and economics" back in 2010, I think "Philosophy of economics" would be a more appropriate style. The current title is confusing, as it implies a superset of both philosophy and economics, rather than the subset of philosophical content which concerns economics, which is the focus of the article. "Philosophy of economics" also fits with the general convention of wikipedia articles concerning the philosophical aspects of other disciplines, see foro example Philosophy of computer science, Philosophy of social science, Philosophy of geography, Philosophy of sport, Philosophy of chemistry, Philosophy of engineering, Philosophy of thermal and statistical physics etc. If there are no objections, I will request a move to "Philosophy of economics" in one month. Nren4237 (talk) 10:29, 19 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hello, Nren.
 * IMO, the statement above that:
 * The current title is confusing, as it implies a superset of both philosophy and economics, rather than the subset of philosophical content which concerns economics, which is the focus of the article.
 * is misleading (though, of course, not intentionally).
 * Rather, for ease of reference:
 * 1T. A philosopher who writes professionally on the subject of economics would use that subset of phil and subset of econ that interests her/him. And an economist may write on philosophical aspects of the econ that interests her/him. "Philosophy of economics" might bias some non-philosophy persons to believe that only philosophers write on the philosophy of economics. "Philosophy" coming before "and economics" in the title suggests by implicature otherwise, without suggesting its contrary of econ coming before 'and philosophy'.
 * 2T. Would anyone claiming to write on "philosophy and economics" claim that it is the total rather than their intersection? I don't believe so. What could be their relation in those parts that do not intersect? Zero, I think. So the superset inference suggested in the quote above is quite unlikely.
 * 3T. "Methodology" and philosophy of econ is common to both econ as at JEL classification codes at "JEL: B – History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches, and philosophy and an aspect of philosophy.
 * 4T. The classification system in WP may be less important than Third-party sources in suggesting that the more common expression for the same subject. In this regard,  note Google scholar for each:
 * "philosophy and economics": 10,800 hits vs.
 * "philosophy of economics": 6,740 hits
 * -- Thomasmeeks (talk) 04:30, 15 September 2015 (UTC) + revision for clarity. 10:40, 15 September 2015 (UTC)