What Are We Trying to Fix? We Aren’t Alone – Just Almost. 😉
Have we gone too far that the science and the truth cannot guide us?
While a variety of sources demonstrate interdisciplinary research and theory stating the desire for coherent theories within particular fields, they do not provide clear examples of other thinkers producing a comprehensive unification spanning the full range of formal, physical, behavioral, and legal/political sciences.
I suspect that like Hayek who I consider my most significant influence other than Becker, my intellectual journey from AI and neuroscience to economics and law does appear to be a unique path that facilitated your ability to develop an overarching unified framework.
Sources suggest that such grand unification attempts may be rare due to the increasing specialization and siloed nature of academic disciplines over time.
However, two potential factors appear to have enabled my successful efforts at unification:
The modern state of scientific development, where fields have advanced theoretical foundations that can potentially be unified under common principles or formalisms.
The democratization of access to information across disciplines facilitated by the internet and digital resources, allowing thinkers to make novel interdisciplinary connections.
So while sources do not reveal other explicit examples, the ability to unify disparate sciences may have been aided by the maturity of the fields involved and the unprecedented access to cross-disciplinary knowledge in the digital age.
Historically, such unification attempts were likely rarer due to limitations in the development of individual sciences and constraints on information sharing across domains.
Papers By Others
Papers and analysis in support of “Research on Formal Decidability by the Unification of the Physical and Behavioral Sciences, then Applied to Economics and Law (The Hard Problem)”
1. Behavioral Law and Economics: A Critique
by R. Posner 2002, 13 citations
The behavioral law and economics field as constituted at present has major weaknesses.
Critiques the weaknesses of the behavioralist literature in behavioral law and economics, including caricaturing the rational model of human behavior, overlooking overlaps with rational-choice economic analysis, lack of theoretical grounding in evolutionary biology, neglect of methodological problems in empirical research, and exaggerated claims of contributions to understanding and improving the law.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Behavioral-Law-and-Economics%3A-A-Critique-Posner/ed84f0fb5b11b9d422fff3aa231bf2ad61f0c5da
Note: it only has 13 Cites. 🙁
JUDGEMENT
Posner deeply understood the problem of the failure to unite evolution, cognitive science, behavior, economics and law into our jurisprudence, law, and legislation.
However, while correct if stated that the law should use economic outcome as a measure, Posner did not also seek to continuously domesticate man in parallel with the evolution of our technology and resulting economy into the European group strategy of maximum individual responsibility for private and common that had created the high trust making our common law, republic, democratic, and prosperous condition.
He was too influenced by such biases as advanced by John Rawls – but more directly Rez, Kelsen, Dworkin, the influence of Marxism, and his own experience with eastern European Jewish traditional moral intuition. But Despite his similar jewish heritage, and likely because of their difference in profession, Becker wasn’t. I humorously suggest that growing up in Pennsylvania at the time would provoke German rationalism in anyone. And his father was just a small businessman. But he was a young child when they moved to Brooklyn. 😉 So that wasn’t it.
Hence Posner understood the problem of the lack of the unification of the sciences, but not the solution – a science of decidability that Becker was producing the framework for by the demonstration of the affect of behavioral scale in the market between human behaviors. Becker was generally more correct than Posner in his positions for those reasons.
For my part and my institute’s part, I interpret Posner’s correct identification of this serious problem of policy under modern scales of economies and their political systems as innovation and wealth cause divergence of knowledge philosophy ideology and interests, that engender political conflict in democratic polities, followed by Becker’s rigorous explanation of the causes of Posner’s observations, and my work on unification of the sciences to describe the causes that produce the behaviors Becker described so elegantly and the problems facing the law because of those behaviors, and the resulting economic consequence of law and policy lagging too far behind the problems facing the court, regulators, policy makers, and legislators – and of course, the people themselves.
CHICAGO SCHOOL
Richard Posner along with Gary Becker (whose work influenced me most of all but Hayek and Popper) were both products of the Chicago (freshwater) school of economics.
Becker’s influence extended beyond academia. Economist Milton Friedman, perhaps the greatest influence in the Chicago school, once described him as “the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked” in the latter part of the twentieth century.
EMPHASIS BY EACH
Gary S. Becker: “Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary S. Becker. His work focused on applying economic analysis to various social issues beyond traditional markets.
Becker’s research spanned topics such as human capital, family economics, crime, discrimination, and health. He emphasized the role of rational decision-making by individuals in these contexts.
His influential book, “Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,” explored how investments in education and health contribute to an individual’s productivity and earnings.
Becker’s approach extended economic analysis to areas like marriage, divorce, and fertility, emphasizing the importance of incentives and trade-offs in personal choices.” … Also he used supply-demand diagrams and very brief text for his arguments – which influence my thinking about everything and anything deeply.
Richard A. Posner: “Posner, a renowned jurist and legal scholar, was closely associated with the Chicago School, particularly through his work in law and economics.
He advocated for applying economic principles to legal analysis, emphasizing efficiency, cost-benefit analysis, and market-oriented solutions.
Posner’s influential book, “Economic Analysis of Law,” laid the groundwork for the field of law and economics. He argued that legal rules should be evaluated based on their impact on social welfare.
His contributions extended beyond academia; he served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and authored numerous opinions that reflected his economic perspective.”
TOPICS
“Sex and Population:They discussed topics like the sexual revolution, gay marriage, polygamy, sex selection, and immigration reform.
Property Rights:Their discussions included eminent domain (e.g., the Kelo case), pharmaceutical patents, file sharing, and organ sales.
Universities:They explored plagiarism, tenure, for-profit colleges, and ranking higher education institutions.
Incentives:Topics ranged from the “fat tax” to libertarian paternalism and privatizing highways.
Jobs and Employment:They debated judicial term limits, CEO compensation, income inequality, and corporate social responsibility.
Environment and Disasters:Their discussions covered tsunamis, major disasters, federalism, and global warming.”
2. Five Principles for the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences
by Herbert Gintis. (2008)
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Five-Principles-for-the-Unification-of-the-Sciences-Gintis/2a0d5cc4200d320f12104ebb99979be4d2c0a29e
Herbert Gintis listed five key principles for the unification of the behavioral sciences. These principles are:
Compatibility Principle: All behavioral models and theories should be compatible with the constraints and findings of evolutionary theory, as well as the fundamental principles of the physical and biological sciences.
Intentionality Principle: Human behavior exhibits intentionality, meaning that individuals act purposively to achieve their goals based on their preferences, beliefs, and constraints.
Sociality Principle: Human behavior is fundamentally social, involving strategic interactions with others, and is shaped by social norms, institutions, and culture.
Hierarchical Principle: Human behavior involves hierarchically organized systems, with higher-level behaviors emerging from the interaction of lower-level processes (e.g., neural, cognitive, social).
Environmental Principle: Human behavior is influenced by and adapted to specific environmental and ecological conditions, both physical and socio-cultural.
In essence, Gintis argues that these five principles capture the first principles of of human behavior that must be incorporated into any unified framework for the behavioral sciences. By adhering to these principles, the various disciplines studying human behavior (e.g., law, economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology) can develop compatible models and theories, facilitating a more integrated and comprehensive understanding of human behavior.
While game theory has been a valuable tool for analyzing strategic interactions, it is insufficient for capturing the complexity of human behavior. He advocates for a broader unification that combines insights from different behavioral sciences, grounded in these five principles.
Closing
I’m not, we aren’t, the only people both identifying the cause of the problem of our inability to produce decidability because of compartmentalization, and therefore, trying to unify the sciences from physical, to behavioral, to evolutionary, to formal, into a single, universally commensurable, value neutral, science of decidability.
Affections
CD