The Economists‘ Philosophy Day „The Past of the Futures: Inquiries Taking the Lens of Economic Philosophy“

In deference to the work of all inquisitive minds, past and present, who have embraced philosophical reflection to understand the consequential events for people’s wellbeing, the Working Group on Economic Philosophy and Ethics in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie (DG Phil) in partnership with the Journal of Philosophical Economics  announce  the fourth edition of the Economists’ Philosophy Day and a Call for a Special Section.

In October 2005, the UNESCO General Conference proclaimed the third Thursday of November every year ‘World Philosophy Day’ recalling that ‘philosophy is a discipline that encourages critical and independent thought and is capable of working towards a better understanding of the world and promoting tolerance and peace.’

The theme of this year’s Economists‘ Philosophy Day online plenary sessions was:

The Past of the Futures: Inquiries Through the Lens of Economic Philosophy

A fundamental assumption underlying many approaches in economics, ethics, and philosophy is that human action involves taking future-oriented decision-making thereby influencing the conditions for the realization of future states. From this perspective, human action connects the past and the future; and human beings, endowed with scientific knowledge or simply obvious reasoning, can achieve some control over future states of affairs. An epistemic, an ontological, and a pragmatic problem can be associated with this premise. The epistemic problem concerns the relevance and validity of the knowledge that actors have gained or can gain about the social world. The ontological problem is based on assumptions about the nature of the social reality in which we act. Does this reality allow for a connection between the past and future based on human action? The pragmatic problem has to do with how our projects change because we act as part of the world, observe how we and others act, and make predictions about future states based on that observation. The common denominator of all problems is that something that is of our making cannot be independent of us.

Organizers
Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies
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The Working Group on Economic Philosophy and Ethics in the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie (DG Phil)