Two philosophical blind spots in the pedagogy of undergraduate economics

Don Ross

Chapter 22 in Handbook of Teaching Philosophy to Economists, 2025, pp 283-297 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: I consider two lessons from philosophy that, if economists were better aware of them, could improve undergraduate pedagogy in economics. First, economists should familiarise themselves with the understanding of the nature of preferences and beliefs that is becoming the majority view in the philosophy of cognitive science, that they are externally attributed from the intentional stance, rather than internal representational states. This would make the idea of revealed preference easier for students to grasp and could be taught simply as part of the introduction of utility functions, thus requiring no extra-economic digression. Second, economists should recognise that the idea of general rationality adds nothing to the concept of agency and should stop using the former idea in the classroom because it serves only to confirm counterproductive stereotypes of economists as bossy suppressors of warm values.

Keywords: Teaching economics; Undergraduate economics curriculum; Philosophy of economics; Social atomism; General rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035336814
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