Fallible Knowledge

Rogério P. de Andrade ()
Additional contact information
Rogério P. de Andrade: Unicamp

Nova Economia, 2004, vol. 14, issue 1, 123-149

Abstract: The paper discusses the nature and role of knowledge in a socio-economic life marked by genuine uncertainty. The starting point is to regard that uncertain environments render knowledge fallible and contingent. Knowledge is fallible for reasons associated both with interactions in space taking place at the same time (complexity), and with the passage of time. The paper stresses two types of knowledge, namely, "knowledge how" and "knowledge that". The former is the knowledge of the way we perform something and the latter is the knowledge of why it is that we perform something. One way that agents find to cope with the condition of fallible knowledge is to resort to conventions (Keynes) and rules (Hayek). Conventions and rules are the repository of a social, intersubjective form of knowledge, which agents may acquire, store and communicate with each other. They partly provide the necessary information for the undertaking of their daily activities.

Keywords: knowledge; Keynes; Hayek (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 B00 B50 D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.face.ufmg.br/novaeconomia/sumarios/v14n1/Andrade.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nov:artigo:v:14:y:2004:i:1:p:123-149

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Av. Antonio Carlos, 6627 - Predio da FACE Belo Horizonte, 31270-901 Brazil
https://revistas.fac ... dex.php/novaeconomia

Access Statistics for this article

Nova Economia is currently edited by Gustavo de Britto Rocha

More articles in Nova Economia from Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil) Av. Antonio Carlos, 6627 - Predio da FACE Belo Horizonte, 31270-901 Brazil. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucas Resende de Carvalho ().