Kantian Epistemology in Examination of the Axiomatic Principles of Economics: the Synthetic a Priori in the Economic Structure of Society

Mughal, Adil Ahmad (2022): Kantian Epistemology in Examination of the Axiomatic Principles of Economics: the Synthetic a Priori in the Economic Structure of Society.

Abstract

Transcendental Analytic, in Critique of Pure Reason, combines the space and time as conditions of the possibility of phenomenon from Transcendental Aesthetic with the pure magnitude-intuition notion. The property of continuity as a qualitative result of the additive magnitude brings the possibility of connecting with experience, even though only as a potential because of the a priori necessity from assumption, as syntheticity of the a priori task of a scientific method of philosophy given by Kant, which precludes the application of categories to something not empirically reducible to the content of such a category's corresponding and possible object. This continuity as the qualitative result of a priori constructed notion of magnitude lies as a fundamental assumption and property of, what in Microeconomic theory is called as, 'choice rules' which combine the potentially-empirical and practical budget-price pairs with preference relations. This latter result is the purest qualitative side of the choice rules' otherwise autonomously quantitative nature. The theoretical, barring the empirical, nature of this qualitative result is a synthetic a priori truth, which, if at all, it should be, if the axiomatic structure of economic theory is held to be correct. It has a potentially verifiable content as its possible object in the form of quantitative price-budget pairs, yet, the object that serves the respective Kantian category is qualitative itself which is utility. This article explores the validity of Kantian qualifications for this application of 'categories' to the economic structure of society.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Categories of Understanding, Continuity, Convexity, Psyche, Revealed Preferences, Synthetic a priori
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B49 - Other; D - Microeconomics > D0 - General; D - Microeconomics > D0 - General > D01 - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles; D - Microeconomics > D9 - Intertemporal Choice

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