ABSTRACT

There is an essentialist view that requires one to specify the set of necessary and sufficient properties of the things that exist when establishing definitions. The endorsement of essentialism for definitions in economics has been largely motivated by the Taxonomic Tower of Babel (TTB), which encompasses two intellectual fears. The fear of scientific aphasia is the fear that scientific progress is hampered because economists do not agree on the definitions they use. The fear of nihilism refers to the fear of the advent of an unmanageable proliferation of definitions of the same term. We advocate the abandonment of essentialism by offering three arguments. First, essentialism seems impracticable in economics because essences are either mostly unavailable or useless. Second, the TTB, rather than a bug, is a feature of economics. Third, the TTB does not necessarily display the negative implications presumably associated with its existence.

摘要

有一种本质主义观点，要求人们在建立定义时指定存在的事物的一组必要且充分的属性。对经济学定义的本质主义的认可很大程度上是受到巴别塔分类塔（TTB）的推动，它包含了两种知识分子的恐惧。对科学失语症的恐惧是对科学进步因经济学家不同意他们使用的定义而受到阻碍的恐惧。对虚无主义的恐惧指的是对同一术语的定义出现难以控制的扩散的担忧。我们通过提出三个论点来主张放弃本质主义。首先，本质主义在经济学中似乎不切实际，因为本质要么大多不可用，要么无用。其次，TTB 不是 bug，而是经济学的一个特征。第三，TTB 不一定表现出与其存在相关的负面影响。