Positivism

Bruce is currently a research professor of economics and the director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University.

His first book, Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century, explored the relationship between twentieth-century philosophy of science and the writings of economists on questions of economic methodology.

This early interest is one I share and was hi- how I first got to know Bruce at a workshop in Amsterdam.

But for the past three decades, Bruce's research has principally focused on the multifaceted writings of the Nobel Prize-winning economist and social theorist Hayek.

Uh, the LSE is also where I think it could be argued he did- All or at least most of his most famous work.

Okay? It at least initiated stuff that he would continue on later, uh, but if we think about, uh, his contributions, uh, for example, to the theory of, uh, money and, uh, and the trade cycle, and his debates with John Maynard Keynes and when he first arrived, uh, by the mid-1930s, uh, he started, uh, to engage with some of the, um, the socialists, uh, on the faculty, uh, but also, uh, academic socialists in general.

Uh, he came out with a book that was edited that carried a forward and a, and a, uh, and an afterward by Hayek ca-called Collectivist Economic Planning.

And he...

So, you know, I was emphasizing the differences between Carnap and Rorty, but you could also emphasize the similarities.

So, you know, Carnap, you know, the Positivist project was also a project about language and gave language tons of power.

It just thought language needed to be reformed to produce a logic that was more accurate to descriptions and that was truth conditional semantics in a particular way.

You know, you see the language of construction, Carnap's Aufbau is literally, you know, that's literally in the title.