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Excited to share @ClaudiusGrabner and my paper on pluralist economics! Fellow pluralists may know earlier versions of the paper, it has now been published open access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350178X.2020.1824076. Here our core points: Thread /1
We start by distinguishing between plurality as a descriptive category to report the multiplicity of something and pluralism as the normative demand for plurality of some sort. When discussing pluralism, it’s useful to clarify which dimension of plurality one refers to /2
We survey three ‘outside’ critiques, namely (1) “the discipline is already pluralist”, (2) “if there were a need for pluralism, it would emerge on its own”, and (3) “pluralism means ‘anything goes’, and is thus unscientific”. Pluralist responses are summarized in the table /3
Main takeaways: Whether the discipline is already pluralist depends on the dimension – topics probably yes, epistemologies clearly no. Path dependencies in existing academic institutions hinder the broadening of plurality in the epistemological and methodological dimension /4
While broader epistemologies don’t imply ‘anything goes’ they do come with a question of ensuring quality control. Yet, we show that this is something pluralists have debated among themselves as well when discussing the epistemological trade-off between diversity and consensus /5
This trade-off is not a refutation of pluralism, but it does point to certain practical limits in research. To substantiate this trade-off, we conceptualize epistemological costs and benefits of pluralism. Where do they come from? /6
We say that benefits derive from the recognition of fundamental epistemological uncertainty, especially for social embedded systems like economies. The costs derive mainly come from two challenges: the challenge of quality and the challenge of communication /7
We conceptualize the relationship between epistemological costs and benefits in a simple graph: benefits of plurality increase with decreasing marginal benefits while costs become increasingly more relevant the higher the level of plurality /8
In other words: the more plural the discipline, the less beneficial to add even more plurality, but at low levels of plurality (in any dimension) benefits of increasing plurality are very high and costs are negligible /9
This graph should not be read as a way to ‘optimize’ pluralism in practice, but rather illustrate the general dynamics. In methodological and epistemological dimensions, the discipline is not pluralist (see above in /4), hence we argue benefits clearly outweigh costs /10
Moreover, costs depend on how well scientific institutions address the two challenges of quality and communication. This is good news - it means that we can decrease the significance of costs even further by equipping people (and institutions) for pluralism! /11
How? For quality: criteria should address the process through which an idea has been produced and the idea itself. The former via mutual criticism, the latter via scientific (meta-)virtues combined with specific criteria depending on the purpose of the investigation at hand /12
For communication: more transparency on (meta-)theoretical assumptions in research practice, enabling young scholars to reflect on differences among approaches via more plural education, and establishing joint ‘symbolic spaces’ for exchange /13
Overall, this article aims to serve as 2 things: as a survey to consult for existing pluralist responses to ‘outside’ critiques, and as a conversation starter on how to deal with the trade-off between diversity and consensus to harvest even greater benefits from plurality /14
