For citation:
Mudrik, D. G. & Kovnir, Vl. N. (2022). Ontological Dualism of Economic Reality. AlterEconomics, 19(4), 584-601. https://doi.org/10.31063/AlterEconomics/2022.19-4.2
Abstract:
The article explores the dualism of economic reality that stems from two irreducible basic ontologies of moral and naturalistic worldviews. Such dualism is expressed in the absence of a common subject of economic science, incompatibility of paradigms of different schools, lack of the direct relationship between theory and practice, and denial of the existence of objective economic laws. The paper shows that mainstream economics is based on moral principles of anthropomorphism, teleologism and hierarchism, which impedes the direct transfer of natural science methods to the economic science. The purpose of this study is to substantiate the unity of epistemology and ontology of natural and moral phenomena. This unity stems from the empirical cognition of material and socio-economic phenomena which happens when an individual interacts with the environment. The research methodology comprises empirical and rationalistic methods of cognition. Comparative analysis of the basic principles of moral and naturalistic worldviews is used to build a general model of scientific cognition. It is shown that study of natural and socio-economic phenomena is based on the empirical cognition of their physical and value properties due to the action of external natural forces of nature and internal psychophysical forces of man. The proposed approach allows presents socio-economic facts as reflections of objective reality manifested through the value properties of objects cognized qualitatively and quantitatively.
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