Salud y enfermedad: ¿individual o colectiva?

Leading economists of today like Myrdle, Arrow, Solow and Sen – as also the philosophers of economics – now admit en mass that value neutrality, especially in social sciences like economics, is not a defensible claim. For, not to have values is in itself a value (Arrow and Hahn 1971). Nevertheless, the issue is now being put across differently: the question is what are considered as the ‘right’ values and how these values are being or can be selected, modified or replaced in each case – secular and Islamic. What are the criteria used for value selection? Who has the authority in value selection and what role, if any, could the State play in this respect? What are the limits to value choice and the extent of flexibility allowed? How can we base economics on Islamic values and what are the necessary conditions to be fulfilled?

Such questions are briefly dealt with in Hasan (1995 Section 4). His essential point is that value selection in secular societies is the function of democratic process and is infinitely flexible depending on the majority view. Consultation or Shura is its counterpart in Islam but the flexibility is limited to what the Shari’ah can allow. However, one must point out clearly that the set of permissions is much wider than the set of

restrictions under the Islamic economic framework. In essence, the considerations for Akhirah are the overriding element regulating human economic behavior while the emphases on Dunya appear to be the deciding factor in secular economics.

More importantly, selection of values under the Islamic worldview is never left to human choice for the followers of the Right Path. For expository purposes, take the central economic problem of scarcit6 _and

the celebrated definition of economics by Lionel Robbins that the economic problem is a problem of choice.7 _{Why is there a problem of choice?}

Because Man’s wants are ‘unlimited’ and the resources at his disposal at any given time and place are relatively ‘limited’ or ‘scarce’ and these resources have alternative uses. Wants as such stare all of us in the face and are the springhead of economic activity and progress. Nature, according to Robbins, is niggardly, and has not given men enough resources to satisfy their continual urge of satisfying wants. However, in the literature

on Islamic economics, presence of resource scarcity is not explicitly acknowledged (please see n. 99).

More importantly, indulging in material pursuits in Islam though allowed is not an end in itself; it is but means for a much nobler end – the solace in the Al-Akhira. Although a believer consumes, produces, and involves himself in economic exchange, his intentions are not just to satisfy his immediate wants but also to please Allah first and foremost as His ‘slave’ (Abd) on earth. He has rights and obligations vis-à-vis the society that he lives in. A complete economic framework is prescribed by the

Shari’ah wherein the state has an active role to play, where private property is respected provided all the dues are observed, and where sharing is a pre-requisite for growth.

In short, values in Islamic economics are bound by the precepts of the Shari’ah, and consequently, Muslim economists cannot go out of their way to give a ‘scientific rationale’ or endorse a specific ‘economic relation’ which is not in accordance with the divine precepts. In essence, there seems to be a call for a marriage, or at least a much closer cohabitation between ‘positive economics’ and ‘normative economics’ as far as the methodology of Islamic economics is concerned. Based on this approach, Islamic economics becomes, in a way, the art of over- seeing the development of secular economics in a special way: it shall invariably have a methodological position or stance on all the theoretical and applied aspects of the subject.

There are indeed three ways in which ethics enter economics. First, economists have ethical values that help shape the way they apply economics in the ordinary business of life. This builds into the core of economic theory or a viewpoint as to how the economy does work and how it should work. Second, economic actors (consumers, workers, business owners) have ethical values that help them shape their economic behavior. Third, economic institutions and policies affect people in different ways and thus ethical valuations, in addition to economic evaluations, are always significant.

The issue of ethical value judgments in economics is as old as, if not older than, the position of John Neville Keynes who divided economics into three areas: positive (economic theory), normative (welfare economics) and practical (economic policy). The first deals with ‘what

is’, the second with ‘what ought to be’, and the third with how to get from the one to the other (Hausman, p.180). Although the majority of economists admit that ethical values permeate welfare economics and economic policy, they proceed with some confidence in the belief that their work in pure and applied economic theory is ethically neutral. Methodologists studying this question are more cautious.

In recent years there has been a flurry of literature calling into question the scientific character of economics, more so of its Islamic counterpart. Part of that literature deals explicitly with the impact of ethical norms and value judgments on economics as a science: value neutrality versus value permeation. There are two pervasive tenets of the value neutrality argument. The first is a reliance on the human guillotine which categorically separates fact (‘what is’) from value (‘what ought to be’); the second basic tenet strongly supports the first by claiming that, since we have objective access to the empirical world through our senses and experience, scientists need not concern themselves with ‘what ought to be’. This second tenet is the crucial point and the one that critics have sought to undermine.

One of the recent criticisms of the value neutrality thesis, Kuhnian in character, is convincing for many. Kuhn’s rejection of the second tenet – that we have objective access to the empirical world through our sense experience – is important for those opposed to the value neutrality position. He argues that the empirical world can be known only through the filter of a theory; thus facts are theory-laden. A major argument of those who build on Kuhn’s approach runs as follows: a worldview greatly influences the scientific paradigm out of which one works; value judgments are closely associated with the worldview; theories must remain coherent with the worldview; facts themselves are theory-laden; therefore the whole scientific venture is permeated by value judgments from the start (Kuhn 1970, p. 37).

The worldview or Weltanschauung shapes the interests of the scientists and helps determine the questions they ask, the problems they consider important, the answers they deem acceptable, the axioms of the theory, their choice of the ‘relevant facts’, the hypotheses they propose to account for facts, the criteria they use to assess the fruitfulness of competing theories, the language they use to formulate the results and so

on.. All such choice decisions have value underpinnings. The ambit of the worldview is indeed wide and pervasive.

It is thus argued that the paradigm or research program of any scientific community is circumscribed by boundaries laid out in a worldview which, while possibly objective at the level of individuals, remains empirically non-testable, or metaphysical, as Boland (1982) and others say. In mainstream economics the facade of value-neutrality stands, but the pillars that support it seem to be crumbing. Blaug (1997) concedes that both ‘factual’, and ‘moral’ arguments rest ‘at bottom’ on certain definite techniques of persuasion, which in turn depend for their effectiveness on shared values of one kind or another’.8