Frank P. Ramsey: A Cambridge Economist

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2023

This paper reassesses Ramsey's influence on Keynes. It is argued that the Standard View has restricted attention to the implications for probability theory of Ramsey's criticisms of Keynes's concepts of logical probability-relations and non-numerical probabilities. Building on the work of both Coates (1996) and Misak (2016), an Alternative View is proposed in which Ramsey's influence on Keynes is seen as principally philosophical. Specifically, the Alternative View recognises Ramsey's adoption of the logical pragmatist philosophy of C. S. Peirce from 1924 onwards with a dispositional theory of belief in which beliefs are treated not only as useful mental habits that can successfully guide future actions but also as able to provide true explanations of observed empirical facts. The textual evidence is examined, particularly Keynes's biographical essay on Ramsey, which, it is argued, supports the contention that Keynes fully appreciated and was sympathetic to Ramsey's pragmatism especially the importance of vague knowledge and the need for the development of human logic as the study of reasonable human behaviour.

Researchgate, 2023

B .Gerrard 's in press paper at the Cambridge Journal of Economics attempts to spread the Ramsey myth about a supposed axiom I in Keynes's A Treatise on Probability that doesn't exist except in the minds of Ramsey and Gerrard.This mythical axiom I states the following : "First, he thinks that between any two non-self-contradictory propositions there holds a probability relation (Axiom I), for example between 'My carpet is blue' and 'Napoleon was a great general'; it is easily seen that it leads to contradictions to assign the probability 1/2 to such cases, and Mr Keynes would conclude that the probability is not numerical. But it would seem that in such cases there is no probability; that, for a logical relation, other than a truth function, to hold between two propositions, there must be some connection between them. If this be so, there is no such probability as the probability that' my carpet is blue' given only that 'Napoleon was a great general', and there is therefore no question of assigning a numerical value.”(Ramsey,1922,p.3). Ramsey’s opening paragraph is complete and total nonsense. First ,there is no such axiom I anywhere in Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability .Second Keynes’s definitions of his argument form and relevance -irrelevance logic on pp.4-6,36-37 and 50-56,respectively,completely rules out Ramsey’s bizarre assessment using his example. Third, Ramsey’s “ my carpet is blue', given only that 'Napoleon was a great general” example, was obliterated by Russell with his similar Napoleon example, specifically designed to demonstrate the utterly preposterous nature of Ramsey’s example,in July,1922.The only honorable option for Ramsey to do in 1922 was to publish a complete and total retraction of his January,1922 review .Instead, he kept repeating the same type of nonsense in private papers that culminated in his disastrous 1926 contribution.A simple comparison of Ramsey’s example with Russell’s example leads to the complete collapse of Ramsey’s critique.Russell provides his complete refutation in his review of Keynes’s book in the July,1922 issue of the Mathematical Gazette: “* I do not know whether Mr. Keynes has considered and rejected a definition of irrelevance which, prima facie, would be simpler than his. He does not state definitely whether every pair of propositions has some probability-relation, but I think he does not hold this view. I think he would say, e.g., that there is no probability-relation between the propositions ' 2+2=4 ' and ' Napoleon disliked poodles.' If so, it would seem natural to define h as irrelevant to a when a/h does not exist.”(Russell,1922,p.120,star footnote). Thus, Ramsey’s 'My carpet is blue' and 'Napoleon was a great general' example and Russell’s counter example, ' 2+2=4 ' and ' Napoleon disliked poodles’, as well as all of Ramsey’s examples from his 1926 “Truth and Probability “,have led to a 100 year debacle in which Ramsey’s unsupportable claims are just accepted as true . This leads to the conclusion that Ramsey’s assessment of Keynes’s formal , propositional ,relational logic,which is built on Boole’s approach , is ,using the Australian mathematician -philosopher James Franklin’s description ,”rubbish.”(Academia.edu.- Discussion -Comment,2021). B. Gerrard ,like Ramsey ,Braithwaite,Mellor,Skidelsky, Misak,Bateman,Runde,etc, before him ,provides no textual citation (A specific Part ,Chapter ,Page, Paragraph, Sentence citation)as to where this supposed axiom I exists in Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability. Of course,it is impossible to provide such a citation because it only existed in Ramsey’s mind.

International Journal of Social Sciences and Management Review, 2024

Ramsey made many, many, many errors about Keynes's logical theory of probability, as contained in A Treatise on Probability, in his reviews of 1922 and 1926.Given the extent and magnitude of these errors, I have decided to focus on the most severe of these many, many, many errors The most severe error is Ramsey's complete confusion and conflation of Keynes's Boolean ,objective ,logical, probability relations with the metaphysical relations of Plato, as well as Moore's use of Plato's metaphysical relations or entities to serve as the foundation for his intuitionistic approach in analyzing moral and ethical issues, especially as it relates to Moore's concern for "the Good". Now it is a correct conclusion that, as regards issues in ethics, morality, aesthetics and metaphysics that Keynes, despite some criticisms, did accept Moore's intuitionistic approach in those specific fields. However, to claim that Keynes's work on probability and statistics is based on a foundation of Platonic relations /Moorean intuitionism, with assorted metaphysical entities supposedly floating around somewhere in outer space, waiting to be intuited, is simply preposterous and ludicrous lunacy. Keynes's logical theory of probability, in his A Treatise on Probability, is based wholly on a foundation of the formal, mathematical, symbolic logic that was originally presented in G. Boole's The Laws of Thought (1854). Keynes's method was Boole's method. Boole's method was composed of (a) a relational, propositional, formal, mathematical, symbolic logic, (b) an interval valued probability approach, (c) required the general rejection of the POI, and (d) required a logical, objective probability relation holding between RELATED propositions, not Ramsey's idiotic, imbecilic and moronic claims based on an analysis of UNRELATED propositions.

Researchgate, 2022

The complete failure of all heterodox economists (orthodox economists are no better) to recognize , grasp ,and apply Bertrand Russell’s July ,1922 refutation of the 1922 Ramsey critique of Keynes’s Logical Theory of Probability ,as presented in Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability,in the Mathematical Gazette in his * footnote on p.120, resulted in the integration of Ramsey’s farcical and laughable gobbledygook attack of Keynes’s theory into all Heterodox attempts at explaining Keynes’s General Theory. All heterodox economists have accepted Ramsey’s incomprehensible and ludicrous claim that Keynes’s nonnumerical probabilities could only “…preserve the relations of greater and less.”(Ramsey,1926;In Kyburg and Smokler ,1980,2nd ed.,p.27). Nowhere in anything published in Keynes’s CWJMK will anyone ever find such a preposterous piece of intellectual garbage and rubbish. The integration of Ramsey’s rubbish into the foundations of heterodox(orthodox )economics has resulted in the acceptance, to one degree or another by all heterodox economists, of the Ramsey Myth ,which was that an 18 year old ,teenage, boy genius walked onto the Cambridge ,England campus in 1921 and convinced Keynes that he was all wrong. This eventually led Keynes to capitulate to Ramsey’s critique ,as presented in a worthless 3 page review published in the Jan.,1922 issue of Vol. 11 of Cambridge Magazine ,in 1931.Further ,it is claimed by Bateman and many others that Keynes not only explicitly repudiated his own theory in 1931, but that he fully accepted Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability or created a so called intersubjective theory of probability to replace his failed logical theory of probability.None of these claims are ever recognized , mentioned or discussed by Keynes in(a) the Keynes-Townshend exchanges over the connections between the A Treatise on Probability and the General Theory in 1937-38,(b)Keynes’s 1937 QJE reply to his critics ,(c) in his 1938-1940 exchanges with Tinbergen over Tinbergen’s precise,frequentist approach to statistics, or(d)in his Feb., 1937 Eugenics Review article ,which contains Keynes's most scathing rejection of precise probability and the concept of mathematical expectations .

Economic Thought 6.1: 16-34, 2017, 2017

This paper challenges Tony Lawson's account of the relationship between mainstream economics and ideology along two key axes. First off, we argue that Newtonian physics has been the primary version of pro-science ideology within mainstream economics, rather than mathematics per se. Secondly, we argue that the particular uses of mathematics within mainstream economics have always been ideological in the pro-capitalist sense of the term. In order to defend these claims we develop a line of argument that Lawson has thus far strategically avoided. Namely, we view mainstream economic theory as an integrated theoretical paradigm with intrinsic links to the capitalist economy. Viewed in this way, it becomes clear that Lawson's (trans) historical account of ideology is too general to capture the complexity of the relationship between natural science, mathematics and mainstream methods. Having briefly outlined Lawson's central argument, we highlight the non-mathematical methods underpinning Classical Political Economy. Thereafter, we assess the nature of the mathematics associated with the Marginal Revolution of the 1870s and the Formalist Revolution of the 1950s.

The present work investigates the economic thought of the Cambridge Apostles, the famous élite intellectual group which counted J.M. Keynes among its members. In the first decades of the XX century the Apostles’ Society worked as a first-class think-tank where a cross-fertilization of feelings and ideas among some of the most brilliant minds of the time occurred in a peculiarly interdisciplinary context. G. E. Moore (1873-1958), one of the most influential British philosophers in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, was the leader of the Apostles’ Society at the beginning of the century. His great book, Principia Ethica (1903), through a radical criticism of idealism, hedonistic utilitarianism, and empiricism, undermined the philosophical basis of Victorian conventional morality, and was enthusiastically greeted by the young Apostles. Moore indicated the states of consciousness consisting in the pleasure of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beauty as the greatest intrinsic goods; for them only he endorsed the performing any public or private duty. From the perspective of the historian of economic thought, there are three problems related to Moore’s impact on the Apostles. The first is the difference between the young and the mature Keynes’s adhesion to Moore’s teachings, as reported in My Early Beliefs (1938); the second relates to the divergent interpretations that the Apostles gave of Moore’s influence on them; the third contrasts Moore’s ‘unwordliness’ with the Apostles-economists’ intellectual and professional concerns. The first problem has been tackled by most authors who have studied Moore’s influence on Keynes, but the other two have been largely neglected. In particular, the paradox referred to in the third question has not been convincingly explained. Moreover, while in the last thirty years the philosophical foundations of Keynes’s economics have been the subject of a very extensive literature, and Moore’s influence has been duly acknowledged, the same cannot be said for Keynes’s fellow Apostles. The present research aims to assess the impact of such similar philosophical background on their views: it emphasizes, first, the simultaneous recurrence of ethical, social and political elements in the works of the Apostles-economists in the first decades of the XX century. Second, it points to some neglected features in Moore’s philosophy that shaped the Apostles’ concerns as well as their intellectual approach.

Marshall Studies Bulletin, 2010

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2011

Six volumes in the Great Thinker in Economics Series were chosen by the Editors for this review, which focuses on The Cambridge School of Economics, so very different from the mainstream theory of general economic equilibrium which gives formal expression to Lionel Robbins’ famous definition of the subject as the allocation of scarce means among alternative uses. In recognition of a distinct Cambridge School, the authors of these volumes present a variety of arguments within which three overlapping themes can be discerned: the relationship between ethics and economics; the role of stocks and flows in economic analysis; and the epistemic problem surrounding the role of creativity, which has eluded the skills of formalists. The once pervasive influence of Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Dennis Robertson, Piero Sraffa, Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor can only be recovered with some such set of general themes in mind.

Advances in politics and economics, 2023

This paper covers Harai's analysis, contained in his section, titled "Keynes as a philosopher", of Keynes's logical theory of probability. Harai spends too much of his time repeating Ramsey's claims about having uncovered serious errors in the structure of Keynes's relational propositional theory. .For 100 years, Keynes's logical theory has been interpreted and misevaluated through the eyes of an ignorant 18 year old teenager. The result has been the proliferation and spread of what can be called the "Ramsey myth". The "Ramsey myth" is that an 18 year old teenager appeared at Cambridge University in 1921.This 18 year old teenager was a genius who wrote a three page review in the Jan., 1922 issue of Cambridge Magazine, which supposedly destroyed, devastated and demolished the logical foundations of Keynes's A Treatise on Probability, which was his relational, propositional logic founded on Boole's relational, propositional logic. Russell countered this in his review, but was ignored (See Brady, 2016a). In 1931, it is further supposed that Keynes then capitulated to Ramsey and repudiated his own logical theory of probability, accepting some version of Ramsey's subjectivist theory. This myth is what Hirai's paper is based on. It was false in 1921 and it is false today in 2022. The paper will be organized in the following manner. Section Two will present a very brief overview of Keynes's logical theory of probability. Section Three will show how Edgeworth's two vastly superior reviews could have saved Hirai from making the many errors that he made in his paper, where he simply repeats all of Ramsey's claims. Section Four will show that all of Hirai's analysis concerning Keynes's A Treatise on Probability (TP, 192) is wrong. Section Five will conclude the paper. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape