Criticism
Criticism of rational addiction theories have emerged along different lines. One strand of criticism is the already mentioned econometric work. A prominent critic working along different lines is the philosopher Jon Elster who in a series of works has claimed that theories in Becker's framework are conceptually incoherent in their view of preferences, as well as inconsistent with the ambivalence and desire for increased self-regulation that is empirically displayed by many addicts. Economist Ole Rogeberg has used the theories as a case example of what he calls "absurd theories" in economics, and argues that the theories "illustrate how absurd choice theories in economics get taken seriously as possibly true explanations and tools for welfare analysis despite being poorly interpreted, empirically unfalsifiable, and based on wildly inaccurate assumptions selectively justified by ad-hoc stories."
Read more about this topic: Rational Addiction
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)