Papers by Dan Fitzpatrick
The contemporary academic disciplines of Philosophy and Economics by and large do not concern the... more The contemporary academic disciplines of Philosophy and Economics by and large do not concern themselves with questions pertaining to the ontology of economic reality; by economic reality I mean the kinds of economic phenomena that people encounter on a daily basis, the central ones being economic transactions, money, prices, goods and services. Economic phenomena also include other aspects of economic reality such as economic agents, (including corporations, individual producers and consumers), commodity markets, banks, investments, jobs and production. My investigation of the ontology of economic phenomena begins with a critical examination of the accounts of theorists and philosophers from the past, including Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Marx, Simmel and Menger. Here I discuss various themes that have emerged from these writings, including the metallism-chartalism debates and whether economic value is an objective or subjective notion. Then I turn to contemporary phil...
The Senate HELP committee is considering changes to income-driven repayment (IDR) schemes for stu... more The Senate HELP committee is considering changes to income-driven repayment (IDR) schemes for student loans, necessitating research that examines the characteristics and financial behaviors of the borrowers in IDR programs. Using descriptive methods and a nationally representative sample, we examine the demographics of IDR enrollment. Contrary to the intention of the policy, we find that low-income borrowers and borrowers with high debt-to-income ratios are less likely to enroll in IDR. We also find that married women of color are likely to enroll in IDR programs as are borrowers with more than $50K in student loan debt. Finally, we find that enrollment in IDR does not predict engagement in other financial behaviors such as saving for retirement or buying real estate. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of these findings for federal financial aid policy.
Journal of Social Philosophy, 1998
Few people would disagree with the view that blackmail is a particu-larly nasty and immoral activ... more Few people would disagree with the view that blackmail is a particu-larly nasty and immoral activity and should not be encouraged. Although many would also be in favor of a legal ban on blackmail, such views are not unanimous. I want to examine some of the issues ...
Journal of social philosophy, 1998
Few people would disagree with the view that blackmail is a particu-larly nasty and immoral activ... more Few people would disagree with the view that blackmail is a particu-larly nasty and immoral activity and should not be encouraged. Although many would also be in favor of a legal ban on blackmail, such views are not unanimous. I want to examine some of the issues ...
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2003
Several key elements go into Searle's construction of social reality, namely, collective inte... more Several key elements go into Searle's construction of social reality, namely, collective intentionality, constitutive rules, and status functions. But by far the most important and arguably contentious of these is collective intentionality. Searle postulates his notion of collective intentionality as a solution to a conflict between two of his own problematic claims: the irreducibility of collective intentions to singular intentions and what he sees as the requirements of methodological individualism. According to Searle, methodological individualism seems to require that we reduce collective intentionality to individual intentionality; however, this contradicts his claim that collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality plus some mutual beliefs. I will show that at least part of what is really at stake here is Searle's internalism or, as he puts it, his "brain in a vat condition." My strategy will be to examine his internalism and show that Searle's account is far more radical than other internalists in that he extends internalism beyond its usual domain of the mental to incorporate social facts. While there are no knockdown arguments in favor of either internalism or externalism as normally construed in the philosophy of mind, I will show that Searle's account of collective intentionality introduces an element of privacy to social facts that denies us the public access to the conditions on the basis of which we normally take collective facts to obtain. Copyright 2003 Americal Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc..
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Papers by Dan Fitzpatrick