Bart J. Wilson

Professor of Economics & Law, Chapman University | Author of Meaningful Economics, The Property Species, & Humanomics

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Roger_Koppl I love using Hayek to say no decoding, no regress. But the “no third option” claim needs shoring up. A critic will posit direct, non-phenomenal control. A signal with valence can be wired to guide action without being felt. You need to show why self-availability rules that out.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Roger_Koppl None of those descriptions yet entails “there is something it is like.” “Different from the process compressed” assumes that it leaves only one option: feel. That’s a false narrowing.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Roger_Koppl First, “different kind of thing” is too loose. A compression can be a different kind of thing in many ways: a priority signal, an error signal, a confidence score, a readiness state, a motor tendency, a policy summary, a warning tag, a bodily orientation, a change in attention.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Roger_Koppl Hayek is not saying that physical processes thereby become phenomenally felt. He is saying that our explanatory position forces us to treat mental processes as special for practical purposes.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

This seems to me to be too strong:

Hayek gives us a theory of why self-knowledge must be partial. He does not give us a theory of why partial self-knowledge must feel like something. That missing “must” is the whole argument.

[Roger Koppl 🗽 @Roger_Koppl]

Why Claude is conscious: https://t.co/uBzjNUAQ5g

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Rok_Novak I think that’s right.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@Roger_Koppl “Qualitatively distinct” is doing equivocal work. In the Hayekian argument, it means formally or informationally distinct. In the consciousness claim, it comes to mean phenomenally distinct.

[Vlad Tarko 🌐 🏗️ @vladtarko]

I have as new short paper, "The future of meaningful work", in the new Humanomics special issue of @cosmosandtaxis. Whole issue discusses/expands on various aspects of Bart Wilson and Vernon Smith's work. https://t.co/aJg6fbqAo7

[Jordan Lofthouse @JordanLofthouse]

I've got a new paper in Cosmos+Taxis in the symposium on "Humanomics.” My paper is "Humanomics and Rational Irrationality: Why Moral Sentiments May Make Voting Biases Worse." If you're interested in the topic, please check out the paper here: https://t.co/oDgf8pDorB

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

The question also is, are material and efficient causes sufficient for the study of economics?

(No.)

[The Ciceronian Society @ciceroniansoc]

New Sower Ep! Enjoy the “Humanomics” Plenary Session from our 2026 Conference. How do we humanize economics? Are formal & final causes necessary for economics? Featuring presentations by Michael and Diana Thomas, Steven Miller and @DrPaulMueller. Link to follow:

[Cosmos + Taxis @cosmosandtaxis]

Published!
https://t.co/7Aitc3TsEd

[skepticalifornia @skepticaliblog]

Arizona and Nevada are pursuing a deal with the San Diego County Water Authority to tap millions of gallons of fresh water produced by a Carlsbad ocean-desalination plant—the largest in North America—to help offset reliance on the collapsing Colorado River
https://t.co/oNp11zZm0I

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

@WalkerWright86 @BuckleyInst @AEI Congratulations!

[Peter Boettke @PeterBoettke]

The Chicago Price Theory initiative has a Master Class and it is highly recommended. But I would like to have a discussion with my good friends @BryanPCutsinger @BrianCAlbrecht etc. about a carefully listening to Kevin Murphy's wonder introduction. See min 1:45-2:15, where he discusses the problem of cutting the story too short. This of course was a point McCloskey hammered home in her Applied Theory of Price and elsewhere -- DO NOT CUT THE STORY SHORT -- keep pressing the logic of the economics forces _at work_. But then also listen carefully to the discussion shortly after on the importance of competition. As Murphy puts it, competition ensures that if there are gains from trade to be had people will, as he puts it, "try to get them." In both instances, the power of price theory is in guiding exchange and production behavior to pursue productive specialization and realize the gains from peaceful social cooperation. Optimality conditions are by-products of a process of adaptation and adjustment, not assumptions. We are constantly groping toward equilibrium, not trapped in it at each instant in time. Our models, as such, may imperfectly capture what it is that we want to explain -- exchange and the institutions within which those exchanges take place. As a result we can either question the model, or ignore the process. But if we ignore the process we lose the power of price theory in our depiction. As both Alchian and Buchanan stressed the market is best understood and in a constant state of becoming and exhibiting the pattern of an evolution toward a solution. And not just characterized by the solution concept itself.
https://t.co/b5DKkC0MQx

[Cosmos + Taxis @cosmosandtaxis]

Coming soon! Symposium on #Humanomics by #VernonSmith and @bartwilson. Guest editor Michael Thomas with @JoshuaDAmmons, @vladtarko, @Snowtini, and others.

https://t.co/7Aitc3TsEd

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

Economics has no comparable mechanism to subsume prior work. What actually happens when economists stop reading old work is they forget prior work. Distinctions get flattened and the profession moves on as if the earlier insights had been absorbed when they were merely abandoned.

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

Here’s how Mankiw’s analogy to reading Newton in physics breaks down:

https://t.co/8CRnZFC5er

[Bart J. Wilson @bartwilson]

In physics, later frameworks genuinely subsume earlier ones in a formally demonstrable way. Newtonian mechanics is derivable as a limiting case of general relativity. You can prove that nothing was lost. The later theory contains the earlier one.