{{short description|British philosopher and economist}} {{for|the Australian Olympic diver|Tony Lawson (diver)}} {{use dmy dates|date=August 2023}} {{Infobox philosopher |name = Tony Lawson |image = Tonylawson.jpg |caption = Lawson in 2010 |alt = Tony Lawson at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in 2010 |era = Contemporary philosophy |region = Western philosophy |school_tradition = Critical realism, Cambridge social ontology |main_interests = Philosophy of economics, ontology, ethics, gender theory |alma_mater = University of Cambridge |notable_ideas = Social positioning theory, critical ethical naturalism, contrast explanation, neoclassical economics as a (contradictory) position in social ontology, quantum social theorising with relational depth, irrelevance of mathematical economic modelling |website = [https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/tony-lawson Homepage] |birth_date = |birth_place = Minehead, Somerset, England }} '''Tony Lawson''' is a British philosopher and economist. He is professor of economics and philosophy in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Administrator |date=2016-12-09 |title=Professor Tony Lawson |url=https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/tony-lawson |access-date=2017-10-11 |website=www.econ.cam.ac.uk}}</ref> He is a co-editor of the ''Cambridge Journal of Economics'',<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://academic.oup.com/cje/pages/Editorial_Board |title=Editorial_Board |website=Cambridge Journal of Economics |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=2017-10-11}}</ref> a former director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and co-founder of the Cambridge Realist Workshop and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |title=Social Ontology and Modern Economics |last=Pratten |first=Stephen |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780415858304 |location=New York |oclc=891449934}}</ref> Lawson is noted for his contributions to heterodox economics and to philosophical issues in social theorising, most especially to social ontology.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |title=Ontology and economics: Tony Lawson and his critics |date=2009 |publisher=Routledge |others=Fullbrook, Edward |isbn=978-0203888773 |location=New York |oclc=227191562}}</ref>
== Contributions ==
=== Economics === Lawson's early contributions were on philosophical topics such as uncertainty, knowledge and prediction as well as on substantive analyses of the labour process and the industrial decline of the United Kingdom.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1985|title=Uncertainty and Economic Analysis|jstor=2233256|journal=The Economic Journal|volume=95|issue=380|pages=909–927|doi=10.2307/2233256}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1987|title=The Relative/Absolute Nature of Knowledge and Economic Analysis|jstor=2233082|journal=The Economic Journal|volume=97|issue=388|pages=951–970|doi=10.2307/2233082}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1994-07-01|title=The Nature of Post Keynesianism and Its Links to Other Traditions: A Realist Perspective|journal=Journal of Post Keynesian Economics|volume=16|issue=4|pages=503–538|doi=10.1080/01603477.1994.11489998|issn=0160-3477}}</ref> Lawson's further work has focussed on achieving greater relevance in social theorising, especially economics. This has involved developing an ontologically informed critique of mainstream economics and elaborating methods more relevant to social analysis. Perhaps most importantly, Lawson has introduced ontological reflection into all aspects of economic discussion, including methodology, basic theory and history of economic thought.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1999|title=What Has Realism Got To Do With It?|journal=Economics & Philosophy|volume=15|issue=2|pages=269–282|doi=10.1017/s0266267100004016|s2cid=153432601 |issn=1474-0028}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2001|title=The Varying Fortunes of the Project of Mathematising Economics|journal=European Journal of Economic and Social Systems|volume=15|pages=241–268}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1999-01-01|title=Feminism, Realism, and Universalism|journal=Feminist Economics|volume=5|issue=2|pages=25–59|doi=10.1080/135457099337932|issn=1354-5701}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2003-01-01|title=Ontology and Feminist Theorizing|journal=Feminist Economics|volume=9|issue=1|pages=119–150|doi=10.1080/1354570022000035760|s2cid=9622266 |issn=1354-5701}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2006-07-01|title=The nature of heterodox economics|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|volume=30|issue=4|pages=483–505|doi=10.1093/cje/bei093|s2cid=28097842 |issn=0309-166X}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2012-03-01|title=Ontology and the study of social reality: emergence, organisation, community, power, social relations, corporations, artefacts and money|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|volume=36|issue=2|pages=345–385|doi=10.1093/cje/ber050|issn=0309-166X}}</ref> Lawson argues repeatedly that if social science is to be successful then it must fashion methods that are appropriate to its subject matter.<ref name=":3" /> He argues that this requires an explicit orientation to social ontology. The reason that mathematical modelling in economics fails to provide insight, he reasons, is simply because such methods are quite inappropriate, given the nature of social material.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Economics and reality|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1997|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0415154208|location=London|oclc=34545173}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=Reorienting economics|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2003|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780415253369|location=London|oclc=810086031}}</ref> Lawson develops dialectical methods that he systematises as contrast explanation. More basically Lawson advocates pluralism in method for modern economics.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book|title=Economic pluralism|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0415747417|location=London and New York|oclc=859038420}}</ref>
Lawson has also argued that the notion of a neoclassical economics is not coherent. Thorstein Veblen (who coined the label ''neoclassical economist'') identified neoclassical economists as those who made two mutually incompatible commitments. First, they used methods that implicitly presuppose (often unrecognised) a social reality of a static, non-relational nature. These methods were associated with economists that Veblen deemed to be ''classical''. Second, they partially broke with classical economists in that they simultaneously (and so inconsistently) explicitly embraced a ''vision'' wherein social reality is of a processual, relational, nature. So, these economists were interpreted not as straightforwardly classical but, in seeking or wanting to move forward (in a direction Veblen regarded as positive), as ''neo-classical''. Lawson argues that this incompatibility of (ontological) commitments lives on today, albeit largely unnoticed, not least in many (typically ‘heterodox’) economic modellers.<ref name="neoclassical1">{{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Tony |title=What is this ‘school’ called neoclassical economics? |journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics |date=2013 |volume=37 |issue=5 |pages=947-983 |doi=10.1093/cje/bet027}}</ref><ref name="neoclassical2">{{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Tony |title=Whatever happened to neoclassical economics? |journal=Revue de Philosophie Économique |date=2021 |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=39-84}}</ref>
Lawson has also developed a conception of the human individual person that, in contrast to the isolated atom of most of modern economics, always stands within a multitude of social relations. However, in contrast to the posits of postmodern conceptions, in particular of those conceptions that identify as quantum social theories, Lawson’s individual does not reduce to these social relations. Indeed, Lawson’s conception turns out (though not by design) to qualify as a quantum social theory itself, but does so (and unlike competing conceptions) without losing sight of human subjectivity, relational depth, or giving up on explanatory power.<ref name="HP">{{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Tony |title=The human person, the human social individual and community interactions |journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics |date=2023 |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=475-506 |doi=10.1093/cje/bead016|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="SPTQT">{{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Tony |title=Social positioning theory and quantum mechanics |journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour |date=2023 |volume=53 |issue=4 |pages=583-619 |doi=10.1111/jtsb.12390|doi-access=free }}</ref>
=== Philosophy === As a result of his argument that economics should concern itself with ontology, Lawson has developed and defended his own theory of the constitution and nature of social reality.<ref name=":1" /> The main philosophical influence for this is the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. An early influence was the work of Roy Bhaskar.<ref>{{Cite book|title=A realist theory of science|last=Bhaskar|first=Roy|date=1978|publisher=Harvester Press|isbn=978-0391005761|location=Hassocks, Sussex|oclc=4614842}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The possibility of naturalism : a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences|last=Bhaskar|first=Roy|date=26 October 2023 |isbn=978-1138798885|edition=Fourth|location=London|oclc=872522672}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=1989-03-01|title=Abstraction, tendencies and stylised facts: a realist approach to economic analysis|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|volume=13|issue=1|pages=59–78|doi=10.1093/oxfordjournals.cje.a035091|issn=0309-166X}}</ref> Indeed, in his early work, Lawson joined Bhaskar and others in referring to the account of social reality defended as critical realism.<ref name=":3" /> Since 1997, however, Lawson has developed his own conception of social ontology, largely in collaboration with the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. The project is known as Cambridge Social Ontology and its central conception is systematised as social positioning theory.<ref name="SPT">{{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Tony |title=Social Positioning Theory |journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics |date=2022 |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=961-996 |doi=10.1093/cje/beab040|doi-access=free }}</ref>
==== Social ontology ==== Lawson's conception of social ontology has been in part derived through transcendental argument.<ref name=":3" /> He defines as social anything "whose formation/coming into existence and/or continuing existence ''necessarily'' depend at least in part upon human beings and their interactions”.<ref name=":1" /> Lawson argues that there is a level of emergent – from human interaction – reality that is reasonably demarcated as social.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Powers and capacities in philosophy : the new Aristotelianism|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|others=Groff, Ruth, 1963-, Greco, John.|isbn=9780415889889|location=New York|oclc=800035791}}</ref> In general, however, Lawson argues, “we human beings for the most part do ''not create'' social reality, but rather, on finding it given to us at each moment, each draw upon it in acting in always situated ways, pursuing our particular situated concerns, in conditions clearly not of our own making, with understandings that are always fallible and extremely partial at best, and in so doing thereby contribute, along with the simultaneous actions of all others, to the continuous reproduction and transformation of social reality in a manner that is mostly unintended and poorly understood”.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2016-12-01|title=Ontology and Social Relations: Reply to Doug Porpora and to Colin Wight|journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour|language=en|volume=46|issue=4|pages=438–449|doi=10.1111/jtsb.12128|issn=1468-5914|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/265929}}</ref>
The result is a world in which human agency and social structure each presuppose the other though neither is reducible to, or completely explicable in terms of, the other. More specifically, Lawson argues that social reality is everywhere constituted through positioning people and things as components of social totalities, whereupon human actions and uses of positioned objects are guided by rights and obligations associated with the positions. Whole communities can also be so positioned, as in the formation of corporations. The result is a social realm organised by various forms of social structure of which there are different types such as communities, collective practices, norms, social rules, social positions, powers, social relations, and artefacts.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":4" />
==== Ethics ==== Lawson defends a conception of ethics named critical ethical naturalism in which the goal is a society in which we all flourish in our differences, and the mechanism ever nudging us towards it turns on the fact that the flourishing of any one of us depends on the flourishing of all and at some level we all recognise this.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2013-12-01|title=Ethical Naturalism and Forms of Relativism|journal=Society|language=en|volume=50|issue=6|pages=570–575|doi=10.1007/s12115-013-9712-7|issn=0147-2011|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260186806|title=Critical Ethical Naturalism: An Orientation to Ethics|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2014-12-01}}</ref>
==== Debates ==== Lawson has engaged in numerous debates with various contributors, many of which are published, including, early on, over the use of econometrics and indeed mathematical economic modelling of any sort as practiced, and later, regarding the value of ontology to social theorising, including to feminist theorising. In addition, Edward Fullbrook’s ''Ontology and Economics: Tony Lawson and his Critics'', contains a series of debates between Lawson and leading heterodox economists.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ontology and economics : Tony Lawson and his critics|date=2009|publisher=Routledge|others=Fullbrook, Edward.|isbn=9780415476133|location=New York|oclc=227191562}}</ref> Recently Lawson has debated the relative advantages of competing conceptions of social ontology with several ontologists such as John Searle, Doug Porpora and Colin Wight.<ref name=":5" /> Moreover, he has debated the nature of specific social existents, such as money, with Searle and Geoffrey Ingham.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2016-07-01|title=Social positioning and the nature of money|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|language=en|volume=40|issue=4|pages=961–996|doi=10.1093/cje/bew006|issn=0309-166X}}</ref>
== Bibliography ==
=== Books ===
*{{Cite book|title=The Nature of Social Reality: Issues in Social Ontology|last=Lawson|first=Tony|publisher=Routledge|year=2019|isbn=978-0367188931|location=London|oclc=1082243306}} *{{Cite book |title=Essays on the Nature and State of Modern Economics |last=Lawson |first=Tony |publisher=Routledge |year=2015 |isbn=978-1138851023 |location=London |oclc=907773349}} *{{Cite book |date=2003|title=Reorienting Economics|last=Lawson|first=Tony|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0415253369|location=London|oclc=810086031}} *{{Cite book|title=Economics and Reality|last=Lawson|first=Tony|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|isbn=978-1134735105|location=London|oclc=225574891}}
===Selected articles=== *{{Cite journal|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2022|title=Social positioning theory|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|volume=46|issue=1|pages=1–39|doi=10.1093/cje/beab040|doi-access=free}} *{{Cite journal |title=The Constitution and Nature of Money |last=Lawson |first=Tony |date=2018 |journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=851–873 |doi=10.1093/cje/bey005}} *{{Cite journal |title=Social positioning and the nature of money |last=Lawson |first=Tony |date=2016 |journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=961–996 |doi=10.1093/cje/bew006}} *{{Cite journal|title=Comparing Conceptions of Social Ontology: Emergent Social Entities and/or Institutional Facts?|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2016|journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour|volume=46|issue=4|pages=359–399|doi=10.1111/jtsb.12126|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/254263}} *{{Cite journal|title=Some Critical Issues in Social Ontology: Reply to John Searle|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2016|journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour|volume=46|issue=4|pages=426–437|doi=10.1111/jtsb.12129|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/265853}} *{{Cite journal|title=Ontology and Social Relations: Reply to Doug Porpora and to Colin Wight|last=Lawson|first=Tony|date=2016|journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour|volume=46|issue=4|pages=438–449|doi=10.1111/jtsb.12128|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/265929}}
=== Secondary sources ===
*{{Cite journal|url=https://academic.oup.com/cje/issue/41/5|title=Special issue: Cambridge Social Ontology: Clarification, Development and Deployment|date=2017|journal=Cambridge Journal of Economics|volume=41|issue=5 }} *{{Cite book |date=2009|title=Ontology and economics : Tony Lawson and his critics|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0415546492|location=New York|oclc=227191562|last=Fullbrook|first=Edward}} * "Cambridge social ontology, the philosophical critique of modern economics and social positioning theory: an interview with Tony Lawson, part 1". ''Journal of Critical Realism''. '''20:1''', 72–97. 2021. *"Cambridge social ontology, the philosophical critique of modern economics and social positioning theory: an interview with Tony Lawson, part 2". ''Journal of Critical Realism''. '''20:2''', 201–237. 2021.
== References == {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lawson, Tony}} Category:British economists Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:People from Minehead Category:British philosophers Category:Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Category:English economists