The paper discusses the nature and role of knowledge in a socio-economic life marked by genuine uncertainty. The starting point is to regard that uncertain environments render knowledge fallible and contingent. Knowledge is fallible for reasons associated both with interactions in space taking place at the same time (complexity), and with the passage of time. The paper stresses two types of knowledge, namely, "knowledge how" and "knowledge that". The former is the knowledge of the way we perform something and the latter is the knowledge of why it is that we perform something. One way that agents find to cope with the condition of fallible knowledge is to resort to conventions (Keynes) and rules (Hayek). Conventions and rules are the repository of a social, intersubjective form of knowledge, which agents may acquire, store and communicate with each other. They partly provide the necessary information for the undertaking of their daily activities.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil) in its journal Nova Economia.
Volume (Year): 14 (2004) Issue (Month): 1 (January-April) Pages: 123-149 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
Order Information: Postal: Av. Antonio Carlos, 6627 - Predio da FACE Belo Horizonte, 31270-901 Brazil Email: Web: http://www.face.ufmg.br/novaeconomia/
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Hugo Cerqueira).
Find related papers by JEL classification: A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General B00 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General - - - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches B50 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - General D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General