Understanding Money: Philosophical Frameworks of Monetary Value

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Economics and the philosophical discourse on money
	Crises, ethics, and economics: why philosophy ignored money
	Making space for a philosophical take on money
	Inspecting our clothes: the necessity of conceptual frameworks
	Notes
Chapter 2: On conceptual frameworks and the role of a philosophical discourse on money
	Not all distinguishables are separables
	Monetary value is a distinguishable
	How to judge the merits of a philosophical framework of monetary value?
	Notes
Chapter 3: Aristotle and the philosophical discourse on money: Ethics, Politics, and the Nature of Monetary Value
	Why does Aristotle discuss money at all?
	The broad framework of Aristotle’s ethics of money acquisition
	The ontological basis of Aristotle’s ethical claims about money
	The barter narrative is central to Aristotle’s ontological convictions on money
	Notes
Chapter 4: Objects, money, and the grounds of monetary value
	Two aspects of the money-object: use and exchange
	Aristotle’s oversight or philosophical sophistication?
	Is money a spatial entity? Aristotle and the fallacy of separability
	Notes
Chapter 5: Money and the modern scientific paradigm
	Monetary alchemy: does monetary value emerge from nothing?
	Coinage, monetary value, and Locke’s abstraction of weight or quantity
	Value in weight versus value in tale
	Notes
Chapter 6: The political economists, their critics, and the long shadow of Aristotle
	The naturalistic turn in the philosophy of monetary value
	The quest for a science of money
	Abstract labor as the ontological ground of monetary value
	Marx’s place within the Aristotelian paradigm of monetary value
	Notes
Chapter 7: The traditional paradigm of monetary value and the philosophical problems surrounding it
	Is the supposed discovery of the real–apparent dichotomy philosophically sound?
	How economics attempted to escape the real–apparent dichotomy
	Ricardo’s dissolution of the dichotomy does not resolve the underlying philosophical problems
	The real–apparent dichotomy is not new to philosophy
	Infinite regress and the substantive paradigm’s tendency to essentialization
	Note
Chapter 8: Moving beyond the substantive framework of monetary value: Voices of Discontentment
	Two dissenting strains of thought in the philosophical discourse on monetary value
	Is monetary value just a fiction ? Hume’s skeptical stance toward monetary value
	Bailey's relational theory of monetary value: A forgotten moment
	Illustrating the relational nature of monetary value through the concept of distance
	The relational framework as a door to alternative paradigms for monetary value
	Notes
Chapter 9: Origin of money: The Barter Narrative and the Credit Theory of Money
	Link between the barter narrative, the object-centric framework, and the substantive paradigm of monetary value
	Credit theory of money: the barter narrative faces an empirical challenge
	The credit theorists’ case against the barter “theory” in the history of money
	Not a medium of exchange but a quantified system of obligation
	Notes
Chapter 10: Simmel and the myth of objective truths concerning monetary value
	Barter and credit: two modes of construing the history of the development of money
	The question of credit : an originary occurrence or a monetary epiphenomenon?
	Simmel’s philosophy of money and the question of credit
	Credit, temporality, trust, and the function of exchangeability
	Monetary value understood through the category of substance not of function
	Simmel’s philosophically radical prioritization of epistemology over ontology
	Our encounter with the monetary world demands a philosophical interpretation
	Notes
Chapter 11: Money is what money does
	The necessity for the money-object to shed its non-monetary function(s)
	Being and value : the two aspects of sense-making
	The gradual, collective process of value ascription to the money-object
	Monetary value is a conceptual construct, not an intrinsic property of an object
Chapter 12: The constructivist paradigm: How Are We to Understand Monetary Value?
	The need for a multi-categorical framework within the constructivist paradigm
	If all epistemic frameworks are constructed, how are they to be judged?
	The categories of our constructivist framework of monetary value are formal
	A cautionary note: functionally interdependent epistemic categories are distinguishable from each other, but not separable
	Ask not what causes monetary value, but how best to understand it
	Generic description of monetary value, not of a specific monetary system
	Notes
Chapter 13: Substance and relation : Two Sides of the Same Coin
	Configuring the epistemic categories of substance, relation and function
	Constructivist recasting of the category of substance
	Overcoming the substantive intoxication with gold as money
	Emphasizing the distinction between “gold” and the “gold standard” monetary system
	Without relations, discrete elements lack epistemic significance
	Substance without relation is atomistic, relation without substance is unhinged
	Notes
Chapter 14: Fleshing out the multi-categorical, constructivist framework for monetary value
	Belonging to the same world – the mode of association of substance-instantiations
	Relations are determinate, but not predetermined
	How functional capabilities frame, enable, and limit relational capabilities
	Substance-instantiations and their properties
	The rules of interaction and their role in the formal complex
	Monetary systems are posited to realize a determinate end or ideal
	Notes
Chapter 15: Why a constructivist framework of monetary value?
	Mapping monetary systems in order to address pressing questions
	Change in monetary systems necessitates an accommodative framework of understanding
	How to think about change in monetary systems – two contrasting examples
	Thresholds of change: range-bound deviation and the evolution of monetary systems
	Toward a formal definition of monetary value
	Notes
References
Index