Imagine trying to decide between two competing explanations of the same phenomenon, when neither can be conclusively proven right or wrong. This is the dilemma faced by economists debating the nature of value: should it be measured by the labor that produces goods, as Marx famously proposed, or by subjective preferences, as marginalist economists have argued? In the early 1930s, Sidney Hook ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Hook ) confronted this very question, not as a technical economist, but as a philosopher influenced by pragmatism,(in particular the pragmatism of his teacher John Dewey ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey ) ). His solution was surprising: instead of insisting that one theory was empirically correct, he argued that the theories should be judged by their *usefulness in understanding capitalism* , a move that anticipates later debates in the philosophy of science about theory choice and underdetermination. (More at: https://medium.com/@jimfarmelant/sidney-hooks-pragmatist-defense-of-marx-s-labor-theory-of-value-1965ac82237d
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