general theory of reflexivity

The Financial Times is posting some ongoing lectures by George Soros on a ‘general theory of reflexivity.’ Most of what is there, so far, will be old news to social science readers: reflexivity of theories (e.g., actor’s beliefs vis-a-vis reality), the self-fulfilling and performative nature of expectations, natural versus social sciences etc.

And, indeed, here’s Colin McGinn, extensively citing wikipedia and Popper, discussing self-fulfilling prophecies, bank runs, expectations, etc.

My two cents?  The problem I have with reflexivity, or the self-fulfilling prophecy argument, is that it is a seemingly boundaryless argument, as if objective reality doesn’t even exist.  Furthermore, reflexivity doesn’t identify mechanisms, it doesn’t answer upstream “why” questions.  And, reflexivity is often framed in a way that seemingly denies all human rationality (the classic bank run example illustrates this), without appropriately accounting for uncertainty.  We’ve hashed some of this already in previous posts (for example, here), so I won’t belabor these points.

That said, it’s fantastic to see some public discussion on issues of reflexivity — parts of the Q&A (e.g., here’s part 1)  are also interesting.