Chris Bertram notes that the kind of examples we use to support our theories tend to be reflective of our cultural surroundings. Two features in particular seem to be important: what the latest technological fashion is, and what games are prevalent in our corner of spacetime. Since these examples not only prop up existing theory, but drive theory change and selection, it might turn out that what games people (around us) play determines rather large scale features of our world-views. (—So the closest we could get to an objective philosopher is one who spends all day watching ESPN so (s)he doesn’t have a mind driven by one particular source of examples? —Perhaps!)

Getting away from my special pleading, Bertram’s post is well worth reading, as it seems is the book on which he is commenting (Philip Mirowski’s Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science).