by Friedman’s ‘as if’ methodology — a total disaster The explicit and implicit acceptance of Friedman’s as if methodology by mainstream economists has proved to be disastrous. The fundamental paradigm of economics that emerged from this methodology not only failed to anticipative the Crash of 2008 and its devastating effects, this paradigm has proved incapable of producing a consensus within the discipline of economics as to the nature and cause of the economic stagnation we find ourselves in the midst of today. In attempting to understand why this is so it is instructive to examine the nature of Friedman’s arguments within the context in which he formulated them, especially his argument that the truth of a theory’s assumptions is irrelevant so long as the inaccuracy of a theory’s predictions are cataloged and we argue as if those assumptions are true … A scientific theory is, in fact, the embodiment of its assumptions. There can be no theory without assumptions since it is the assumptions embodied in a theory that provide, by way of reason and logic, the implications by which the subject matter of a scientific discipline can be understood and explained. These same assumptions provide, again, by way of reason and logic, the predictions that can be compared with empirical evidence to test the validity of a theory.
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Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Economics, Theory of Science & Methodology
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Friedman’s ‘as if’ methodology — a total disaster
The explicit and implicit acceptance of Friedman’s as if methodology by mainstream economists has proved to be disastrous. The fundamental paradigm of economics that emerged from this methodology not only failed to anticipative the Crash of 2008 and its devastating effects, this paradigm has proved incapable of producing a consensus within the discipline of economics as to the nature and cause of the economic stagnation we find ourselves in the midst of today. In attempting to understand why this is so it is instructive to examine the nature of Friedman’s arguments within the context in which he formulated them, especially his argument that the truth of a theory’s assumptions is irrelevant so long as the inaccuracy of a theory’s predictions are cataloged and we argue as if those assumptions are true …
A scientific theory is, in fact, the embodiment of its assumptions. There can be no theory without assumptions since it is the assumptions embodied in a theory that provide, by way of reason and logic, the implications by which the subject matter of a scientific discipline can be understood and explained. These same assumptions provide, again, by way of reason and logic, the predictions that can be compared with empirical evidence to test the validity of a theory. It is a theory’s assumptions that are the premises in the logical arguments that give a theory’s explanations meaning, and to the extent those assumptions are false, the explanations the theory provides are meaningless no matter how logically powerful or mathematically sophisticated those explanations based on false assumptions may seem to be.
If scientific progress in economics – as Robert Lucas and other latter days followers of Milton Friedman seem to think – lies in our ability to tell ‘better and better stories’ one would of course expect economics journal being filled with articles supporting the stories with empirical evidence confirming the predictions. However, I would argue that the journals still show a striking and embarrassing paucity of empirical studies that (try to) substantiate these predictive claims. Equally amazing is how little one has to say about the relationship between the model and real world target systems. It is as though thinking explicit discussion, argumentation and justification on the subject isn’t considered required.
If the ultimate criteria of success of a deductivist system is to what extent it predicts and coheres with (parts of) reality, modern mainstream economics seems to be a hopeless misallocation of scientific resources. To focus scientific endeavours on proving things in models, is a gross misapprehension of what an economic theory ought to be about. Deductivist models and methods disconnected from reality are not relevant to predict, explain or understand real world economies.