by On the irrelevance of Milton Friedman In producing theories couched in terms of isolated atoms that are quite at odds with social reality, modellers are actually compelled to make substantive claims that are wildly unrealistic. And because social reality does not conform to systems of isolated atoms, there is no guarantee that event regularities of the sort pursued will occur. Indeed, they are found not to … Friedman enters this scene arguing that all we need to do is predict successfully, that this can be done even without realistic theories, and that unrealistic theories are to be preferred to realistic ones, essentially because they can usually be more parsimonious. The first thing to note about this response is that Friedman is attempting to turn inevitable failure into a virtue. In the context of economic modelling, the need to produce formulations in terms of systems of isolated atoms, where these are not characteristic of social reality, means that unrealistic formulations are more or less unavoidable. Arguing that they are to be preferred to realistic ones in this context belies the fact that there is not a choice. What amazed me about the initial responses to Friedman by numerous philosophers and others is that they mostly took the form: prediction is not enough, we need explanation too.
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On the irrelevance of Milton Friedman
In producing theories couched in terms of isolated atoms that are quite at odds with social reality, modellers are actually compelled to make substantive claims that are wildly unrealistic. And because social reality does not conform to systems of isolated atoms, there is no guarantee that event regularities of the sort pursued will occur. Indeed, they are found not to …
Friedman enters this scene arguing that all we need to do is predict successfully, that this can be done even without realistic theories, and that unrealistic theories are to be preferred to realistic ones, essentially because they can usually be more parsimonious.
The first thing to note about this response is that Friedman is attempting to turn inevitable failure into a virtue. In the context of economic modelling, the need to produce formulations in terms of systems of isolated atoms, where these are not characteristic of social reality, means that unrealistic formulations are more or less unavoidable. Arguing that they are to be preferred to realistic ones in this context belies the fact that there is not a choice.
What amazed me about the initial responses to Friedman by numerous philosophers and others is that they mostly took the form: prediction is not enough, we need explanation too. Rarely, if ever, was it pointed out that because the social world is open, we cannot have successful prediction anyway.
So my own response to Friedman’s intervention is that it was mostly an irrelevancy, but one that has been opportunistically grasped by some as a supposed defence of the profusion of unrealistic assumptions in economics. This would work if successful prediction were possible. But usually it is not.
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 model 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.
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.