Tag Archives: philosophy of science

Less wonkishly, the basic problem here can be viewed in terms of the logical fallacy of hasty generalization. Hasty generalization involves extending one's one's position, or that held by one's group, universally. In philosophy this result in claims of naturalism to humanity as a whole. For example, natural law is often reducible to a particular set of Western values that is generalized. The "laws" of economics are largely of this sort, and homo economicus as a rational agent that carries...

Helena Sheehan’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Science , originally written in 1985, but reprinted at the end of 2017, recounts a wide history of serious Marxist thought on science starting with Marx and Engels themselves, and going up to the mass workers’ movements of the 1930s and 1940s. In keeping with a dialectical conception of science, Marxist ideas aren’t presented as static but evolving through debate and experiment in the face of new scientific and political challenges.... This...

I am posting this for its relevance to philosophy of logic and philosophy of science rather than specifics. It draws a useful distinction between frameworks that generate theories and which are themselves not testable (hence falsifiable) and the theories a framework is used to generate.This is obviously relevant to philosophy of science, but why philosophy of logic? In his later work, Ludwig Wittgenstein sought to show that the overarching frameworks of a culture as a way of life are deeply...

As the Canadian experience shows, deciding which episodes qualify as "recessions" can be debated. The safest course of action is to make it clear what definition you are using, and apply it consistently across regions. This is logic and critic thinking 101, and also fundamental to math application. While it is basic for thinking critically, it is key for doing science.This is a big problem for economics since economics is not regarded as a pure science but an applied science. Macroeconomics...

On the practical side of philosophy of science. Adding nuance to Karl Popper on falsification. Further argument for the view that theories are useful but not "true." This may seem to contradict the realist view that theories are general descriptions of causal relationships. But I don't think that this is what is is implied. Rather, useful theories can be viewed as fitting the data because they reveal underlying structures that are not observed directly but only indirectly.  There is a...

Recommended reading on the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of economics, and Milton Friedman's instrumentalism.EvonomicsEconomists Should Stop Defending Milton Friedman’s Pseudo-science George H. Blackford | former Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint

Some philosophy of statistics. Short read. Not wonkish.Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceThe fallacy of the excluded middle — statistical philosophy editionAndrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Since econometrics doesn’t content itself with only making optimal predictions, but also aspires to explain things in terms of causes and effects, econometricians need loads of assumptions — most important of these are additivity and linearity. Important, simply because if they are not true, your model is invalid and descriptively incorrect. And when the model is wrong — well, then it’s wrong.... Simplifying assumptions versus oversimplification.Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe main reason why almost...

In my macro critique, I mentioned "meta-narratives" — what did I mean by that? Noah Smith has a nice concise description of one of them today in Bloomberg that helps illustrate what I mean: the wage-price spiral. The narrative of the 1960s and 70s was that the government fiscal and monetary policy started pushing unemployment below the "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment" (NAIRU), causing inflation to explode. The meta-narrative is the wage-price spiral: unemployment that is...

Another good one on foundations of science and economics, specifically macroeconomics — if you are into this sort of thing. These papers also fail to make any empirical predictions or really engage with data at all. I get the impression that people aren't actually interested in making predictions or an actual scientific approach to macro- or micro-economics, but rather in simply using science as a rhetorical device.... Information Transfer EconomicsThe ability to predictJason Smith