Part II: General Philosophies of Science and Economics Flashcards
What are the two types of positions of philosophy of science
Normative positions articulatinf norms on how good science should be practiced
Descriptive positions giving descriptions of existing science.
Inductivism/ Positivism
Inductivism: in science you find easily-verifiable singluar statements and general statements which cannot be verified in the same way (indefinite amount of facts).
Inductivism says scientific knowledge is gained in 2 steps: observe single fact without prejudice and articulate in an observatin (positive fact). Then generalize from the data to a general law or theory (inductive generalization).
Inductive generalization seems to work if it hits a natural law. You can have accidental generalizations not based on laws.
Positivism also called empiricism since you start with data.
Popper
Normative theory
Falsification is developed to avoid the philosophical problem of induction where you test a theory against data instead of the other way around.
Observe law, deduce law and test against data: falsification of deductivism.
For Popper, science is the continual invention of falsifiable hypotheses and their empirical test.
Demarcation criteria
A hypothesis is scientific iff it is empirically falsifiable, risky. Not falsifiable: universe is governed by love and hate.
Popper and Economists
Popper’s falsification seemed attractive to economists because it offered the possibility of turning economics into a respectable science, but didn’t fit the practice of econ very well, some elements of economic theory don’t even really seem falsifiable like utility theory.
This led to either saying econ is not a science or falsification is not a scientific method.
Kuhn and Paradigm theory
Paradigm theory is a descriptive.
Goal: norms articulate by Popper are wrong, people do not behave as Popper suggests they should.
Paradigm theory describes sciences with a cyclical phase model going from pre-science, to normal science to revolutionary science, to normal to rev…
Phases of paradigm theory
First phase of Kuhn’s paradigm theory. Various schools compete with fundamentally different view points.
One school uses an extraordinarily convincing solution to issues in the fiels and people congregate to this school. Normal science: single practice with consensus and same framework. Research activity is implicitly governed by these paradigms. Quasi dogmatic element since framework is not called into question as it is in popper.
Significant anomalies turn up, hinder normal practice , paradigm comes into question and a new solution comes and it’s a new phase.
Kuhn questions
Are there economic paradigms with unanimous research tradition of normal science? Are there economic scientific revolutions in which traditioon of normal science is then replaced by another?
There are currents in economics. Revolutions don’t replace previous traditions, they integrate them.
Lakotas
Tries to install popperian critical framework into Kuhnian framework of scientific development.
Popper to him was naive in his falsification method so he developes a more sophisticated one.
The proper subject of philosophy of science is not a single theory but the research programs: successive modifications of an initial theory. The modifications come from two sources:
- negative heuristics: hard core element, untouchable like newtons law
- positive heuristics: new hypothesis to protect hard core from research program falsification (think rationality)
With Popper you observe a deviation from the core, and falsify it. For Latakos we find an auxiliary plausible reason we might observe the deviation and protect the core.
Lakatos acceptance rule
Lakatos replaces Poppr’s demarcation criteria with acceptance rule of scientific research; a sequence of theories is theoretically progressive if it produces unfalsifiable content and surprising predictions every now and then.
Lakatos falsitication rule
The falsification rule lakatos uses is different:
A theory is rejected iff it is part of a progressive sequence of theories and excess empirical content of the next theory is empirically confirmed (important deviation from Popper), the test is against theories vis à vis the data, not a single theory against the data.
A research program is rejectid iff it is superseded by an alternative research program which explains success of previous program and is stronger and theoretically more progressive. Competition among research programs.
Lakatos and economics
More attractive to economics, more adequate to the economic endeavour.
Issues : What is the hard core of neoclassical economics? Does research really supersede because of empirical strenght or other factors?
Oriental paradigms
OPs are shared across the communities and communities are aware of that, all economists know of the shared OPs. They are not generally binding guidelines for research, they are more points of reference. OPs can be critizised openly during normal science phase.
Economics has these OPs which gives economics a strange position between naturlal (common paradigms but here non binding) and social sciences. (lack of common ground, but social sciences have much less OPs).
Systematic theory
Covers all fields of science including non empirical ones. Main claim is that scientific knowledge differs from every day knowledge by being more systematic, sciences has a higher degree of systematicity. Progress of science is increase of systematicity in all 9 dimensions. For OP we focius on two:
- Epistemic correctness, different parts of science cohere with one another. OPs increase degree of epistemic correctness because there are points of orientation.
- Critical discourse: you need institutions that foster critical discourse and OPs facilitate this because different schoos have same point of reference.
So this is the advantage of having OPS, according to systematic theory.
