The Received View of Science week 1 Economic Methodology

Course information Marcel Boumans lectures E9.13,  4197 Wednesday11:00-13:00all groupsA4.04 Murat Kotan classes E9.08,  4299 Thursday13:00-15:00group 1E1.50 Thursday15:00-17:00group 2E0.09

Assessment Written examination: January 25, 9:00-11:00. Max. 20% exemption possible: 2 presentations in class see Requirements presentation on blackboard

Reading material Reader Economic Methodology Including entries from The Handbook of Economic Methodology.

Reading schedule Wk 1: Ch.1, Positivism, Scientific Explanation Wk 2: Ch. 2, Instrumentalism, Friedman, As if Wk 3: Ch. 3, Duhem-Quine Thesis, Falsificationism, Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes Wk 4: Ch. 4, Paradigm/Normal Science, Relativism Wk 5: Ch. 5, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Reflexivity, Constructivism Wk 6: Ch. 6, Rhetoric, Poststructuralism, Methodological Pluralism Wk 7: Ch. 7, Positive-Normative Distinction, Economics and Ethics, Economics as a Profession

David Hume ( ) When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. - An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung Der Wiener Kreis 1929 Purity and clarity are aimed at, dark distances and unfathomable depths declined. In science there are no ‘depths,’ all over is surface... Published by Ernst Mach Society Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, Kurt Gödel, Phillip Frank, Viktor Kraft and Moritz Schlick

Judgement of... Eureka! Context of DiscoveryContext of Justification Research results

Logical reconstruction Syntactics: logical structure First-order language variablesx, y, z, … functions and predicatesA, B, C logical symbols  (‘not’)  (‘and’)  (‘or’)  (‘if … then’)  (‘for all individuals  (‘for some individual’)

Axiomatization Axiom 1Axiom 2…Axiom n S1 S2S3 SmSm

Meaningful sentences Analytical statements: true by definition e.g. “A dog is an animal.” “5 + 3 = 8.” Synthetic statements a posteriori: e.g. “Bulldogs are dangerous.” “The US unemployment rate is 4.7% in Oct ”

Synthetic a priori statements E.g. “Every object or event that occurs within the spatio-temporal universe has a cause.” Analytical Synthetic a posteriori

Scientific explanation Explanation is an answer to a ‘why?’-question. Carl Hempel deductive-nomological (DN) model: True statements of initial conditions: c 1, …, c n Laws: L 1, …, L m _____________________________________ Explanandum: E

Law (nomos) Syntactic definition:  x[A(x)  B(x)] Semantic requirements: not accidental = unrestricted universal: not for a particular object only and not for a definite date or temporal period

Examples “The surnames of all students taking Economic Methodology consist of less than 20 letters.” “Copper expands on heating.” “As the price of a good or service increases, consumer demand for the good or service will decrease and vice versa.”

Symmetry thesis Explanations: Prediction: initial conditions ? _____________ explanandum ? laws _____________ explanandum initial conditions laws _____________ ?

The problem of induction All swans we have observed are white.  ? All swans are white. Is the next swan we will observe necessarily white?

Instrumentalism Laws are not meaningful but useful: Their truth value is not crucial but how effective laws are in explaining and predicting phenomena. Moritz Schlick ( )

Confirmationism Probabilistic laws  x[A(x)  B(x)] A(a) ____________ B(a) Rudolf Carnap ( ) y%y% y%y%

The problem of operationalisation F = m  a acceleration (a): defined in terms of ‘time’ and ‘position’, measured with a clock and a meter. mass (m): defined in terms of weight, measured with a spring balance at sea level on the equator. Force (F): ?