What does it mean to say that a theory represents the targeted phenomenon that it aims to explain? Our interpretation of “representation” is closely related to the methodological position that we would adopt in answering the question of realism in science. As is pointed out by Nancy Cartwright, according to the traditional syntactic approach of explaining scientific theorization, the question of realism is about how accurately the sciences can represent the world; in the semantic approach, however, the focus of the (...) question shifts to a concern about the range of science—i.e., how much of the world the sciences can represent. This shift in the methodological concern is by no means trivial; it indicates that there is a change of content in the concept of representation from a static idea to a dynamic one. The static idea of representation concerns how reliably the formal structure of a class of sentences—i.e., the formal structure of a theory—can stand for the targeted phenomenon. The dynamic idea, however, perceives a theory as a class of models and explores the development of these models; that is, the dynamic idea of representation investigates how a theorizer uses these models to stand for reality. As a consequence of this shift from a static to a dynamic mode of thinking, it seems that model-building constitutes the main content of the concept of representation. By comparing two differing contemporary accounts of the nature of economic models and presenting a case study in economic theorizing, this paper argues that representation is a process of economists’ repeatedly using “realistic representation of the isolated unrealistic world” at each step of their theorizing to build up a class of “unrealistic constructed credible worlds.”. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to the study of the philosophical notions of mechanisms and causality in biology and economics. This chapter sets the stage for this volume, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, in three ways. First, it gives a broad review of the recent changes and current state of the study of mechanisms and causality in the philosophy of science. Second, consistent with a recent trend in the philosophy of science to focus on scientific practices, it in (...) turn implies the importance of studying the scientific methods employed by researchers. Finally, by way of providing an overview of each chapter in the volume, this chapter demonstrates that biology and economics are two fertile fields for the philosophy of science and shows how biological and economic mechanisms and causality can be synthesized. (shrink)

This article argues that the credibility of both theoretical and empirical models in economics is best understood through their connection with the empirical aspects of the real world. The discussion herein demonstrates that the similarity between the model and the real world is not enough to justify a theoretical model’s explanatory power. The best way to secure the model’s credibility is to prove the existence of representation theorems.