In a number of very influential publications, Epstein and Hoover (among other authors) have recently argued that a thoroughly micro-foundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. However, as we show in this article, this metaphysical/social ontological approach to the debate fails to resolve the status of micro-foundations in the practice of economic modelling. To overcome this, we argue that endogenizing a model—that is, providing micro-foundations for it—correlates with making that model more complex. Specifically, we show that models with (...) more micro-foundations tend to have more parameters or variables. This matters, as there are well-established methodological reasons for preferring models with fewer parameters or variables—ceteris paribus. We therefore conclude that, from a practice-based point of view, micro-foundations are only defensible to the extent that they significantly improve the ability of the relevant model to fit the data of interest. In this way, we arrive at a practice-based, methodological reconceptualization of the debate surrounding the need for micro-foundations in economics. (shrink)

The idea that mechanisms are crucially important to differentiate between genuine and spurious causal relations is ubiquitous both in the philosophical and in the social scientific literature. Yet...

The predictive inadequacy of the social sciences is well documented, and philosophers have sought to diagnose it. This paper examines Brian Epstein’s recent diagnosis. He argues that the social sciences treat the social world as entirely composed of individual people. Instead, social scientists should recognize that material, non-individualistic entities determine the social world, as well. First, I argue that Epstein’s argument both begs the question against his opponents and is not sufficiently charitable. Second, I present doubts that his proposal will (...) improve predictive success for the social sciences, which I support with Edith Penrose’s resource-based theory of the firm. (shrink)

This article argues that a particular notion of rationality, more exactly a specific notion of legitimate inference, is presupposed by much work in the social sciences to their detriment. The author describes the notion of rationality he has in mind, explains why it is misguided, identifies where and how it affects social research, and illustrates why that research is weaker as a result. The notion of legitimate inference the author has in mind is one that believes inferences are guided by (...) principles that are formal, universal and a priori—that is, that make no substantive, domain-specific empirical assumptions about the world. The author briefly provides a variety of reasons to be skeptical about such principles. Those reasons extend from broad philosophical considerations to quasi-empirical evidence. The author then argues that this notion of inference is involved with both the practice and the content of the social sciences in various ways. In terms of practice, this notion of inference lies behind the way statistical testing is generally done in the social sciences. In terms of content, the author argues that this notion of rationality is invoked, for example, in game theory and in rational expectations macroeconomics. In all cases, use of the formal rationality notion leads social scientists to put more faith in their results than is warranted and thus is an obstacle to doing better social science. (shrink)

This article first surveys a significant set of issues that are intertwined in asking whether social classes are real. It distinguishes two different notions of class: class as organized social entities and class as types of individuals based on individual characteristics. There is good evidence for some classes as social entities—ruling classes and underclasses in some societies—but other classes in contemporary society are sometimes best thought of in terms of types, not social entities. Implications are drawn for pluralist accounts of (...) social classification and the individualism-holism dispute. (shrink)

Agent-based models are increasingly important in social science research. They have two obvious apparent virtues: they can model complex macrosociological phenomena without strong assumptions about agents and without analytic solutions for models, and they seem to instantiate the methodological individualist program in a concrete way. We argue that the latter claim is false. After providing schematic accounts of ABM models and a first introduction to ways in which to characterize individualist explanations, we work through six conceptions of individualist explanations that (...) are decreasingly "less individualist" and argue that ABM-based explanations in the social sciences are not inevitably individualist in any of these senses. ABMs allow for explanatory relations among social entities and properties in the model environment and they are silent on what basic agents are, allowing social entities and properties to play basic explanatory roles. (shrink)