L'objet de cet article est de présenter et discuter les objections d'inspiration anti-réaliste qui sont adressées au programme de modélisation de la rationalité limitée dans les sciences de la décision, et en particulier dans les sciences économiques. Après avoir reconstruit ces objections dans leurs diverses variantes, nous proposons un argument qui entend contrer de manière constructive la variante que nous appelons comportementale, selon laquelle les modèles de décision ne doivent être évalués qu'en fonction de leur capacité à décrire les comportements (...) individuels. Cet argument repose sur les avancées récentes de la théorie de la décision expérimentale et fait appel à la prise en compte de données cognitives. This paper discusses anti-realist objections against the bounded rationality research program in decision sciences. After a reconstruction of several versions of these objections, we expose an argument against the so-called behavioral version of the anti-realist objection according to which decision models should be assessed exclusively on the basis of behavioral data. Our argument relies on recent advances in experimental decision theory, especially on works that collect and exploit cognitive data. (shrink)

In this paper I study how the theoretical categories of consumption theory were used by Milton Friedman in order to classify empirical data and obtain predictions. Friedman advocated a case by case definition of these categories that traded theoretical coherence for empirical content. I contend that this methodological strategy puts a clear incentive to contest any prediction contrary to our interest: it can always be argued that these predictions rest on a wrong classification of data. My conjecture is that this (...) methodological strategy can contribute to explain why Friedman’s predictions never generated the consensus he expected among his peers. (shrink)

This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the pointlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to this thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establish radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called “instrumentalist” thesis, when applied by Friedman to economics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious problems than the standard instrumentalist thesis (...) devised by some methodologists of physics. To disentangle these ambiguities concerning realism and instrumentalism applied to physics or to economics, this paper refers to Van Fraassen's “constructive empiricism”, which is helpful in reformulating, in a more satisfactory way, the essentials of Friedman's considerations about empiricism and anti-realism. (shrink)

This essay attempts to distinguish the pressing issues for economists and economic methodologists concerning realism in economics from those issues that are of comparatively slight importance. In particular I shall argue that issues concerning the goals of science are of considerable interest in economics, unlike issues concerning the evidence for claims about unobservables, which have comparatively little relevance. In making this argument, this essay raises doubts about the two programs in contemporary economic methodology that raise the banner of realism. In (...) particular I argue that the banner makes it more difficult to relate the concerns of those who wave it to those of other methodologists. Although this essay argues that many of the debates in this century between scientific realists and their opponents are not relevant to economics, it does not attack scientific realism, and it does not urge economists or economic methodologists to reject it. (shrink)