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  1. The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics.Daniel M. Hausman - 1992 - Cambridge University Press.
    This book offers a comprehensive overview of the structure, strategy and methods of assessment of orthodox theoretical economics. In Part I Professor Hausman explains how economists theorise, emphasising the essential underlying commitment of economists to a vision of economics as a separate science. In Part II he defends the view that the basic axioms of economics are 'inexact' since they deal only with the 'major' causes; unlike most writers on economic methodology, the author argues that it is the rules that (...)
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  • Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Bas C. van Fraassen presents an original exploration of how we represent the world.
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  • On the method of isolation in economics.Uskali Mäki - 1992 - Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 26:19-54.
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  • (1 other version)MISSing the World. Models as Isolations and Credible Surrogate Systems.Uskali Mäki - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (1):29-43.
    This article shows how the MISS account of models—as isolations and surrogate systems—accommodates and elaborates Sugden’s account of models as credible worlds and Hausman’s account of models as explorations. Theoretical models typically isolate by means of idealization, and they are representatives of some target system, which prompts issues of resemblance between the two to arise. Models as representations are constrained both ontologically (by their targets) and pragmatically (by the purposes and audiences of the modeller), and these relations are coordinated by (...)
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  • Appraising Models Nonrepresentationally.Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (5):850-861.
    Many scientific models lack an established representation relation to actual targets and instead refer to merely possible processes, background conditions, and results. This article shows how such models can be appraised. On the basis of the discussion of how-possibly explanations, five types of learning opportunities are distinguished. For each of these types, an example—from economics, biology, psychology, and sociology—is discussed. Contexts and purposes are identified in which the use of a model offers a genuine opportunity to learn. These learning opportunities (...)
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  • (1 other version)Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World.Wesley C. Salmon - 1984 - Princeton University Press.
    The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...)
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  • The invisible hand in economics: how economists explain unintended social consequences.N. Emrah Aydinonat - 2008 - New York: Routledge.
    Introduction -- Unintended consequences -- The origin of money -- Segregation -- The invisible hand -- The origin of money reconsidered -- Models and representation -- Game theory and conventions -- Conclusion.
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  • Making things happen: a theory of causal explanation.James F. Woodward - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.
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  • Nature's capacities and their measurement.Nancy Cartwright - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Ever since David Hume, empiricists have barred powers and capacities from nature. In this book Cartwright argues that capacities are essential in our scientific world, and, contrary to empiricist orthodoxy, that they can meet sufficiently strict demands for testability. Econometrics is one discipline where probabilities are used to measure causal capacities, and the technology of modern physics provides several examples of testing capacities (such as lasers). Cartwright concludes by applying the lessons of the book about capacities and probabilities to the (...)
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  • The Methodology of Positive Economics.Milton Friedman - 1953 - In Essays in Positive Economics. University of Chicago Press. pp. 3-43.
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  • Making models count.Anna Alexandrova - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (3):383-404.
    What sort of claims do scientific models make and how do these claims then underwrite empirical successes such as explanations and reliable policy interventions? In this paper I propose answers to these questions for the class of models used throughout the social and biological sciences, namely idealized deductive ones with a causal interpretation. I argue that the two main existing accounts misrepresent how these models are actually used, and propose a new account. *Received July 2006; revised August 2008. †To contact (...)
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  • (1 other version)Models in Science (2nd edition).Roman Frigg & Stephan Hartmann - 2021 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as inflationary models in cosmology, general-circulation models of the global climate, the double-helix model of DNA, evolutionary models in biology, agent-based models in the social sciences, and general-equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains is a case in point (the Other Internet Resources section at the end of this entry contains links to online resources that discuss these models). Scientists spend significant amounts of time building, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Philosophy of economics.Daniel M. Hausman - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This is a comprehensive anthology of works concerning the nature of economics as a science, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Apart from the classics, most of the selections in the third edition are new, as are the introduction and bibliography. No other anthology spans the whole field and offers a comprehensive introduction to questions about economic methodology.
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  • Robustness Analysis.Michael Weisberg - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):730-742.
    Modelers often rely on robustness analysis, the search for predictions common to several independent models. Robustness analysis has been characterized and championed by Richard Levins and William Wimsatt, who see it as central to modern theoretical practice. The practice has also been severely criticized by Steven Orzack and Elliott Sober, who claim that it is a nonempirical form of confirmation, effective only under unusual circumstances. This paper addresses Orzack and Sober's criticisms by giving a new account of robustness analysis and (...)
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  • Explanatory unification.Philip Kitcher - 1981 - Philosophy of Science 48 (4):507-531.
    The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...)
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  • Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Wesley Salmon.James H. Fetzer - 1987 - Philosophy of Science 54 (4):597-610.
    If the decades of the forties through the sixties were dominated by discussion of Hempel's “covering law“ explication of explanation, that of the seventies was preoccupied with Salmon's “statistical relevance” conception, which emerged as the principal alternative to Hempel's enormously influential account. Readers of Wesley C. Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, therefore, ought to find it refreshing to discover that its author has not remained content with a facile defense of his previous investigations; on the (...)
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  • Contested modelling: The case of economics.Uskali Mäki - 2013 - In Ulrich Gähde, Stephan Hartmann & Jörn Henning Wolf (eds.), Models, Simulations, and the Reduction of Complexity. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 87-106.
    Economics is a culturally and politically powerful and contested discipline, and it has been that way as long as it has existed. For some commentators, economics is the "queen of the social sciences", while others view it as a "dismal science" (and both of these epithets allow for diverse interpretations; see Mäki 2002). Economics is also a discipline that deals with a dynamically complex subject matter and has a tradition of reducing this complexity by using systematic procedures of simplification. Nowadays, (...)
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  • Realistic realism about unrealistic models.Uskali Mäki - 2009 - In Don Ross & Harold Kincaid (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    My philosophical intuitions are those of a scientific realist. In addition to being realist in its philosophical outlook, my philosophy of economics also aspires to be realistic in the sense of being descriptively adequate, or at least normatively non-utopian, about economics as a scientific discipline. The special challenge my philosophy of economics must meet is to provide a scientific realist account that is realistic of a discipline that deals with a complex subject matter and operates with highly unrealistic models. Unrealisticness (...)
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  • Models and the locus of their truth.Uskali Mäki - 2011 - Synthese 180 (1):47 - 63.
    If models can be true, where is their truth located? Giere (Explaining science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998) has suggested an account of theoretical models on which models themselves are not truth-valued. The paper suggests modifying Giere’s account without going all the way to purely pragmatic conceptions of truth—while giving pragmatics a prominent role in modeling and truth-acquisition. The strategy of the paper is to ask: if I want to relocate truth inside models, how do I get it, what (...)
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  • Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination (1981).William C. Wimsatt - 2012 - In Lena Soler (ed.), Characterizing the robustness of science: after the practice turn in philosophy of science. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 61-78.
    The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...)
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  • Building economic machines: The FCC auctions.Francesco Guala - 2001 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 32 (3):453-477.
    The auctions of the Federal Communication Commission, designed in 1994 to sell spectrum licences, are one of the few widely acclaimed and copied cases of economic engineering to date. This paper includes a detailed narrative of the process of designing, testing and implementing the FCC auctions, focusing in particular on the role played by game theoretical modelling and laboratory experimentation. Some general remarks about the scope, interpretation and use of rational choice models open and conclude the paper.
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  • Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics.Nancy Cartwright (ed.) - 2007 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of causal relations, each with different characterizing features, different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays, Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods - and it exposes (...)
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  • The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics by Daniel M. Hausman. [REVIEW]Alex Rosenberg - 1993 - Journal of Philosophy 90 (10):533-537.
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  • Explanation.Julian Reiss - 2008 - In New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.
    Explaining socio-economic phenomena is one important aim of economics. There is very little agreement, however, on what precisely constitutes an adequate economic explanation. Starting from the very influential but defective ‘deductive-nomological model’ of explanation, this article describes and criticizes the major contemporary competitors for such an account (the probabilistic–causal, the mechanistic–causal and the unificationist models) and argues that none of them can by itself capture all aspects of a good explanation. When seeking to explain a socio-economic phenomenon it should therefore (...)
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  • Playing with networks: how economists explain. [REVIEW]Caterina Marchionni - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3 (3):331-352.
    Network theory is applied across the sciences to study phenomena as diverse as the spread of SARS, the topology of the cell, the structure of the Internet and job search behaviour. Underlying the study of networks is graph theory. Whether the graph represents a network of neurons, cells, friends or firms, it displays features that exclusively depend on the mathematical properties of the graph itself. However, the way in which graph theory is implemented to the modelling of networks differs significantly (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Philosophical Papers, Volume II.David Lewis - 1986 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    A collection of 13 papers by David Lewis, written on a variety of topics including causation, counterfactuals and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, explanation, perception, free will, and rational decision. The conclusions reached include the claim that time travel is possible, that counterfactual dependence is asymmetrical, that events are properties of spatiotemporal regions, that the Prisoners’ Dilemma is a Newcomb problem, and that causation can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual dependence between events. These papers (...)
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  • Why Look Under the Hood?Daniel Hausman - 1992 - In Daniel M. Hausman (ed.), Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70-73.
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  • Explanatory Unification: Double and Doubtful.Uskali Mäki - 2001 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 31 (4):488-506.
    Explanatory unification—the urge to “explain much by little”—serves as an ideal of theorizing not only in natural sciences but also in the social sciences, most notably in economics. The ideal is occasionally challenged by appealing to the complexity and diversity of social systems and processes in space and time. This article proposes to accommodate such doubts by making a distinction between two kinds of unification and suggesting that while such doubts may be justified in regard to mere derivational unification (which (...)
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  • Models, Representation, and Mediation.Tarja Knuuttila - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1260-1271.
    Representation has been one of the main themes in the recent discussion of models. Several authors have argued for a pragmatic approach to representation that takes users and their interpretations into account. It appears to me, however, that this emphasis on representation places excessive limitations on our view of models and their epistemic value. Models should rather be thought of as epistemic artifacts through which we gain knowledge in diverse ways. Approaching models this way stresses their materiality and media-specificity. Focusing (...)
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  • The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics.David Phillips & Daniel M. Hausman - 1994 - Philosophical Review 103 (2):348.
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  • Learning from Minimal Economic Models.Till Grüne-Yanoff - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (1):81-99.
    It is argued that one can learn from minimal economic models. Minimal models are models that are not similar to the real world, do not resemble some of its features, and do not adhere to accepted regularities. One learns from a model if constructing and analysing the model affects one’s confidence in hypotheses about the world. Economic models, I argue, are often assessed for their credibility. If a model is judged credible, it is considered to be a relevant possibility. Considering (...)
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  • Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. [REVIEW]Jeffrey S. Poland - 1988 - Philosophical Review 100 (4):653-656.
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  • Economic models.Allan Gibbard & Hal R. Varian - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (11):664-677.
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  • (1 other version)MISSing the World. Models as Isolations and Credible Surrogate Systems.Uskali Mäki - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (1):29-43.
    This article shows how the MISS account of models—as isolations and surrogate systems—accommodates and elaborates Sugden’s account of models as credible worlds and Hausman’s account of models as explorations. Theoretical models typically isolate by means of idealization, and they are representatives of some target system, which prompts issues of resemblance between the two to arise. Models as representations are constrained both ontologically (by their targets) and pragmatically (by the purposes and audiences of the modeller), and these relations are coordinated by (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Causality, invariance and policy.Nancy Cartwright - 2009 - In .
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  • Explaining Science.Ronald Giere - 1991 - Noûs 25 (3):386-388.
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  • If No Capacities Then No Credible Worlds. But Can Models Reveal Capacities?Nancy Cartwright - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (1):45-58.
    This paper argues that even when simple analogue models picture parallel worlds, they generally still serve as isolating tools. But there are serious obstacles that often stop them isolating in just the right way. These are obstacles that face any model that functions as a thought-experiment but they are especially pressing for economic models because of the paucity of economic principles. Because of the paucity of basic principles, economic models are rich in structural assumptions. Without these no interesting conclusions can (...)
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  • The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think.Mary S. Morgan - 2012 - Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
    During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. (...)
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  • Models in Economics.Marcel Boumans - 2004 - In John Bryan Davis & Alain Marciano (eds.), The Elgar companion to economics and philosophy. Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar. pp. 260--282.
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  • Connecting economic models to the real world: Game theory and the fcc spectrum auctions.Anna Alexandrova - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (2):173-192.
    Can social phenomena be understood by analyzing their parts? Contemporary economic theory often assumes that they can. The methodology of constructing models which trace the behavior of perfectly rational agents in idealized environments rests on the premise that such models, while restricted, help us isolate tendencies, that is, the stable separate effects of economic causes that can be used to explain and predict economic phenomena. In this paper, I question both the claim that models in economics supply claims about tendencies (...)
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  • Review of M aking Things Happen. [REVIEW]Eric Hiddleston - 2005 - Philosophical Review 114 (4):545-547.
    Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defences, objections, and replies into a convincing defence of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyse causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.
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  • Review of Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. [REVIEW]James Woodward - 1988 - Noûs 22 (2):322-324.
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  • (1 other version)Philosophical Papers, Volume II.Frank Jackson - 1989 - Journal of Philosophy 86 (8):433-437.
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  • Making it Explicit.Isaac Levi & Robert B. Brandom - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):145.
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  • Incredible Worlds, Credible Results.Jaakko Kuorikoski & Aki Lehtinen - 2009 - Erkenntnis 70 (1):119-131.
    Robert Sugden argues that robustness analysis cannot play an epistemic role in grounding model-world relationships because the procedure is only a matter of comparing models with each other. We posit that this argument is based on a view of models as being surrogate systems in too literal a sense. In contrast, the epistemic importance of robustness analysis is easy to explicate if modelling is viewed as extended cognition, as inference from assumptions to conclusions. Robustness analysis is about assessing the reliability (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Causality, invariance and policy.Nancy Cartwright - 2009 - In . pp. 410--421.
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  • 7 Econometrics and reality.Kevin D. Hoover - 2002 - In Uskali Mäki (ed.), Fact and Fiction in Economics: Models, Realism and Social Construction. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 152.
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  • The Methodology of Economics.M. Blaug - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (3):289-295.
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