À la fin des années 1990, plusieurs tendances convergentes en économie, psychologie et neuroscience ont préparé le terrain pour la naissance d’un nouveau champ scientifique qualifié de « neuroéconomie ». Comme pour toute discipline émergente – pensons par exemple à l’économie mathématique, l’économétrie ou l’économie expérimentale en d’autres temps – la neuroéconomie est plutôt controversée en économie. Elle soulève un grand nombre de questions d’ordre empirique, méthodologique et philosophiques donnant lieu à des débats et controverses que l’article identifie et discute (...) à travers trois questions majeures relatives aux connaissances produites : Sont-elles fiables? Sont-elles scientifiquement légitimes? Sont-elles utiles pour les économistes? Sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, ce cadre analytique permet de comprendre l’essence des principales critiques adressées à la neuroéconomie. Dans le même temps, l’article éclaire la nature des réponses susceptibles d’être apportées à ces critiques au vu des progrès conceptuels et empiriques qu’a connus ce champ de recherche depuis son émergence et à la lumière du tournant apparu dans l’agenda de la neuroéconomie au cours de la dernière décennie. JEL Codes : A12, B41, C51, C81, C9, D03, D87. (shrink)

This paper aims (a) to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and (b) to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that ‘all models are false’, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as ‘partial’ or ‘approximate’. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: (1) Once we have usefulness, truth (...) is redundant. (2) There is something disturbing about causal structure. (3) It's better to do what one can than to chase rainbows. (shrink)

Compared to other philosophies of special sciences, the scope, object, and definition of the philosophy of political science remain vague. This article traces this vagueness to the changing subject matter of political science throughout its history, but argues that all social sciences are subject to radical changes in what count as their defining characteristics. Accordingly, the only legitimate definition of “philosophy of political science” is “the philosophical study of whatever happens to conventionally fall within the scope of political science at (...) a given moment.” Moving from this assumption, this article makes the case for a unified philosophy of social science. (shrink)

USKALI MÄKI (Helsinki, 1951) is a philosopher of science and a social scientist, and one of the forerunners of the strong wave of research on the philosophy and methodology of economics that has been expanding during the last three decades. His research interests and academic contributions cover many topics in the philosophy of economics, such as realism and realisticness, idealisation, scientific modelling, causation, explanation, rhetoric, the sociology and economics of economics, and the foundations of new institutional and Austrian economics. He (...) is a coeditor of The handbook of economic methodology (1998); Economics and methodology: crossing boundaries (1998); Rationality, institutions and economic methodology (1993). And the editor of two compilations of essays that have become highly influential to the shaping of the field: The economic world view: studies in the ontology of economics (2001), and Fact and fiction in economics: realism, models, and social construction (2002). (shrink)

Is subjective expert judgment a source of evidence in economics? In this paper, I will argue that it is, on a par with other sources like modeling, statistics, experimental, etc. I will also argue that it is not derivative, that is, reducible to the previous ones. But what is exactly the role of experts in economics? The contribution to the current methodological debate that I propose not only takes the role of expertise in economics as indispensable, but also suggests a (...) need for a methodology associated with that role. I defend an indispensability argument, and indirectly David Colander's plea for refocusing the methodological debate on the lost art of economics. Finally, I indicate where to look for guidelines in formulating a methodology of economic expertise. (shrink)

Uskali Mäki has offered an innovative scientific realist account of Milton Friedman’s 1953 essay, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, which directly challenges the dominant instrumentalist interpretation. This paper offers critical reflections on Mäki’s approach and interpretation. It is argued that Mäki’s method of rereading-rewriting the text is problematic; that an unforced instrumentalist account of unrealistic assumptions can be extracted from the text itself; and that seemingly realist passages can be plausibly read as expressing an instrumentalist stance.

The paper seeks to offer [1] an explication of a concept of economics imperialism, focusing on its epistemic aspects; and [2] criteria for its normative assessment. In regard to [1], the defining notion is that of explanatory unification across disciplinary boundaries. As to [2], three kinds of constraints are proposed. An ontological constraint requires an increased degree of ontological unification in contrast to mere derivational unification. An axiological constraint derives from variation in the perceived relative significance of the facts explained. (...) An epistemological constraint requires strong fallibilism acknowledging a particularly severe epistemic uncertainty and proscribing against over-confident arrogance. (shrink)

Corporate/collective moral responsibility is a thorny topic in business ethics and this paper argues that this is due a number of unacknowledged and connected epistemic issues. Firstly, CSR, Corporate Citizenship and many other research streams that are based on the assumption of collective and/or corporate moral responsibility are not compatible with Kantian ethics, consequentialism, or virtue ethics because corporate/collective responsibility violates the axioms and central hypotheses of these research programmes. Secondly, in the absence of a sound theoretical moral philosophical foundation, (...) business ethicists have based their ideas on legal and political epistemologies, yet still claim to be ethics-based. Thirdly, research is often driven by an intention to prove that a specific social goal is right, not by open and critical inquiry. Finally, today, corporate/collective moral responsibility is widely accepted as the Truth as most researchers are unaware of any issues because they are untrained in philosophy. The paper identifies the confusion about the epistemic basis as a major impediment for delivering a thick concept of the role of corporations as moral agents. Thus, the paper does not argue against corporate or collective agency as such, but points out an obvious but forgotten paradox: corporate and collective personhood cannot, at the moment at least, be epistemologically grounded in the field in which business ethics claims to operate: moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper's purpose is to set forth the conditions of explanation in the domain of formal modelling of social action. Explanation is defined as an adequate account of the underlying factors bringing about a phenomenon. The modelling of a social phenomenon can claim explanatory value in this sense if the following two conditions are fulfilled. (1) The generative mechanisms involved translate the effects of real factors abstracted from their phenomenal context, not those of purely ideal ones. (2) The explanatory hypotheses, (...) which account for the effects of explanatory factors, and the purely descriptive hypotheses, which introduce conceptual simplifications and summarise complex secondary mechanisms, are relatively independent from each other with regard to the phenomenon represented. This condition subjects the model to testing by alternatives through the development of purely descriptive hypotheses in the sense of explanatory or analytical realism. (shrink)