In the Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training program (MB-EAT) (Kristeller and Wolever, 2014; Kristeller and Wolever, in press), mindfulness practice is taught, mindful eating is cultivated, and self-acceptance and spiritual well-being are enhanced. An integrative concept is the value of cultivating ‘wisdom’ in regard to creating a new and sustainable relationship to eating and food. ‘Wisdom’ refers to drawing on personal experience and understanding in a flexible, insightful manner, rather than strictly following external rules and guidelines. Several clinical trials involving variations (...) of MB-EAT have documented substantive improvement in how people relate to their eating, including individuals with both binge eating disorder (BED) and subclinical eating issues. Based on the traditional value of contemplative practices for cultivating spiritual engagement, and on evidence from related research showing that spiritual well-being increases in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program and is related to other effects, we hypothesized that the MB-EAT program would also engage this aspect of experience, as assessed by the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Spiritual Well-Being subscale (FACIT-Sp), and that increases in spiritual well-being would relate to other measures of adjustment such as emotional balance and improvement in disordered eating. Participants (N = 117) with moderate to morbid obesity, including 25.6% with BED, were randomly assi... (shrink)

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample (...) – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward. (shrink)

Appendix 1 was incomplete in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

Work on a computer program called SMILE + IBP (SMart Index Learner Plus Issue-Based Prediction) bridges case-based reasoning and extracting information from texts. The program addresses a technologically challenging task that is also very relevant from a legal viewpoint: to extract information from textual descriptions of the facts of decided cases and apply that information to predict the outcomes of new cases. The program attempts to automatically classify textual descriptions of the facts of legal problems in terms of Factors, a (...) set of classification concepts that capture stereotypical fact patterns that effect the strength of a legal claim, here trade secret misappropriation. Using these classifications, the program can evaluate and explain predictions about a problem’s outcome given a database of previously classified cases. This paper provides an extended example illustrating both functions, prediction by IBP and text classification by SMILE, and reports empirical evaluations of each. While IBP’s results are quite strong, and SMILE’s much weaker, SMILE + IBP still has some success predicting and explaining the outcomes of case scenarios input as texts. It marks the first time to our knowledge that a program can reason automatically about legal case texts. (shrink)

Reasoners compare problems to prior cases to draw conclusions about a problem and guide decision making. All Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) employs some methods for generalizing from cases to support indexing and relevance assessment and evidences two basic inference methods: constraining search by tracing a solution from a past case or evaluating a case by comparing it to past cases. Across domains and tasks, however, humans reason with cases in subtly different ways evidencing different mixes of and mechanisms for these components.In (...) recent CBR research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), five paradigmatic approaches have emerged: statistically-oriented, model-based, planning/design-oriented, exemplar-based, and adversarial or precedent-based. The paradigms differ in the assumptions they make about domain models, the extent to which they support symbolic case comparison, and the kinds of inferences for which they employ cases. (shrink)

This article describes recent jurisprudential accountsof analogical legal reasoning andcompares them in detail to the computational modelof case-based legal argument inCATO. The jurisprudential models provide a theoryof relevance based on low-levellegal principles generated in a process ofcase-comparing reflective adjustment. Thejurisprudential critique focuses on the problemsof assigning weights to competingprinciples and dealing with erroneously decidedprecedents. CATO, a computerizedinstructional environment, employs ArtificialIntelligence techniques to teach lawstudents how to make basic legal argumentswith cases. The computational modelhelps students test legal hypotheses againsta database of (...) legal cases, draws analogiesto problem scenarios from the database, andcomposes arguments by analogy with a setof argument moves. The CATO model accountsfor a number of the important featuresof the jurisprudential accounts, includingimplementing a kind of reflective adjustment.It also avoids some of the problems identifiedin the critique; for instance, it deals withweights in a non-numeric, context-sensitivemanner. The article concludes by describingthe contributions AI research can make tojurisprudential investigations of complexcognitive phenomena of legal reasoning. Forinstance, unlike the jurisprudential models,CATO provides a detailed account of how togenerate multiple interpretations of a citedcase, downplaying or emphasizing the legalsignificance of distinctions in terms of thepurposes of the law as the argument contextdemands. (shrink)

Causality in Macroeconomics examines causality while taking macroeconomics seriously. A pragmatic and realistic philosophy is joined to a macroeconomic foundation that refines Herbert Simon's well-known work on causal order to make a case for a structural approach to causality. The structural approach is used to understand modern rational expectations models, regime switching models, Granger causality, vector autoregressions, the Lucas critique, and concept exogeneity. Techniques of causal inference based on patterns of stability and instability in the face of identified regime changes (...) are developed and illustrated in two empirical case studies. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of, and thematic justification for, the special issue of the journal of Artificial Intelligence and Law entitled “E-Discovery”. In attempting to define a characteristic “AI & Law” approach to e-discovery, and since a central theme of AI & Law involves computationally modeling legal knowledge, reasoning and decision making, we focus on the theme of representing and reasoning with litigators’ theories or hypotheses about document relevance through a variety of techniques including machine learning. We also identify (...) two emerging techniques for enabling users’ document queries to better express the theories of relevance and connect them to documents: social network analysis and a hypothesis ontology. (shrink)

The research described here explores the idea of using Supreme Court oral arguments as pedagogical examples in first year classes to help students learn the role of hypothetical reasoning in law. The article presents examples of patterns of reasoning with hypotheticals in appellate legal argument and in the legal classroom and a process model of hypothetical reasoning that relates them to work in cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence. The process model describes the relationships between an advocate’s proposed test for deciding (...) a case or issue, the facts of the hypothetical and of the case to be decided, and the often conflicting legal principles and policies underlying the issue. The process model of hypothetical reasoning has been partially implemented in a computerized teaching environment, LARGO (“Legal ARgument Graph Observer”) that helps students identify, analyze, and reflect on episodes of hypothetical reasoning in oral argument transcripts. Using LARGO, students reconstruct examples of hypothetical reasoning in the oral arguments by representing them in simple diagrams that focus students on the proposed test, the hypothetical challenge to the test, and the responses to the challenge. The program analyzes the diagrams and provides feedback to help students complete the diagrams and reflect on the significance of the hypothetical reasoning in the argument. The article reports the results of experiments evaluating instruction of first year law students at the University of Pittsburgh using the LARGO program as applied to Supreme Court personal jurisdiction cases. The learning results so far have been mixed. Instruction with LARGO has been shown to help law student volunteers with lower LSAT scores learn skills and knowledge regarding hypothetical reasoning better than a text-based approach, but not when the students were required to participate. On the other hand, the diagrams students produce with LARGO have been shown to have some diagnostic value, distinguishing among law students on the basis of LSAT scores, posttest performance, and years in law school. This lends support to the underlying model of hypothetical argument and suggests using LARGO as a pedagogically diagnostic tool. (shrink)

The popular press and academic research has focused primarily on the characteristics of corporate leaders. Subordinates have been studied much less frequently than leaders and yet they play a pivotal role in destructive leadership processes. An area holding significant potential to bring clarity to subordinates’ ability to withstand (or succumb) to pressures from superiors is dispositional affect. In our exploratory study, we examine how specific affective states influence subordinates’ unethical behavior. We performed an experiment with 63 mid-level managers having significant (...) work experience. Participants were given ethical scenarios and asked to assess their intentions to comply with their superiors’ requests to engage in unethical conduct. The participants also completed the positive affect negative affect schedule (PANAS) which provides measures of affective states. Our results provide support for theory-based predictions. The findings of our study make important contributions and have implications to both practice and theory. First, we identify certain affective states that encourage subordinates to adopt the behavior of a conformer or colluder and thus be susceptible to their superiors’ unethical directives. Second, our results suggest the need for training programs to assist employees in managing affect in the work place and consideration of organizational changes that provide a culture of empowerment of its employees. Third, unlike a large majority of prior research, we measured naturally occurring affective states rather than providing a contrived (and potentially exaggerated) triggering event to elicit affective states. Fourth, we examined specific affective states rather than examining only general positive and negative valence categories. (shrink)

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 requires company executives to certify financial statements and internal controls as a means of reducing fraud. Many companies have operationalized this by instituting a sub-certification process and requiring lower-level managers to sign certification statements. These lower-level organizational members are often the individuals who are aware of fraud and are in the best position to provide information on the fraudulent act. However, the sub-certification process may have the effect of reducing employees’ intentions to report wrongdoing. We (...) suggest that subordinates with knowledge of a superior who committed a fraudulent act and certified that there is no fraud will feel less personal responsibility to report the act, thus, decreasing reporting intentions. Additionally, we suggest that if the fraud is discovered subsequent to the reports being filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, employees will perceive lower management responsiveness to investigate the fraud, which will reduce intentions to report. Using an experimental approach, we manipulate two between-participant variables: the presence or absence of sub-certification by the transgressor and the timing of fraud discovery, either before or after the reports have been filed with the SEC. We find that when sub-certification is present, perceived personal responsibility and intentions to report were diminished compared to when sub-certification is absent. Timing of the discovery of the fraudulent act did not influence perceived management responsiveness or reporting intentions. Supplemental analysis shows that personal responsibility partially mediates the relationship between sub-certification and reporting intentions. Our findings suggest that audit committees and senior executives may want to carefully consider the costs and benefits of the sub-certification process. (shrink)

Elliot Sober ([2001]) forcefully restates his well-known counterexample to Reichenbach's principle of the common cause: bread prices in Britain and sea levels in Venice both rise over time and are, therefore, correlated; yet they are ex hypothesi not causally connected, which violates the principle of the common cause. The counterexample employs nonstationary data—i.e., data with time-dependent population moments. Common measures of statistical association do not generally reflect probabilistic dependence among nonstationary data. I demonstrate the inadequacy of the counterexample and of (...) some previous responses to it, as well as illustrating more appropriate measures of probabilistic dependence in the nonstationary case. A challenge to the principle of the common causeSober's argument and the attempts to rescue the principleProbabilistic dependenceNonstationary time seriesProbabilistic dependence in nonstationary time seriesDo Venetian sea levels and British bread prices violate the principle of the common cause? (shrink)

Macroeconomists overwhelmingly believe that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, typically understood as a strong eliminativist reductionism. Microfoundations aims to recover intentionality. In the face of technical and data constraints macroeconomists typically employ a representative-agent model, in which a single agent solves the microeconomic optimization problem for the whole economy, and take it to be microfoundationally adequate. The characteristic argument for the representative-agent model holds that the possibility of the sequential elaboration of the model to cover any number of individual agents justifies treating (...) the policy conclusions of the single-agent model as practically relevant. This eschatological justification is examined and rejected. (shrink)

The Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics stakes out a pragmatic middle-ground between traditional, prescriptive economic methodology and recent descriptive methodology. The former is sometimes seen as arrogantly telling economists how to do their work and the latter as irrelevant to their practice. The lectures are built around a case study of a concrete example of macroeconomic analysis. They demonstrate that economic methodology and the philosophy of science offer insights that help to resolve the genuine concerns of macroeconomists. Some examples of questions (...) addressed include: What is the relationship between theoretical models and empirical observations? What is the relevance of macroeconomics to policy? Should macroeconomics be viewed as a special case of microeconomics? What is the place of long-standing philosophical issues in macroeconomics, such as the scope and nature of economic laws, the role of idealizations, methodological individualism, and the problem of causality? (shrink)

Argues that ontological reduction of macroeconomics to microeconomics is untenable. Existence of macroeconomic aggregates; Microfoundations of macroeconomics; Examinations of the general price level; Limits of the scientific development of microeconomics.

Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been the highest, the Commons had been the busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, – ‘Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!’.

Recent debates over the nature of causation, casual inference, and the uses of causal models in counterfactual analysis, involving inter alia Nancy Cartwright (Hunting Causes and Using Them), James Woodward (Making Things Happen), and Judea Pearl (Causation), hinge on how causality is represented in models. Economists’ indigenous approach to causal representation goes back to the work of Herbert Simon with the Cowles Commission in the early 1950s. The paper explicates a scheme for the representation of causal structure, inspired by Simon, (...) and shows how this representation sheds light on some important debates in the philosophy of causation. This structural account is compared to Woodward’s manipulability account. It is used to evaluate the recent debates – particularly, with respect to the nature of causal structure, the identity of causes, causal independence, and modularity. Special attention is given to modeling issues that arise in empirical economics. (shrink)

Economics prefers complete explanations: general over partial equilibrium, microfoundational over aggregate. Similarly, probabilistic accounts of causation frequently prefer greater detail to less as in typical resolutions of Simpson’s paradox. Strategies of causal refinement equally aim to distinguish direct from indirect causes. Yet, there are countervailing practices in economics. Representative-agent models aim to capture economic motivation but not to reduce the level of aggregation. Small structural vector-autoregression and dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium models are practically preferred to larger ones. The distinction between exogenous (...) and endogenous variables suggests partitioning the world into distinct subsystems. The tension in these practices is addressed within a structural account of causation inspired by the work of Herbert Simon’s, which defines cause with reference to complete systems adapted to deal with incomplete systems and piecemeal evidence. The focus is on understanding the constraints that a structural account of causation places on the freedom to model complex or lower-order systems as simpler or higher-order systems and on to what degree piecemeal evidence can be incorporated into a structural account. (shrink)

In the eyes of its practitioners, economics is both a deductive science and an empirical science. The starting point of its deductions might be thought of as first principles. But what is the status of such principles? The tension between foundationalism, the idea that there are necessary and secure first principles for economic inquiry, and fallibilism, the idea that no belief can be certified as true beyond the possibility of doubt, is explored. Empirical disciplines require some sort of falsifiability. Yet, (...) empirical inquiries also require a starting place—if not a necessarily true one, at least an indubitable one, that is, one that is not actually doubted. Indubitability appears to have necessary consequences, undercutting fallibilism, while fallibilism threatens confidence in the de facto first principles that begin inquiry. This tension is examined in three well-known attempts to define economics and its method: John Stuart Mill’s economics as the science of wealth, Lionel Robbins’s economics as constrained optimization; and George Stigler and Becker’s attempt to reformulate neoclassical economics to square empiricism with Robbins’ deductivism. (shrink)

The difficulty of conducting relevant experiments has long been regarded as the central challenge to learning about the economy from data. The standard solution, going back to Haavelmo's famous “The Probability Approach in Econometrics” (1944), involved two elements: first, it placed substantial weight on a priori theory as a source of structural information, reducing econometric estimates to measurements of causally articulated systems; second, it emphasized the need for an appropriate statistical model of the data. These elements are usually seen as (...) tightly linked. I argue that they are, to a large extent, separable. Careful attention to the role of an empirically justified statistical model in underwriting probability explains puzzles not only in economics, but more generally with respect to recent criticisms of Reichenbach's principle of the common cause, which lies behind graph-theoretic causal search algorithms. And it provides an antidote to the pessimistic understanding of the possibilities for passive observation of causal structure in econometrics and related areas of Nancy Cartwright and others. (shrink)

Modern empirical macroeconomic models, known as structural autoregressions (SVARs) are dynamic models that typically claim to represent a causal order among contemporaneously valued variables and to merely represent non-structural (reduced-form) co-occurence between lagged variables and contemporaneous variables. The strategy is held to meet the minimal requirements for identifying the residual errors in particular equations in the model with independent, though otherwise not directly observable, exogenous causes (“shocks”) that ultimately account for change in the model. In nonstationary models, such shocks accumulate (...) so that variables have discernible trends. Econometricians have conceived of variables that trend in sympathy with each other (so-called “cointegrated variables”) as sharing one or more of these unobserved trends as a common cause. It is possible for estimates of the values of both the otherwise unobservable individual shocks and the otherwise unobservable common trends to be backed-out of cointegrated systems of equations. The issue addressed in this paper is whether and in what circumstances these values can be regarded as observations of real entities rather than merely artifacts of the representation of variables in the model. The issue is related, on the one hand, to practical methodological problems in the use of SVARs for policy analysis—e.g., does it make sense to estimate of shocks or trends in one model and then use them as measures of variables in a conceptually distinct model? The issue is also related to debates in the philosophical analysis of causation—particularly, whether we are entitled, as assumed by the developers of Bayes-net approaches, to rely on the causal Markov condition (a generalization of Reichenbach’s common-cause condition) or whether cointegration generates a practical example of Nancy Cartwright’s “byproducts” objection to the causal Markov condition. (shrink)

Research on sexual harassment in the workplace has followed several trajectories: the extent of sexual harassment, labeling sexual harassment, responses to sexual harassment, and contributing factors to sexual harassment. Much of this research has been necessarily applied, leaving theoretical frameworks concerning sexual harassment underdeveloped. This research uses the case of the sexual harassment of temporary workers to develop grounded theory to provide a more structural understanding of sexual harassment. While temporary employment has increased dramatically in the past 15 years, researchers (...) have only recently begun to document the effects of this trend. This research is based on 68 in-depth interviews from two broader studies on clerical temporary work in Chicago and Los Angeles. The researchers find that the organization of temporary work fosters sexual harassment through the magnification of asymmetrical power relationships. (shrink)

Although the relevance and importance of his work has been recognized only belatedly, Charles Sanders Peirce was, throughout his life, a careful student and significant contributor to the development of logic, scientific theory, and philosophy generally. Occasionally, complete appreciation of Peirce's efforts has been hampered because his work is often unique and, at times, highly idiosyncratic. Yet, we hope to show in this paper that for one aspect of his work in logic Peirce did not abandon the ordinary without purpose. (...) Only relatively recently have philosophers of science become interested in the logic of discovery - that is, in the logic of the selection of hypotheses to be tested rather than simply in the ways of testing hypotheses which have already been selected. (shrink)

Organizational leaders are increasingly emphasizing a stakeholder perspective in order to address concerns about business ethics. This study examined the choices of 94 groups in the context of a business decision-making simulation to determine how specific actions and communications can facilitate the consideration of different stakeholder perspectives. In particular, we examined whether generally framing the business situation as one involving diverse stakeholders versus a primarily profit-driven operation (referred to as framing), and whether specific suggestions that participants consider the concerns of (...) stakeholders versus stockholders in maximizing the value of the firm (referred to as vision priming), would influence group choices and decision outcomes. We tested four experimental conditions against a control in a 2 × 2 experimental design to determine the effects that group choices had on decision outcomes when groups were exposed to stakeholder versus stockholder decision framing and stakeholder versus stockholder vision priming. The results revealed that the consistent conditions outperformed the control condition and that vision priming has a greater impact on decision outcomes than decision framing. (shrink)

Nine essays based on a series of public talks held in Melbourne in 1988. The contributors and the editor are academics and writers. They look at the work of such people as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in terms of writing, reading and social context. Includes a symposium on uses of recent French theory and an index.

In this work we study, design, and evaluate computational methods to support interpretation of statutory terms. We propose a novel task of discovering sentences for argumentation about the meaning of statutory terms. The task models the analysis of past treatment of statutory terms, an exercise lawyers routinely perform using a combination of manual and computational approaches. We treat the discovery of sentences as a special case of ad hoc document retrieval. The specifics include retrieval of short texts, specialized document types, (...) and, above all, the unique definition of document relevance provided in detailed annotation guidelines. To support our experiments we assembled a data set comprising 42 queries which we plan to release to the public in the near future in order to support further research. Most importantly, we investigate the feasibility of developing a system that responds to a query with a list of sentences that mention the term in a way that is useful for understanding and elaborating its meaning. This is accomplished by a systematic assessment of different features that model the sentences’ usefulness for interpretation. We combine features into a compound measure that accounts for multiple aspects. The definition of the task, the assembly of the data set, and the detailed task analysis provide a solid foundation for employing a learning-to-rank approach. (shrink)

Among contemporary liberal political theorists in the West, there appears to be a standoff between two camps. One camp promotes tighter social bonds through collective responsibility and patriotic fellow-feeling while the other insists on the need for relaxed social bonds through respect for individual freedom. This essay shows how two Vietnamese thinkers—Ho Chi Minh (1872–1969) and Nguyen Manh Tuong (1909–1997)—can help move this intractable debate about collective responsibility and individual freedom beyond statements of principle to a more pragmatic discussion of (...) what should be done to maintain a healthy polity. They present an alternative to the static standoff, arguing that dynamic oscillation between two activities can forge national fraternal solidarity while also respecting individual freedom when the needs arise: ‘criticism and self-criticism' which tightens social bonds, and ‘liberal self-exploration' which relaxes social bonds. (shrink)

While popular debate grapples with the legality of gay marriage, networks of medical, political, and juridical discourses produce and situate sexuality in a field of knowledge that is constantly under examination and administration. The rationalization of sexuality, and its dispersion into multiple fields of knowledge, has become part of a system of power relations that produces identities and manages them. Within this context, this paper places Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus on Sade's Juliette in conversation with Foucault's first volume of the (...) History of Sexuality. It explores how instrumental reason and power/knowledge relationships produce discourses of sexuality, which have come to dominate Western society. It also explores possible sites of resistance, through the notion of performativity, that exist within these modes of rationalization and power. I argue that this interlocution of Horkheimer and Adorno with Foucault helps us see sexuality as a site of both domination and resistance. It also shows how sexuality is produced in a field of contestation where possibilities of practices of freedom are always circumscribed by modes of rationalization and networks of power. (shrink)

This paper addresses the role of specification tests in the selection of a statistically admissible model used to evaluate economic hypotheses. The issue is formulated in the context of recent philosophical accounts on the nature of models and related to some results in the literature on specification search. In contrast to enumerative induction and a priori theory, powerful search methodologies are often adequate substitutes for experimental methods. They underwrite and support, rather than distort, statistical hypothesis tests. Their success is grounded (...) in a systematic effort to mold appropriate models to, and test them against, constraints of the data. (shrink)

(2013). Beyond mechanical markets – asset price swings, risk and the role of the state. Journal of Economic Methodology: Vol. 20, Methodology, Systemic Risk, and the Economics Profession, pp. 69-75. doi: 10.1080/1350178X.2013.774856.

Through most of the history of economics, the most influential commentators on methodology were also eminent practitioners of economics. And even not so long ago, it was so. Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, Trygve Haavelmo, and Tjalling Koopmans were awarded Nobel prizes for their substantive contributions to economics, and were each important contributors to methodological thought. But the fashion has changed. Specialization has increased. Not only has methodology become its own field, but many practitioners have come to agree with Frank Hahn's (...) (1992) view that methodology is a distraction to the practitioner, best left to the professional methodologists and philosophers, and of little practical import even when delivered from their pens. John Sutton's lectures, Marshall's Tendencies: What Economists Can Know, is a welcome return to the older fashion, for Sutton is an eminent practitioner of game theory and industrial organization. One of the main themes of these rich and nuanced lectures is the relationship of economic theory to econometric evidence. Sutton's reflections on econometrics appear to arise from the darker recesses of his practitioner's soul. While he affects a sunny disposition and ends on a hopeful note, his analysis articulates the lurking fear that econometrics is a hopeless project and that economics has little to learn from the interaction of theory and econometrics. Sutton's book is like a play in which virtue triumphs, but the villain gets all the good lines. (shrink)

Critics argued that the 2007–09 financial crisis was failure of macroeconomics, locating its source in the dynamic, stochastic general-equilibrium model and calling for fundamental re-orientation of the field. Critics exaggerated the role of DSGE models in actual policymaking, and DSGE modelers addressed some criticisms within the DSGE framework. But DSGE modelers oversold their success and even claimed that their approach is the sine qua non of competent macroeconomics. The DSGE modelers and their critics renew an old debate over the relative (...) priority of a priori theory and empirical data, classically exemplified in the Measurement without Theory Debate of the 1940s between the Cowles Commission and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The earlier debate is reviewed for its implications for the recent controversy. In adopting the Cowles-Commission position, some DSGE modelers would essentially straight-jacket macroeconomics and undermine economic science and the pursuit of knowledge in an open-minded, yet critical framework. (shrink)