Alan Nelson

Chapter 1 is introductory. It identifies a cluster of philosophical problems that arise in the foundations of neoclassical economic theory. Issues growing out of the unusually tenuous connection between the theory and the world are singled out as especially troublesome. Is it, after all, possible for economics to look more like an empirical science like physics than like of branch of mathematics? ;Chapter 2 argues that economic methodology has been constrained by the application of faulty philosophy of science, or by the faulty application of philosophy of science. Economists with good intentions have wanted to protect economic theory from intrusions by "unscientific" constructs that had no clear operational criteria for their application. I argue that these attempts to protect economics went astray because theoretical constructs were consequently made to answer to an excessively stringent notion of economic data. Consequently, I find means to argue that all data and, in particular, psychological data about individual economic agents is relevant in the construction and confirmation of economic theory. Actually, I advance the stronger thesis that economics actually owes us an account of the behavior of individuals and that this makes it evident that economic theory should strive to cover the widest range of phenomena is reasonable. ;Chapter 3 takes this broadened notion of economic theory as a starting point and shows why the new outlook can be expected to enrich present theory and make progress towards the project of connecting economics to the phenomena. I include explanations of how prima facie difficulties with the new outlook overcome. In the course of doing this, many striking analogies between economics and linguistics, another science that closely related to psychology, are brought out. The relatively successful resolution of methodological problems in linguistics that parallel methodological problems in economics seems encouraging. ;Finally, Chapter 4 examines a bundle of problems concerning the relationship between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Most of the conclusions drawn in this chapter are negative: I argue that the connection between the micro and the macro is more difficult to fathom than many writers seem to imply. . . . UMI

The correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld was judged by Leibniz himself to be very useful for understanding his philosophy. Historians have concurred in this judgment. Leibniz did not find any philosophy of independent interest in the letters Arnauld sent him. Historians have, for the most part, also concurred in this finding. I shall argue that on one set of issues at least — modal metaphysics and free will — Arnauld accomplished more than facilitating Leibnizian elucidations. He held his own in this dispute. Indeed, were it not for the general sophistication and superior handling of such issues as identity, unity, and the nature of body enjoyed by the Leibnizian system, the Cartesian position on modal metaphysics and free will espoused by Arnauld might have won the day in the eyes of later philosophers. A proper appreciation of the Cartesian framework should also make it of considerable interest to philosophers presently at work on the metaphysics of modality. I shall argue that Descartes and some Cartesians like Arnauld espoused a strongly actualist doctrine. This means they thought that all philosophically interesting uses of possibles were analyzable into facts about actually existing things.

We argue that Descartes’s theistic proofs in the ’Meditations’ are much simpler and straightforward than they are traditionally taken to be. In particular, we show how the causal argument of the "Third Meditation" depends on the intuitively innocent principle that nothing comes from nothing, and not on the more controversial principle that the objective reality of an idea must have a cause with at least as much formal reality. We also demonstrate that the so-called ontological "argument" of the "Fifth Meditation" is best understood not as a formal proof but as an axiom, revealed as self-evident by analytic meditation

This book is a wide-ranging examination of rationalist thought in philosophy from ancient times to the present day. Written by a superbly qualified cast of philosophers Critically analyses the concept of rationalism Focuses principally on the golden age of rationalism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Also covers ancient rationalism, nineteenth-century rationalism, and rationalist themes in recent thought Organised chronologically Various philosophical methods and viewpoints are represented.

Descartes’s correspondence with Elisabeth is among the most important we have for understanding the philosophical thought of a canonical figure. Elisabeth’s perspicacious queries drew forth Descartes’s very famous elaboration of mind/body union. The correspondence also contains the bulk of Descartes’s important statements on morality—a topic touched on only briefly in his books. It seems likely that this part of the correspondence helped set Descartes on the course that resulted in his last book, The Passions of the Soul. Moreover, Elisabeth’s letters to Descartes are her only extant philosophical writings. In Lisa Shapiro’s volume we have, for the first time, translations of the thirty-three letters of Descartes and the twenty-six of Elisabeth complete and unabridged. This is, therefore, a very welcome addition to existing English editions of Descartes’s works and an important resource for studying early modern philosophy written by women

Good scientific explanations sometimes appear to make use of averages. Using concrete examples from current economic theory, I argue that some confusions about how averages might work in explanations lead to both philosophical and economic problems about the interpretation of the theory. I formulate general conditions on potentially proper uses of averages to refine a notion of average explanation. I then try to show how this notion provides a means for resolving longstanding philosophical problems in economics and other quantitative social sciences.