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61Two approaches to reasoning from evidence or what econometrics can learn from biomedical researchJournal of Economic Methodology 22 (3): 373-390. 2015.This paper looks at an appeal to the authority of biomedical research that has recently been used by empirical economists to motivate and justify their methods. I argue that those who make this appeal mistake the nature of biomedical research. Randomised trials, which are said to have revolutionised biomedical research, are a central methodology, but according to only one paradigm. There is another paradigm at work in biomedical research, the inferentialist paradigm, in which randomised trials p…Read more
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115In favour of a Millian proposal to reform biomedical researchSynthese 177 (3). 2010.One way to make philosophy of science more socially relevant is to attend to specific scientific practises that affect society to a great extent. One such practise is biomedical research. This paper looks at contemporary U.S. biomedical research in particular and argues that it suffers from important epistemic, moral and socioeconomic failings. It then discusses and criticises existing approaches to improve on the status quo, most prominently by Thomas Pogge (a political philosopher), Joseph Sti…Read more
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137Do we need mechanisms in the social sciences?Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (2): 163-184. 2007.A recent movement in the social sciences and philosophy of the social sciences focuses on mechanisms as a central analytical unit. Starting from a pluralist perspective on the aims of the social sciences, I argue that there are a number of important aims to which knowledge about mechanismswhatever their virtues relative to other aimscontributes very little at best and that investigating mechanisms is therefore a methodological strategy with fairly limited applicability. Key Words: social scien…Read more
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6Causation, Evidence, and InferenceRoutledge. 2015.In this book, Reiss argues in favor of a tight fit between evidence, concept and purpose in our causal investigations in the sciences. There is no doubt that the sciences employ a vast array of techniques to address causal questions such as controlled experiments, randomized trials, statistical and econometric tools, causal modeling and thought experiments. But how do these different methods relate to each other and to the causal inquiry at hand? Reiss argues that there is no "gold standard" in …Read more
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59Causal Instrumental Variables and InterventionsPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 964-976. 2005.The aim of this paper is to introduce the instrumental variables technique to the discussion about causal inference in econometrics. I show that it may lead to causally incorrect conclusions unless some fairly strong causal background assumptions are made, assumptions which are usually left implicit by econometricians. These assumptions are very similar to, albeit not identical with, James Woodward's definition of an ‘intervention’. I discuss similarities and differences of the two points of vie…Read more
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Third Time's a Charm: Causation, Science, and Wittgensteinian PluralismIn Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo & Jon Williamson (eds.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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2Review of Kevin Hoover's Methodology of Empirical Macroeconomics (review)Economics and Philosophy 20 (1): 226-233. 2004.
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32Error in Economics: Towards a More Evidence–Based MethodologyRoutledge. 2007.What is the correct concept behind measures of inflation? Does money cause business activity or is it the other way around? Shall we stimulate growth by raising aggregate demand or rather by lowering taxes and thereby providing incentives to produce? Policy-relevant questions such as these are of immediate and obvious importance to the welfare of societies. The standard approach in dealing with them is to build a model, based on economic theory, answer the question for the model world and then a…Read more
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92Causation in the sciences: An inferentialist accountStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (4): 769-777. 2012.I present an alternative account of causation in the biomedical and social sciences according to which the meaning of causal claims is given by their inferential relations to other claims. Specifically, I will argue that causal claims are inferentially related to certain evidential claims as well as claims about explanation, prediction, intervention and responsibility. I explain in some detail what it means for a claim to be inferentially related to another and finally derive some implication of…Read more
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CounterfactualsIn Harold Kincaid (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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426The philosophy of simulation: hot new issues or same old stew?Synthese 169 (3): 593-613. 2009.Computer simulations are an exciting tool that plays important roles in many scientific disciplines. This has attracted the attention of a number of philosophers of science. The main tenor in this literature is that computer simulations not only constitute interesting and powerful new science , but that they also raise a host of new philosophical issues. The protagonists in this debate claim no less than that simulations call into question our philosophical understanding of scientific ontology, …Read more
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70The explanation paradox reduxJournal of Economic Methodology 20 (3). 2013.I respond to some challenges raised by my critics. In particular, I argue in favour of six claims. First, against Alexandrova and Northcott, I point out that to deny the explanatoriness of economic models by assuming an ontic (specifically, causal) conception of explanation is to beg the question. Second, against defences of causal realism (by Hausman, Mäki, Rol and Grüne-Yanoff) I point out that they have provided no criterion to distinguish those claims a model makes that can be interpreted re…Read more
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12La contingencia de las teorías de causación y explicación: comentarios sobre Paul HumphreysEnrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 37 35-44. 2005.
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28ExplanationIn New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics., . 2008.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 …Read more
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17Contrefactuels, expériences de pensée, et conception singulariste de la relation causale en histoireLabyrinthe 39 113-127. 2012.L’analyse singulariste de la relation causale Dans l’un de ses textes les plus souvent lus, « Possibilité objective et causalité adéquate en histoire », Max Weber introduit ainsi la procédure de base de l’analyse singulariste des relations causales : L’attribution des effets aux causes prend place à travers un processus de pensée qui inclut une série d’abstractions. La première et la plus décisive a lieu quand nous concevons que l’une ou plusieurs des composantes causales sont modifiées dans ..
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93A Pragmatist Theory of EvidencePhilosophy of Science 82 (3): 341-362. 2015.Two approaches to evidential reasoning compete in the biomedical and social sciences: the experimental and the pragmatist. Whereas experimentalism has received considerable philosophical analysis and support since the times of Bacon and Mill, pragmatism about evidence has been neither articulated nor defended. The overall aim is to fill this gap and develop a theory that articulates the latter. The main ideas of the theory will be illustrated and supported by a case study on the smoking/lung can…Read more
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119What’s Wrong With Our Theories of Evidence?Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 29 (2): 283-306. 2014.This paper surveys and critically assesses existing theories of evidence with respect to four desiderata. A good theory of evidence should be both a theory of evidential support (i.e., be informative about what kinds of facts speak in favour of a hypothesis), and of warrant (i.e., be informative about how strongly a given set of facts speaks in favour of the hypothesis), it should apply to the non-ideal cases in which scientists typically find themselves, and it should be ‘descriptively adequate…Read more
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92Fact-value entanglement in positive economicsJournal of Economic Methodology 24 (2): 134-149. 2017.This paper presents arguments that challenge what I call the fact/value separability thesis: the idea, roughly, that factual judgements can be made independently of judgements of value. I will look at arguments to the effect that facts and values are entangled in the following areas of the scientific process in economics: theory development, economic concept formation, economic modelling, hypothesis testing, and hypothesis acceptance.
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2Causation in the Sciences: An Inferentialist ApproachRoutledge. 2014.In this book, Reiss argues in favour of a tight fit between evidence, concept and purpose in our causal investigations in the sciences. There is no doubt that the sciences employ a vast array of techniques to address causal questions such as controlled experiments, randomized trials, statistical and econometric tools, causal modeling and thought experiments. But how do these different methods relate to each other and to the causal inquiry at hand? Reiss argues that there is no "gold standard" in…Read more
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131Contextualising Causation Part IPhilosophy Compass 8 (11): 1066-1075. 2013.This is the first instalment of a two-part paper on the counterfactual theory of causation. It is well known that this theory is ridden with counterexamples. Specifically, the following four features of the theory suffer from problems: it understands causation as a relation between events; counterfactual dependence is understood using a metric of similarity among possible worlds; it defines a non-discriminatory concept of causation; and it understands causation as transitive. A number of philoso…Read more
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58The philosophy of simulation: hot new issues or same old stew?Synthese 180 (1): 77-77. 2011.Computer simulations are an exciting tool that plays important roles in many scientific disciplines. This has attracted the attention of a number of philosophers of science. The main tenor in this literature is that computer simulations not only constitute interesting and powerful new science, but that they also raise a host of new philosophical issues. The protagonists in this debate claim no less than that simulations call into question our philosophical understanding of scientific ontology, t…Read more
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49The methodology of empirical macroeconomics by Kevin D. Hoover. Cambridge university press 2001, XII + 186 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 20 (1): 226-233. 2004.
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87Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary IntroductionRoutledge. 2013.Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction is the first systematic textbook in the philosophy of economics. It introduces the epistemological, metaphysical and ethical problems that arise in economics, and presents detailed discussions of the solutions that have been offered. Throughout, philosophical issues are illustrated by and analysed in the context of concrete cases drawn from contemporary economics, the history of economic ideas, and actual economic events. This demonstrates the…Read more
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30Suppes’ probabilistic theory of causality and causal inference in economicsJournal of Economic Methodology 23 (3): 289-304. 2016.This paper examines Patrick Suppes’ probabilistic theory of causality understood as a theory of causal inference, and draws some lessons for empirical economics and contemporary debates in the foundations of econometrics. It argues that a standard method of empirical economics, multiple regression, is inadequate for most but the simplest applications, that the Bayes’ nets approach, which can be understood as a generalisation of Suppes’ theory, constitutes a considerable improvement but is still …Read more
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146Idealization and the Aims of Economics: Three Cheers for InstrumentalismEconomics and Philosophy 28 (3): 363-383. 2012.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) Onc…Read more
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227Counterfactuals, thought experiments, and singular causal analysis in historyPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 712-723. 2009.Thought experiments are ubiquitous in science and especially prominent in domains in which experimental and observational evidence is scarce. One such domain is the causal analysis of singular events in history. A long‐standing tradition that goes back to Max Weber addresses the issue by means of ‘what‐if’ counterfactuals. In this paper I give a descriptive account of this widely used method and argue that historians following it examine difference makers rather than causes in the philosopher’s …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |