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37Performativity: Saving Austin from MackenzieIn Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 443-453. 2013.The new economic sociology claims to have adopted the notion of performativity from J.L Austin, has put it in new uses, and has given it new meanings. This is now spreading and has created another vogue term in the social and human sciences. The term is taken to cover all sorts of aspects in the ways in which the use of social scientific theories have consequences for the social world. The paper argues that the expansive use of 'performativity' obscures the Austinian idea and thereby impoverishe…Read more
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24Models, metaphors, narrative, and rhetoric: Philosophical aspectsIn N. J. Smelser & B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, . pp. 15--9931. 2001.Contemporary philosophers of science argue that models are a major vehicle of scientific knowledge. This applies to highly theoretical inquiry as well as to experimental or otherwise observational research, in both the natural and the social sciences. Making this claim is not yet very illuminating, given that there is a large variety of different kinds of model, and a number of ways in which they function in the service of science. The ambiguity of the term ‘model’ and the multiplicity of kinds …Read more
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1093It is argued that rather than a well defined F-Twist, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of positive economics” offers an F-Mix: a pool of ambiguous and inconsistent ingredients that can be used for putting together a number of different methodological positions. This concerns issues such as the very concept of being unrealistic, the goal of predictive tests, the as-if formulation of theories, explanatory unification, social construction, and more. Both friends and foes of Friedman’s essay have igno…Read more
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94Explanatory Unification: Double and DoubtfulPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 31 (4): 488-506. 2001.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 deriv…Read more
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43Realism, Economics, and RhetoricEconomics and Philosophy 4 (1): 167. 1988.Economists often seem to hold the belief that it is in the nature of a model that it cannot but be false. Once this view is adopted, any further truth talk in connection to models becomes obsolete or irrelevant. I want to resist this conclusion. I grant that a model may appear to be false in the sense that the world does not seem to be the way it is being represented in the model. In earlier work, I have entertained the idea that what appears to be false may be true after all, and I have shown s…Read more
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125Realism and antirealism about economicsIn Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics, . pp. 3--24. 2012.Economics is a controversial scientific discipline. One of the traditional issues that has kept economists and their critics busy is about whether economic theories and models are about anything real at all. The critics have argued that economic models are based on assumptions that are so utterly unrealistic that those models become purely fictional and have nothing informative to say about the real world. Many also claim that an antirealist instrumentalism (allegedly outlined by Milton Friedman…Read more
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131Symposium on explanations and social ontology 2: Explanatory ecumenism and economics imperialismEconomics and Philosophy 18 (2): 235-257. 2002.In a series of insightful publications, Philip Pettit and Frank Jackson have argued for an explanatory ecumenism that is designed to justify a variety of types of social scientific explanation of different , including structural and rational choice explanations. Their arguments are put in terms of different kinds of explanatory information; the distinction between causal efficacy, causal relevance and explanatory relevance within their program model of explanation; and virtual reality and resili…Read more
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180On the method of isolation in economicsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 26 19-54. 1992.
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7840Filosofia y metodologia an la economiaIn Juan José Jardón Urrieta (ed.), Temas de Teoria Economica y so Metodo, Universidade De Santiago De Compostela. 2008.Este documento analiza las siguientes cuestiones: 1) La metodología de la economía y su actual institucionalización. 2) La definición de Economía. 3) Las perspectivas de los economistas acerca de la Economía, sus métodos y justificación. 4) Comprobación y progreso: Popper y Lakatos.5) Los modelos y sus supuestos. 6) Persuasión retórica y verdad. 7) La Economía como un recurso para la Filosofía de la Ciencia. 8) Expansionismo explicativo y relaciones interdisciplinares.
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153Isolation, idealization and truth in economicsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 38 147-168. 1994.Challenges the widely held view that good models must necessarily be simplifications and hence cannot be true. This is done by distinguishing between whole truth (complete description) and truth (essential description, attained by the method of isolation).
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University of HelsinkiDepartment of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)Retired faculty
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Social Science |
General Philosophy of Science |