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1085It 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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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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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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124Realism 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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7837Filosofia 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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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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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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556Science as a Free Market: A Reflexivity Test in an Economics of EconomicsPerspectives on Science 7 (4): 486-509. 1999.One prominent aspect of recent developments in science studies has been the increasing employment of economic concepts and models in the depiction of science, including the notion of a free market for scientific ideas. This gives rise to the issue of the adequacy of the conceptual resources of economics for this purpose. This paper suggests an adequacy test by putting a version of free market economics to a self-referential scrutiny. The outcome is that either free market economics is self-defea…Read more
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48Is Coase a Realist?Philosophy of the Social Sciences 28 (1): 5-31. 1998.Ronald Coase has been a vigorous critic of mainstream economic theory, arguing that it is unrealistic and that a good theory is realistic. The attributes "realistic" and "unrealistic" appear in three senses at least in Coase: one related to narrow ness and breadth; another related to abstracting from particularities (and the issue of "blackboard economics"); and the third related to correspondence with the legal. This does not yet make Coase an advocate of realism. It is therefore separately arg…Read more
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697Scientific realism and ontologyIn Steven N. Durlauf & Lawrence E. Blume (eds.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics : volume 7 : real balances - stochastic volatility models, Palgrave-macmillan. 2008.Economists customarily talk about the ‘realism’ of economic models and of their assumptions and make descriptive and prescriptive judgements about them: this model has more realism in it than that, the realism of assumptions does not matter, and so on. This is not the way philosophers mostly use the term ‘realism’ thus there is a major terminological discontinuity between the two disciplines. The following remarks organise and critically elaborate some of the philosophical usages of the term and…Read more
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40Mark Blaug's unrealistic crusade for realistic economicsErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 6 (3): 87-103. 2013.Mark Blaug’s normative methodology of economics is an attempt to articulate certain intuitions about how economic science could be improved by making it more “realistic”. I discuss two such articulations, one in terms of falsificationist principles, the other in terms of an alleged trade-off between relevance and mathematical rigour. My conclusion is that Blaug’s methodology is itself unrealistic, both descriptively and normatively. His (well intended) methodological prescriptions for the improv…Read more
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628Realisms and their opponentsIn N. J. Smelser & B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, . pp. 19--12815. 2001.In everyday usage, ‘realism’ is often used as a name for a practically or epistemically low-ambition attitude, while ‘idealism’ is often taken to denote a highambition—if not utopian—attitude. In philosophcal usage, mostly, it is the other way around: those who are called realists tend to claim more than their opponents—they are the philosophical optimists. Within philosophy itself, ‘realism’ adopts a variety of interrelated and contested meanings. It is used as the name for doctrines about issu…Read more
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64Contested modelling: The case of economicsIn Ulrich Gähde, Stephan Hartmann & Jörn Henning Wolf (eds.), Models, Simulations, and the Reduction of Complexity, De Gruyter. pp. 87-106. 2013.Economics is a culturally and politically powerful and contested discipline, and it has been that way as long as it has existed. For some commentators, economics is the "queen of the social sciences", while others view it as a "dismal science" (and both of these epithets allow for diverse interpretations; see Mäki 2002). Economics is also a discipline that deals with a dynamically complex subject matter and has a tradition of reducing this complexity by using systematic procedures of simplificat…Read more
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355MISSing the World. Models as Isolations and Credible Surrogate SystemsErkenntnis 70 (1): 29-43. 2009.This article shows how the MISS account of models—as isolations and surrogate systems—accommodates and elaborates Sugden’s account of models as credible worlds and Hausman’s account of models as explorations. Theoretical models typically isolate by means of idealization, and they are representatives of some target system, which prompts issues of resemblance between the two to arise. Models as representations are constrained both ontologically (by their targets) and pragmatically (by the purposes…Read more
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77Aspects of realism about economicsTheoria 13 (2): 301-319. 1998.A few aspects of the issue of realism are addressed in the context of a social science. The paper looks for adjustments needed in our conceptions of scientiflc realism to accommodate some peculiarities of economics. Ontologically speaking, economics appears to be closely linked to commonsense conceptions of the world, thus the problem of theoretical concepts does not emerge in the same form it is often taken to exist in physics. Theory formation is largely a matter of idealization and isolation …Read more
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152Modeling in biology and economicsBiology and Philosophy 26 (5): 613-615. 2011.Much of biological and economic theorizing takes place by modeling, the indirect study of real-world phenomena by the construction and examination of models. Books and articles about biological and economic theory are often books and articles about models, many of which are highly idealized and chosen for their explanatory power and analytical convenience rather than for their fit with known data sets. Philosophers of science have recognized these facts and have developed literatures about the n…Read more
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60Putnam's realisms: A view from the social sciencesIn Sami Pihlström, Panu Raatikainen & Matti Sintonen (eds.), Approaching truth: essays in honour of Ilkka Niiniluoto, College Publications. 2007.For the last three decades, the discussion on Hilary Putnam’s provocative suggestions around the issue of realism has raged widely. Putnam’s various formulations of, and arguments for, what he called internal realism in contrast to what he called metaphysical realism have been scrutinised from a variety of perspectives. One angle of attack has been missing, though: the view from the social sciences and the ontology of society. This perspective, I believe, will provide further confirmation to the…Read more
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68Realistic realism about unrealistic modelsIn Harold Kincaid & Don Ross (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, Oxford University Press. 2009.My philosophical intuitions are those of a scientific realist. In addition to being realist in its philosophical outlook, my philosophy of economics also aspires to be realistic in the sense of being descriptively adequate, or at least normatively non-utopian, about economics as a scientific discipline. The special challenge my philosophy of economics must meet is to provide a scientific realist account that is realistic of a discipline that deals with a complex subject matter and operates with …Read more
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69The methodology of positive economics : Reflections on the Milton Friedman legacy (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2009.Milton Friedman's 1953 essay 'The methodology of positive economics' remains the most cited, influential, and controversial piece of methodological writing in twentieth-century economics. Since its appearance, the essay has shaped the image of economics as a scientific discipline, both within and outside of the academy. At the same time, there has been an ongoing controversy over the proper interpretation and normative evaluation of the essay. Perceptions have been sharply divided, with some vie…Read more
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Homo economicus ja marginalismin perintöIn Virtanen Akseli & Heiskala Risto (eds.), Talous ja yhteiskuntateoria I. Vanhan maailman talous ja suuri murros, Gaudeamus. 2011.
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315Puzzled by realism: a response to DeichselErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 4 (1): 42-52. 2011.No realist project in and about economics is close to completion. There are many open issues that remain to be addressed and resolved. Simon Deichsel (2011) has written a healthy challenge that should offer some useful inspiration to anyone interested in assessing and perhaps contributing to the realist projects. He argues against realism and in support of some sort of anti-realism. My response first deals with some conceptual issues regarding the very ideas of realism and anti-realism. I will t…Read more
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158Models and the locus of their truthSynthese 180 (1). 2011.If models can be true, where is their truth located? Giere (Explaining science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998) has suggested an account of theoretical models on which models themselves are not truth-valued. The paper suggests modifying Giere’s account without going all the way to purely pragmatic conceptions of truth—while giving pragmatics a prominent role in modeling and truth-acquisition. The strategy of the paper is to ask: if I want to relocate truth inside models, how do I get…Read more
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37Some non-reasons for non-realism about economicsIn Uskali Mäki (ed.), Fact and Fiction in Economics: Models, Realism and Social Construction, Cambridge University Press. pp. 90. 2002.Many participants in the debate over the current state and recent developments of economics make claims that are unrefined, simplistic, often exaggerated. This is understandable: the stakes are high, the issues trigger emotional responses, and few participants are motivated or equipped to seek more nuanced analyses. To assert, or to deny, that economics as a scientific discipline or a particular part of it (such as a model) is about reality – or refers to reality, represents it, is true about it…Read more
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34Economics as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics, Richard N. Langlois, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, ix + 262 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 3 (2): 367. 1987.
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166Economics Imperialism: Concept and ConstraintsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 39 (3): 351-380. 2009.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 i…Read more
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Maailma markkinoina. Universaalin talousontologian ytimessä ja rajoillaIn Ilkka Niiniluoto, Risto Vilkko & Jaakko Kuorikoski (eds.), Talous ja filosofia, Gaudeamus. pp. 101-123. 2013."The world as markets. At the core and boundaries of a universal economic ontology"
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454Realism from the 'lands of Kaleva': an interview with Uskali MäkiErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 1 (1): 124. 2008.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 foun…Read more
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112EconomicsIn Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge companion to philosophy of science, Routledge. 2008.
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149MISSing the World. Models as Isolations and Credible Surrogate SystemsErkenntnis 70 (1): 29-43. 2009.This article shows how the MISS account of models—as isolations and surrogate systems—accommodates and elaborates Sugden’s account of models as credible worlds and Hausman’s account of models as explorations. Theoretical models typically isolate by means of idealization, and they are representatives of some target system, which prompts issues of resemblance between the two to arise. Models as representations are constrained both ontologically (by their targets) and pragmatically (by the purposes…Read more
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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 |