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16The Specter of Revealed Preference TheoryErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11. 2024.My aim in this paper is to argue that the recent philosophical defenses of revealed preference theory do not withstand scrutiny. Towards this aim, I will first outline revealed preference theory. I will then briefly present the two most common arguments that the received view offers against it. Afterwards, I will outline three argumentative strategies for rehabilitating revealed preference theory, and successively rebut each of them.
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22Do you believe in Deep Down? On two conceptions of valuingSynthese 202 (1): 1-27. 2023.In this paper, we explicate an underappreciated distinction between two conceptions of valuing. According to the first conception, which we call the surface-account, valuing something is exclusively a matter of having certain behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dispositions. In contrast, the second conception, which we call the layer-account, posits that valuing is constituted by the presence of certain representational mental states underlying those dispositions. In the first part of the paper…Read more
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25The Tragic Science: How Economists Cause Harm (even as They Aspire to Do Good). George F. DeMartino. University of Chicago Press. xi + 265 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 39 (3): 522-527. 2023.
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8Review of José Luis Bermúdez's Frame It Again: New Tools for Rational Decision-Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, x + 340 pp (review)Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 15 (2). 2022.
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49The Econ within or the Econ above? On the plausibility of preference purificationEconomics and Philosophy 39 (3): 423-445. 2023.Scholars disagree about the plausibility of preference purification. Some see it as a familiar phenomenon. Others denounce it as conceptually incoherent, postulating that it relies on the psychologically implausible assumption of an inner rational agent. I argue that different notions of rationality can be leveraged to advance the debate: procedural rationality and structural rationality. I explicate how structural rationality, in contrast to procedural rationality, allows us to offer an account…Read more
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28Why We Need to Talk About Preferences: Economic Experiments and the Where-QuestionErkenntnis 89 (4): 1435-1455. 2024.When economists perform experiments, they do so typically in one of two traditions: cognitive psychology experiments in the heuristics and biases tradition (H&B-experiments) and experimental economics in the tradition of Vernon Smith. What sets these two traditions apart? In this paper, I offer a novel conceptualization of their pervasive disagreements. Focusing on how each camp approaches preferences, one of the most fundamental concepts in economics, I argue that experimental economics can be …Read more
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22New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciencesEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4): 1-28. 2021.Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to de…Read more
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118Normative Models and Their SuccessPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 51 (2): 123-150. 2021.In this paper, we explore an under-investigated question concerning the class of formal models that aim at providing normative guidance. We call such models normative models. In particular, we examine the question of how normative models can successfully exert normative guidance. First, we highlight the absence of a discussion of this question – which is surprising given the extensive debate about the success conditions of descriptive models – and motivate its importance. Second, we introduce an…Read more
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639Measuring utility: from the marginal revolution to behavioral economics (review)Journal of Economic Methodology 26 (4): 380-384. 2019.Volume 26, Issue 4, December 2019, Page 380-384.
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247Can Economics can be a separate Science?Rerum Causae 9 (2): 17-36. 2017.Mill (1872, 1874) is an early proponent of the thesis that economics has a special domain in which it can operate relatively independently of findings from other sciences. Contra Mill, I argue that this so-called separateness-thesis is best defendedunder an externalist interpretation of Rational Choice Theory (RCT). Mill’s defence is consistent with an internalist interpretation of RCT. Internalism holds that RCT depicts psychological mechanisms operating in economic agents. I argue that such…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Economics |
Game Theory |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Game Theory and Political Philosophy |