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61Philosophy of economics (edited book)North Holland. 2012.This volume serves as a detailed introduction for those new to the field as well as a rich source of new insights and potential research agendas for those already engaged with the philosophy of economics.
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8The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline's traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism and…Read more
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21Scientific Imperialism: Exploring the Boundaries of Interdisciplinarity (edited book)Routledge. 2019.The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline’s traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism an…Read more
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128On the structure of explanatory unification: the case of geographical economicsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (2): 185-195. 2009.A newly emerged field within economics, known as geographical economics claims to have provided a unified approach to the study of spatial agglomerations at different spatial scales by showing how these can be traced back to the same basic economic mechanisms. We analyze this contemporary episode of explanatory unification in relation to major philosophical accounts of unification. In particular, we examine the role of argument patterns in unifying derivations, the role of ontological conviction…Read more
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77Interdisciplinarity in action: philosophy of science perspectivesEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (3): 323-326. 2016.Interdisciplinarity has become a dominant research policy imperative1 – exercised by European Research Council and other funding agencies at different scales – and a substantial topic in science studies fields outside philosophy of science, including science education, research management (particularly team management) and scientometrics. Philosophers of science have only recently begun to dedicate more attention to this feature of contemporary science. The present collection of studies aspires …Read more
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62Investigating Interdisciplinary Practice: Methodological Challenges (Introduction)Perspectives on Science 27 (4): 545-552. 2019.Interdisciplinarity is one of the most prominent ideas driving science and research policy today.1 It is applied widely as a conception of what particularly creative and socially relevant research processes should consist of, whether in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, or elsewhere. Its advocates, many of whom are located in current science and research administration themselves, are using ideas of interdisciplinarity to reshape university organization and research fund…Read more
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24Introduction to the special issue: papers from the IX INEM Conference in HelsinkiJournal of Economic Methodology 21 (1): 1-2. 2014.Following an established tradition, the current special issue collects five articles that originate from papers presented at the IX Conference of the International Network for Economic Method. The conference took place in Helsinki on 1–3 September 2011 and was hosted by TINT (Trends and Tensions in Intellectual Integration), University of Helsinki. The conference was successful both in terms of the number of participants and the quality of the presentations. Although the sample of papers that ma…Read more
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76Extra-academic transdisciplinarity and scientific pluralism: what might they learn from one another?European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (3): 419-444. 2016.The paper looks at challenges related to the ideas of integration and knowledge systems in extra-academic transdisciplinarity. Philosophers of science are only starting to pay attention to the increasingly common practice of introducing extra-academic perspectives or engaging extra-academic parties in academic knowledge production. So far the rather scant philosophical discussion on the subject has mainly concentrated on the question whether such engagement is beneficial in science or not. Meanw…Read more
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680Introduction: Interdisciplinary model exchangesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 48 52-59. 2014.The five studies of this special section investigate the role of models and similar representational tools in interdisciplinarity. These studies were all written by philosophers of science, who focused on interdisciplinary episodes between disciplines and sub-disciplines ranging from physics, chemistry and biology to the computational sciences, sociology and economics. The reasons we present these divergent studies in a collective form are three. First, we want to establish model-exchange as a k…Read more
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23Notes on economics imperialism and norms of scientific inquiryRevue de Philosophie Économique 21 (1): 95-127. 2021.L’impérialisme économique, entendu comme une certaine relation entre disciplines scientifiques, est défendu par certains et rejeté par d’autres. Ces réactions sont toutefois rarement fondées sur des valeurs et des normes de recherche scientifique explicites. Or, lorsque l’on s’efforce de les rendre explicites, ces normes se révèlent plus complexes et plus floues qu’il n’y paraît. Certains considèrent qu’elles font partie intégrante de la définition du concept d’impérialisme économique ; d’autres…Read more
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20This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways –…Read more
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59Reflections on the Ontology of MoneyJournal of Social Ontology 6 (2): 245-263. 2020.The suggestions outlined here include the following. Money is a bundle of institutionally sustained causal powers. Money is an institutional universal instantiated in generic currencies and particular money tokens. John Searle’s account of institutional facts is not helpful for understanding the nature of money as an institution (while it may help to illuminate aspects of the nature of currencies and money particulars). The money universal is not a social convention in David Lewis’s sense (while…Read more
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23Notes on economics imperialism and norms of scientific inquiryRevue de Philosophie Économique 21 (1): 95-127. 2021.L’impérialisme économique, entendu comme une certaine relation entre disciplines scientifiques, est défendu par certains et rejeté par d’autres. Ces réactions sont toutefois rarement fondées sur des valeurs et des normes de recherche scientifique explicites. Or, lorsque l’on s’efforce de les rendre explicites, ces normes se révèlent plus complexes et plus floues qu’il n’y paraît. Certains considèrent qu’elles font partie intégrante de la définition du concept d’impérialisme économique ; d’autres…Read more
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30Puzzled by Idealizations and Understanding Their FunctionsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 50 (3): 215-237. 2020.Idealization is ubiquitous in human cognition, and so is the inclination to be puzzled by it: what to make of ideal gas, infinitely large populations, homo economicus, perfectly just society, known to violate matters of fact? This is apparent in social science theorizing, recent philosophy of science analyzing scientific modeling, and the debate over ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy. I will offer a set of concepts and principles to improve transparency about the precise content…Read more
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43Rights and wrongs of economic modelling: refining RodrikJournal of Economic Methodology 25 (3): 218-236. 2018.ABSTRACTThis is a critical discussion and proposed refinement of the inspiring account of the successes and failures of economic modelling sketched in Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules. The refinements make use of a systematic framework of the structure of scientific modelling. The issues include distinguishing the discipline of economics from the behaviour and attitudes of economists as targets of normative assessment; nature and sources of success and failure in modelling; the key role of model co…Read more
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16Two philosophies of the rhetoric of economicsIn Rhetoric and Critical Thinking, Routledge. 1993.
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142Reglobalizing Realism by Going Local, or Should Our Formulations of Scientific Realism be Informed about the Sciences?Erkenntnis 63 (2): 231-251. 2005.In order to examine the fit between realism and science, one needs to address two issues: the unit of science question (realism about which parts of science?) and the contents of realism question (which realism about science?). Answering these questions is a matter of conceptual and empirical inquiry by way local case studies. Instead of the more ordinary abstract and global scientific realism, what we get is a doubly local scientific realism based on a bottom-up strategy. Representative formula…Read more
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56On a paradox of truth, or how not to obscure the issue of whether explanatory models can be trueJournal of Economic Methodology 20 (3). 2013.It is argued that Reiss (2012) fails to refute attempts to resolve the paradox of false explanatory models. His article fails to provide an articulate conception of what exactly the presumed paradox is, it suffers from uncontrolled ambiguities and inconsistencies, and it fails to adequately address accounts of economic models that might contribute to reconciling their apparent falsehood and explanatoriness. Some details in my account of how apparently false models may explain are clarified
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35Economics as usual: geographical economics shaped by disciplinary constraintsIn John B. Davis & D. Wade Hands (eds.), The Elgar Companion to Recent Economic Methodology, Edward Elgar Publishers. pp. 188. 2011.Is economics a proper science at all? Or if it qualifies as a science, does it underperform, does it fail to fulfil its scientific duties? Does it perhaps just pretend to proceed as a science by applying principles and techniques that are not suitable for addressing its proper subject matter and for meeting the legitimate expectations? There is a long and live tradition of economics-bashing and economics apology in posing and answering such questions. One popular current in this tradition is to …Read more
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72Economic Epistemology: Hopes and HorrorsEpisteme 1 (3): 211-222. 2005.The cultural and epistemic status of science is under attack. Social and cultural studies of science are widely perceived to offer evidence and arguments in support of an anti-science campaign. They portray science as a mundane social endeavour, akin to religion and politics, with no privileged access to truthful information about the real world. Science is under threat and needs defence. Old philosophical legitimations have lost their bite. Alarm bells ring, new troops have to be mobilised. Cal…Read more
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70Even outrageously unrealistic assumptions are just fine insofar as the theory or model involving them performs well in predicting phenomena of interest. Most economists and many non-economists will attribute this principle to Milton Friedman. Many will consider the principle itself outrageous, while others praise Friedman for having formulated it so persuasively.
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861Universals and the methodenstreit: a re-examination of Carl Menger's conception of economics as an exact scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 28 (3): 475-495. 1997.In the latter half of the 19th century, economic thought in the Germanspeaking world was dominated, both intellectually and academically, by the so-called historical school, from Wilhelm Roscher to Gustav Schmoller and others. In 1871, the Austrian Carl Menger published his Grun&tze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Menger, 1976 (1871)), customarily referred to as one of the three simultaneous discoveries of marginalist economics-the other two marginalist ‘revolutionaries’ being Jevons in England and W…Read more
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13Scientific realism and some RussiaIn Kahla Elina (ed.), Between Utopia and Apocalypse: Essays on Social Theory and Russia, Aleksanteri Institute. 2011.Realism and Russia? Realism is a notion with multiple meanings, so options abound as to how the two might connect with one another. An old Russian proverb conveys a realist message about social properties: "An individual in Rssia was composed of three parts: a body, a soul, and a passport." (Ruben 1985, 83) Having a passport signals the possession of a complex set of social properties, and if these are taken to be real in some appropriate sense, one is inplying a realist view in social ontology…Read more
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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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17Models and Truth: The functional decomposition approachIn Mauricio Suárez, Miklós Rédei & Mauro Dorato (eds.), EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association, Springer. 2009.Science is often said to aim at truth. And much of science is heavily dependent on the construction and use of theoretical models. But the notion of model has an uneasy relationship with that of truth. Not so long ago, many philosophers held the view that theoretical models are different from theories in that they are not accompanied by any ontological commitments or presumptions of truth, whereas theories are (e.g. Achinstein 1964). More recently, some have thought that models are not truth-val…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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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 |