01:730:225 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Microeconomics, Epistemic Virtue, Philip Mirowski
19 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
What kind of notion of laws to practitioners of economics traffic in. Is there a distinction between law-like generalizations and universal generalizations. Summary of use of concept in particular setting. Summary of how concept is talked about by practitioners in that setting. How do they make predictions about unobservable events. If claims (ex. firms maximize profit) are interpreted as universal generalizations, they are false. Fundamental differences in goals-- social sciences should provide. Understanding" which results in element of subjectivity not found in natural sciences. But there are also regularities, and natural sciences also have to deal with irregularities. Raises questions concerning legitimacy of severe abstraction and idealization. Perfect information, perfect rationality, infinite divisibility of commodities. Generalizations (ex law of demand) are causal claims have ceteris paribus clauses. Randomized controlled experiments are used to determine causal relations via Issue of simplification, idealization, and abstraction raise doubts about whether economics is well supported.
