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Category Archives: Philosophy
The Theory of Relativity: Anticipated at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century by George Berkeley
Bishop George Berkeley is, in my opinion, the most profound philosopher ever to have written. He came up with many ideas in the early modern period — that is, around the beginning of the 18th century — that were only … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
2 Comments
Faith-Based Arguments in Empirical, Causal and Probabilistic Reasoning
David Hume is today the philosopher most often associated with what might be termed ‘radical empiricism’. The problem, of course, as I have pointed out on this blog before, is that he was not the originator of what should properly … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Statistics and Probability
2 Comments
The Holy Grail: Distractions in Econometrics and Economic Modelling
Lars Syll ran an interesting piece today on the “confounder” problem in econometrics. This is basically the problem of how do we tell that if there is a relationship between, say, A and B that it is not, in actual … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Statistics and Probability
3 Comments
Models, Myths and Underpants Gnomes: Should Economics Be Dominated By Modelling?
In the latest issue of the Real World Economics Review Gustavo Marqués has an interesting paper entitled A Plea for Reorienting Philosophical Attention From Models to Applied Economics. In the paper Marqués examines some of the philosophical justifications that have been … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
3 Comments
Metaphor and Meaning: What is a Downward-Sloping Demand Curve?
All too often a debate, or what sometimes passes for one, is due to one side not knowing the definition of terms. There are many reasons for this — sometimes, for example, people are just ignorant — but one reason … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
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Nancy Cartwright’s Defense of and Attack on Economic Modelling
Recently I thought it might be interesting to give the other side in the modelling debate a chance. Frankly, I have not found the debates online to be particularly stimulating or interesting, so I thought I’d go to what is … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
2 Comments
Economic Modelling and Artificial Intelligence: Is Economic Reasoning Always Based on a “Hidden” Model?
There’s a trope one hears from economists all too often when one discusses the usefulness (or uselessness) of models. The argument usually runs like this: the person questioning the use of models says, for example, that all the useful predictions … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
9 Comments
Keynes’ Philosophy: Induction, Analogy and Probability
In a recent post I dealt with Keynes’ opinions on the application of statistics and theories based on probability (e.g. econometrics). There I noted that Keynes thought that much applied work failed because it improperly deployed the use of Analogy … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Statistics and Probability
2 Comments
Holey Models: A Final Response to Matheus Grasselli
Matheus Grasselli has responded to some of my previous posts (in the comments on this post) and some comments I made on the Facebook Young INET page. His points were as I thought they would be — indeed, I have … Continue reading
Clarity and Obfuscation in the Use of Mathematics for Economic Reasoning
The Tony Lawson paper discussed on this blog the other day seems already to have begun to cause ripples in the heterodox community. The Real World Economics Review Blog has run a piece by Lars Syll on the paper and … Continue reading
Posted in Economic Theory, Philosophy
8 Comments
Fixing the Economists 