The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics

689 Pages·2009·11.85 MB·English

by  Harold Kincaid

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
PHILOSOPHY
OF ECONOMICS

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
PHILOSOPHY
OF ECONOMICS
Edited by
HAROLD KINCAID
DON ROSS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2009
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Oxford handbook of philosophy of economics/edited by
Harold Kincaid and Don Ross.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-518925-4
1. Economics-Philosophy. I. Kincaid, Harold, 1952-
2. II. Ross, Don, 1962-
III. Title: Handbook of philosophy of economics.
HB72.095 2009
330.01-dc22 2008021771
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
PREFACE
The selection of topics and authors for this volume is based a particular perspec
tive and a specific aim, about both of which we should be clear up front. First, we
take economics fully seriously as a science, and this leads us to treat the philosophy
of economics as a branch of the philosophy of science. Second, we set out to add
significant new material to the foundations of the philosophy of economics as so
conceived. In light of this combination of our standpoint, we do not cover norma
tive issues, except where they make direct contact with economists' ways of gath
ering facts, building models, and testing generalizations. In light of our goal, we
do not simply survey a fixed and familiar set of issues in philosophy of economic
science, but instead seek to expand the set in a way that reflects recent expansion
and changes in the range of activities engaged in by economists.
There are many good volumes already available on the normative issues,
and any attempt to cover both them and the philosophy of science issues would
have meant either a prohibitively large volume or a superficial one. Our focus
is on new material rather than surveys of old debates because we think-as
we argue in our first chapter-that economics and philosophy of science have
undergone significant revision since the received set of core concerns in philoso
phy of economics stabilized in the 1970s. We take very seriously the naturalistic
insistence that philosophy of science is continuous with science itself and that
the actual practice of a scientific discipline, such as economics, must be the basic
test against which the philosophy of the discipline in question is evaluated. Thus
the essays in this volume consistently engage concrete issues in economics, and a
number of our contributors are practicing economists. (One of the editors, Ross,
spends about half of his working time writing strategic analyses of industries in
South Africa.) This Handbook will be true to our intended conception if readers
increasingly find themselves unsure about where to locate the boundary between
economic science and its philosophy. Indeed, we suggest that the boundary met
aphor is misleading; instead, there is only a gradual and continuous shift of
emphasis as one moves from questions that are more empirical and less concep
tual in emphasis, to questions framed under the opposite polarization.
We would like to thank Nelleke Bak for her usual exacting editorial work,
along with Mark Holcombe. Peter Ohlin at Oxford University Press, and series
editor Paul Moser initiated and supported the project through its unduly long ges
tation; we thank them particularly for their patience.
Vl PREFACE
The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Center for Ethics and Values in the
Sciences funded a three-day conference at which rough drafts of the chapters were
presented and discussed among the authors. We think that this approach signifi
cantly strengthened the final product. Almost all of the chapters are entirely new
work, with the following exceptions: Chapter 22 is a revised version of Dasgupta
(2005), "What Do Economists Analyze and Why: Values or Facts?", Economics
and Philosophy 21:221-278. We would like to thank Cambridge University Press
for permission to include it here. Chapter 18 is an English-language, and other
wise revised, version of an article currently slated for publication in Spanish in
El Trimestre Economico. Finally, one section of Chapter 9 is directly adapted from
D. Ross, C. Sharp, R. Vuchinich, and D. Spurrett (2oo8 ), Midbrain Mutiny: The
Picoeconomics and Neuroeconomics of Disordered Gambling, MIT Press. We are
grateful to the Press for allowing us to use this material. Finally, we thank Richard
Charton for an excellent index.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Harold Kincaid would like to dedicate this volume to Scott Gordon, Geoffrey
Hellman, and Frank Thompson, the mentors who started him on this intellectual
project.
Don Ross adds dedication to three people who did the most to allow him to
expand his professional horizons in a new adopted homeland, Brian Kantor, Peter
Collins, and Kerry Capstick-Dale.

CoNTENTS
Contributors, xiii
1. Introduction: The New Philosophy of Economics, 3
Don Ross and Harold Kincaid
PART I: RECEIVED VIEWS IN PHILOSOPHY OF EcoNOMics
2. Laws, Causation, and Economic Methodology, 35
Daniel M. Hausman
3. If Economics Is a Science, What Kind of a Science Is It? 55
Alex Rosenberg
4· Realistic Realism about Unrealistic Models, 68
Uskali Miiki
5. Why There Is (as Yet) No Such Thing as an Economics
of Knowledge, 99
Philip Mirowski
PART II: MICROECONOMICS
6. Rationality and Indeterminacy, 159
Cristina Bicchieri
7· Experimental Investigations of Social Preferences, 189
Jim Woodward
8. Competing Conceptions of the Individual in Recent Economics, 223
John B. Davis
9· Integrating the Dynamics of Multiscale Economic Agency, 245
Don Ross