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    Milton Friedman and like-minded economists argue for pred... — Carmelics
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    Home/Consequentialism
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    Milton Friedman and like-minded economists argue for predictive goals in economics for policy reasons, not to resolve epistemological puzzles about unobservables.

    ConsequentialismTruth & Knowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Those who argue the ultimate goals of economics are predictive do so because of their interest in policy.
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    • 2.Their interest in prediction is not motivated by a desire to avoid or resolve epistemological and semantic puzzles concerning references to unobservables.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Friedman's instrumentalism in 'The Methodology of Positive Economics' directly mirrors Mach's positivist rejection of unobservable theoretical entities.
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    • 2.A methodology that systematically excludes unobservables as criteria of theory assessment is ipso facto taking a position on epistemological puzzles about unobservables.
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    • 3.The policy motivation for predictivism does not preclude simultaneous epistemological commitments — motives and logical entailments are distinct.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Musgrave (1981) demonstrated that Friedman's 'as-if' reasoning smuggles in a surrogate realism, revealing latent ontological commitments beneath the policy framing.
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    • 2.If a framework's justification implicitly relies on claims about what theoretical posits can legitimately do, it is engaged in epistemology whether or not that was the stated intent.
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    ConsequentialismTruth & Knowledge

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    Related

    A methodology that systematically excludes unobservables as criteria of theory a...Friedman's instrumentalism in 'The Methodology of Positive Economics' directly m...If a framework's justification implicitly relies on claims about what theoretica...Musgrave (1981) demonstrated that Friedman's 'as-if' reasoning smuggles in a sur...
    +3 moreShow less
    The policy motivation for predictivism does not preclude simultaneous epistemolo...Their interest in prediction is not motivated by a desire to avoid or resolve ep...Those who argue the ultimate goals of economics are predictive do so because of ...

    Similar

    Those who argue the ultimate goals of economics are predictive do so b...87%If economists abandon predictive success as a standard, their outputs ...81%Their interest in prediction is not motivated by a desire to avoid or ...80%The standards of predictive success that raise doubts about economics ...77%

    Source

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    SEP: economics
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    Economic methodologist have paid little attention to debates within philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists (van Fraassen 1980, Boyd 1984, Psillos 1999, Niniluoto 2002, Chakravarty 2010, Dicken 2016), because economic theories rarely postulate the existence of unobservable entities or properties, apart from variants of “everyday unobservables,” such as beliefs and desires. Methodologists have, on the other hand, vigorously debated the goals of economics, but those who argue that
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit