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    Philosophical standards of empirical success are not mean... — Carmelics
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    Home/Skepticism
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    Philosophical standards of empirical success are not meaningful criteria for evaluating economics.

    Skepticism
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The only relevant criteria for assessing a discipline are those accepted by its practitioners.
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    • 2.Philosophical standards of empirical success are external to the community of economists.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Disciplines can be evaluated by standards they fail to articulate themselves, as Kuhn showed with incommensurable paradigms requiring external meta-criteria.
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    • 2.Economics makes empirical claims about the world, and any discipline making such claims is subject to general norms of empirical inquiry like testability and predictive accuracy.
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    • 3.Friedman's own methodology in 'Essays in Positive Economics' invokes predictive success as a criterion, demonstrating economists already implicitly accept philosophical standards of empirical evaluation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The demarcation criterion for science cannot be set by each discipline autonomously, or pseudosciences would simply self-certify by adopting permissive internal standards.
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    • 2.Philosophers of science like Lakatos have developed criteria for progressive versus degenerative research programs that have been substantively applied to economic theory by economists themselves.
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    Related

    Disciplines can be evaluated by standards they fail to articulate themselves, as...Economics makes empirical claims about the world, and any discipline making such...Friedman's own methodology in 'Essays in Positive Economics' invokes predictive ...Philosophers of science like Lakatos have developed criteria for progressive ver...
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    Philosophical standards of empirical success are external to the community of ec...The demarcation criterion for science cannot be set by each discipline autonomou...The only relevant criteria for assessing a discipline are those accepted by its ...

    Similar

    Philosophical standards of empirical success are external to the commu...84%The standards of predictive success that raise doubts about economics ...82%If economists abandon predictive success as a standard, their outputs ...77%Economics does not pass methodological muster as an empirical science76%

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    An equally radical but opposite reaction is Deirdre McCloskey’s, who denies that there are any non-trivial methodological standards that economics must meet (1985, 1992, 1994, 2000, McCloskey and Ziliak 2003, Ziliak and McCloskey 2008). In her view, the only relevant and significant criteria for assessing the practices and products of a discipline are those accepted by the practitioners. Apart from a few general standards such as honesty and a willingness to listen to criticisms, the only justif
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    Details

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