keskiviikko 30. syyskuuta 2015

Scientists should ignore philosophical ideas about scientific methodology

Scientists are acting wisely when they don't pay attention to philosophical ideas about scientific methodology:
"most economists have a low opinion of 'Methodology'. ... The 'Methodology' that most economists ignore is, in fact, philosophy." (Don Ross: Lionel Robbins and broad positivism: all the philosophy an economist needs, 2007) 
"Skillful trade-offs between generality and accuracy rely crucially on the modeler's insight, judgment and experience - in a word, on her pragmatic professional know-how - not on applications of a priori methodological rules as some philosophers imagine." (Don Ross et al, Midbrain Mutiny, 2008) 

Besides their practical know-how, all the methodology (that is, positive advice about how to do economics) they need can be found in textbooks and other non-philosophical books written by scientists themselves:
"An example of a document that is surely methodological in the straightforward sense of the word and yet has plenty of respect around my department [Ross is an economist] is Hayashi's Econometrics (2000). ... it is ... a set of recipes telling an economist how to test models against data and how to gather and measure data in such a way that they can be used to test models of the kinds economists build. 
... 
those figures who have had the largest influence on economists' working understanding of their practice ... were at most occasionally influenced in tangential ways by philosophers. In their work, methodology does not come apart from first-order economic theorizing." (Don Ross: Lionel Robbins and broad positivism: all the philosophy an economist needs, 2007)
 Don Ross is both a practicing scientist and a philosopher so he knows what he is talking about when he discusses the relationship between science and philosophy. According to him, the only more "philosophical" (in Ross' sense) book economists should read is Lionel Robbins' Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, but notice what he says about it:
"the Essay is not methodology except in a negative sense. That is, from a practical point of view there are merely a few things it advises economists not to do: they shouldn't try to infer sweeping generalizations from quantitative historical data, or set out to empirically test the basic postulates of economics such as the general positive correlation between relative prices and sizes of ratios of demand to supply. 
... 
Note that Robbins mentions not one philosopher in the Essay
... 
the considerations that drive argumentation in the Essay all come from economics." (ibid.)  

 There does not seem to be much that "normative" philosophy of science could offer to scientists, as one of my fellow anti-philosophers often points out.

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