Lawson Tony. Economics and reality

Routledge, 1997. — 364 p.Science and economics
Inconsistency at the level of method
Inconsistency at the level of social theory
Inconsistency at the level of methodology
Realism
Deductivism
Empirical realism
Transcendental realism
Science, inference and law-statements
Knowledge as a produced means of production
Natural science: Bhaskar’s inference from experiments
Social science: inference from human intentionality
Ontology and the epistemic fallacy
Towards a distinctive science of society and economy
The failure of economics at the level of results
Confusion at the level of method
Problems in social theory
A contradictory orientation to methodology
The case against normative methodology
A question of science
Realism and science
Transcendental analysis
Explaining experimental activity
The possibility of economics as science
Human intentional agency
Limits and limitations
A stratified reality
Negativity, intentional causality, emergence and internalrelationality
Problems of contemporary economics
An absence of economic ‘laws’
The ‘Lucas critique’
Reactions to the ‘Lucas critique’
Systematic responses to generalised predictive failure
Regularity stochasticism
Extrinsic closure
Intrinsic closure
Aggregation
Reinterpreting the ‘Lucas critique’
The fallacies of atomism and isolationism
Nominal features of the orthodox ‘pure theory’ project
Changing features
Explanatory failure
Economic ‘theory’ and deductivism
Generalist claims and the question of determinacy
A deductivist tradition
Regularity determinism
Intrinsic closure
Extrinsic closure
Reinterpreting the ‘theory’ project
Solution concepts
Economic ‘theory’ as deductivism
Competing interpretations
Potentials and actualities
Prospects
Theorising as an alternative to explanation
Theory as one-sided understanding
Menger’s defence of ‘theory’
Theoretical science and exact laws
Exact laws of theoretical economics
The nature of Menger’s argument
Unanswered questions
Menger’s account of natural science
Menger’s inferences for social science
Theorising as a preliminary to successful explanation
The method of successive approximation
The method of isolation
Hayek’s theory of knowledge and natural science
Hayek’s theory of knowledge and social science
Social structure
Hayek’s hermeneuticised social science
Social ‘wholes’
Foundationalism and Hayek’s hermeneuticism
Hayek’s atomism
The material embeddedness and intransitivity of society
Consequences of a misconception of science
A typology of responses to failure
Human agency and society
Critical realism
Abandoning social atomism
The routinisation of social life
The irreducibility of social structure
Social rules
Social relations and societal practices
Systems and collectivities
The agency structure relationship
Social change
The relationship of social rules to positions
Intentionality
Irreducibility and the phenomenon of emergence
Tacit knowledge
Unconsciousness
Sameness and continuity
Stability in the face of uncertainty
Individuality
Economic rationality
Situated rationality
Economic explanation
Broad aims
The centrality of human practice
Intrinsic limits to social science
The hermeneutic moment in science
Experimental and non-experimental conditions contrasted
Interpreting partial event regularities
Explaining the preponderance of demi-regs
Contrastive demi-regs
Contrastive demi-regs and science
The detection of interesting demi-regs
Science and scientific interests
Inconsistency, surprise and criticism
Causal hypotheses
Explanatory power
Problems in discriminating between theories
Responses to explanatory failure
Assessing the reality of a hypothesised mechanism
The requirements of orthodox economics
Pure and applied explanation
Economics as an empirical and abstract science
The apparent failures of social research including economics
Abstraction and critical realism
The vantage point
The level of generality
The scope or extension
Abstraction and generalisation
Abstraction and economic ‘modeling’
The nature of truth
Objective truth
Truth as an expressive-referential dual
Criteria of truth
Judgemental rationality
Falsity and sheer error
Truth and economic ‘modeling’
Path-dependence
Functionalism and mainstream theory
The economy as an open system
Britain’s relative productivity performance as a contrastive demi-reg
The nature of the explanation
Explaining the explanation
‘Origins’ of the explanation
Tendencies towards ‘lock-in’
Social reproduction/transformation as an ex posteriori contrastive phenomenon
Conditions for social reproduction
Relative continuity as an ex posteriori production/achievement
The explanation in broader perspective
The partiality of all explanation
Economic policy and forecasting
Orthodoxy, economic policy and change
Critical realism, economic policy and change
Conditions of social emancipation
The basic thesis
Omissions
Consequences
The preoccupation with prediction