Lars P. Syll — In search of causality

Causality is one of the fundamental problems in philosophy, covering epistemology, philosophy of language, semiotics, and philosophy of science. Since causality is the basis of explanation, it applies to all aspects of understanding and theorizing, as Aristotle pointed out in his Metaphysics millennia ago. Yet, there is still no complete understanding of causality that would end controversy.

There many interrogatives — who, what, when, where, how and why, for example. Description involves the facts — what what, when, where, how much and how long, etc. Explanation involves means and ends — "how" (Greek techné) and "why" (telos).

Natural science deals chiefly with the how. "Speculation" deals with the why. Aristotle opined that all speculation begins with wonder. The Greek word for "speculate" that Aristotle uses is theorein. The root is theo which means god, or divine. Speculation is contemplative rather than active. It involves reflection on experience.

An archaic English term for "to speculate" is "to divine." It means to discern the inner workings. We see the sun rise and set and still speak of the "sunrise" and "sunset," but now we know that the sun is not actually moving at all; the rotational movement of the earth is "causing" the experience.

What we wonder about is a "puzzle" to us. The Greek term is aporia. The root means "impasse." This "causes" us to speculate about how and why in search of an explanation as a "theory."

In ancient time, most of the answers to such foundational questions involved supernatural causes expressed in myths, which were largely anthropomorphisms about natural forces. At the time of the Axial Age, interest shifted toward intellectual (logical) reasoning in place of myth as storytelling became less satisfying intellectually.

Aristotle was the first person in the West to systematize knowledge largely in the form that it has been handed down through the centuries in the West. He understood that a requirement for gaining true knowledge (epistemé) through inquiry was to understand reasoning, so he wrote books on logic as a prerequisite.

Aristotle was also understood that knowledge of the world comes through the senses and so he emphasized the role of observation in gaining knowledge. He was particularly interested in biology as a science understood as theory based on observation rather than storytelling.

Aristotle also recognized the existence of foundational issues that "come before," or are "meta," as we say even today. These are properly the issues for intellectual inquiry, which we still call "philosophy." meaning love of wisdom. Here the Greek term sophia means speculative wisdom rather than practical wisdom. Speculative wisdom is concerned with the way, while practical wisdom is concerned with the how.

Aristotle seems to have gotten off on the wrong foot in some instances, but overall the paradigm of knowledge he set forth still holds sway in the West. In fact, Aristotelianism is now making a comeback.

Today, we are still arguing about causality, what counts as causal explanation, and the degree to such ultimate explanation is possible given bounded rationality.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
In search of causality
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Lars P. Syll — The main reason why almost all econometric models are wrong

Since econometrics doesn’t content itself with only making optimal predictions, but also aspires to explain things in terms of causes and effects, econometricians need loads of assumptions — most important of these are additivity and linearity. Important, simply because if they are not true, your model is invalid and descriptively incorrect. And when the model is wrong — well, then it’s wrong....

Simplifying assumptions versus oversimplification.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
The main reason why almost all econometric models are wrong
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Brian Romanchuk — Forecastability And Economic Modelling

When most people think about macroeconomics, what they want is the ability to forecast economic outcomes. However, economists' (of all stripes) reputation as forecasters is not particularly high. My view is that this is not too surprising: what we want forecasters to accomplish is probably impossible. (I am hardly the first person to note this, as variants of this idea go back at least to Keynes; I could not hope to offer a history of this idea.) However, I think if we want to approach macro theory formally, we need to formalise the notion that outcomes cannot be forecast, which means we need to define non-forecastability formally.

This article gives one potential definition of forecastability, and then applies the concept to a simple stock-flow consistent (SFC) model. It should be noted that these are my preliminary thoughts, and I believe that the definition will need to be refined.…

This is one of the key questions in philosophy of economics, as well as philosophy of science and philosophy of social science.

The purpose of science is to provide as general an explanation of data ("data" means "the given.") The data set is determined by the nature, scope and scale of the subject matter being explained. This is accomplished through modeling, both conceptual and mathematical.

Prediction comes in with respect to testing outcomes of theoretical models, using hypothesis the theory generates and carefully designing testing apparatus.

The difference between philosophical speculation based on reasoning and science is that scientific reasoning can be tested by subjecting hypotheses to disconfirmation, since a general statement (theory) is contradicted by a single false instance.

No amount of true instances can definitely confirm a general statement that is not a tautology and therefore empty of content about how things stand in the world. This is the case logically, even though we call theoretical assumptions that are well confirmed by hypothesis testing "scientific laws."

Science is always tentative on the next outcome unless it is established that all the factors involved are known to be true based on observation. A logical argument is sound if and only if the logical from is valid and the premises are true. Then the conclusion necessarily follows.

This implies that a great deal of that which is considered scientific is speculative. That is to say, it is not science but philosophy.

There is nothing wrong with philosophy. Not everything is explained by scientific reasoning. The questions involving key fundamentals of life and reality have not been answered using scientific reasoning. They are "the enduring questions" that are the domain of philosophy. When methods are developed to answer such questions using scientific reasoning, then they become the subject matter of science.

I don't wish to give the impression that fundamental issues in philosophical method are resolved. They are not for the simple logical reason of lack of criteria that are universally agreed up. But the above more or less summarizes what is generally accepted practice based on logic., even though there are issues in the foundations of logic, too.

Hopefully, Brian's post will contribute to getting economists thinking more  about the foundations of their field and doing this more carefully.

Bond Economics
Forecastability And Economic Modelling
Brian Romanchuk

See also

My point is merely that forecasting is not the same as modelling, nor the same as telling a good story.

Stumbling and Mumbling
On thin predictions
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

See also

There are many arguments for the use of models in economics, including notions of rigor and transparency, or that models can help you to see relationships you otherwise might not have expected. I don’t wish to gainsay those, but I thought of another argument yesterday. Models are a way of indexing your thoughts. A model can tell you which are the core features of your argument and force you to give them names. You then can use those names to find what others have written about your topic and your mechanisms. In essence, you are expanding the division of labor in science more effectively by using models.

Austrian economists of typically better at examining the foundations of economics, probably since Mises and Hayek were philosophers. Austrian economists have also written at great about the foundations of liberalism as a social and political theory.

Marginal Revolution
Models as indexing, and the value of GoogleTyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center

Noah Smith — "Theory vs. Data" in statistics too

Important.

I think Noah has this right. Fit the tool to the job, rather than the job to the tool.

Aristotle defined speculative knowledge in terms of causal explanation. This definition stuck although Aristotle's analysis of causality did not.

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle places the following crucial condition on proper knowledge: we think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have grasped its cause (APost. 71 b 9–11. Cf. APost. 94 a 20). That proper knowledge is knowledge of the cause is repeated in the Physics: we think we do not have knowledge of a thing until we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause (Phys. 194 b 17–20). Since Aristotle obviously conceives of a causal investigation as the search for an answer to the question “why?”, and a why-question is a request for an explanation, it can be useful to think of a cause as a certain type of explanation. (My hesitation is ultimately due to the fact that not all why-questions are requests for an explanation that identifies a cause, let alone a cause in the particular sense envisioned by Aristotle.) — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

There is a distinction between reasons and causes. Some types of explanation seek only reasons, while other seek causes. Causation subsequently came to be viewed in terms of articulating mechanisms or lines of transmission (models) that are substantiated in evidence.

Explanation by reasons is different since the strict criterion of articulating mechanisms or lines of transmission that can be checked against evidence is not required.

Explanation by reasons rather than strictly by establishing causation is based on the principle of sufficient reason, which is usually credited to Spinoza and Leibnitz.

In philosophical logic, two negative criteria are foundational. Valid reasoning is vitiated by 1) arguing in a circle and 2) infinite regress.

Without recourse to checking against evidence there is no stopping point in assigning causes other than stipulation, e.g. of a first cause.

However, there may be a reason for a stopping point that doesn't involve causality based on evidence from observation or only stipulation, for example, principles that are "self-evident" based on intuition such as Aristotle's conception of intellectual intuition, or Kant's synthetic a priori propositions as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason. 

On the other hand, Hume argued that causality is merely over-interpretation of constant correlation, there being no knowledge of the world other than that based on sense data. There is no observable causal link.

Cutting to the chase, scientific explanation based on causality is grounded in models that articulate causal mechanisms or lines of transmission that show how things change invariantly, which is the basis for deterministic functions. Where this is not possible, then there are two other avenues. The first is explanation by giving reasons, which is the domain of speculative philosophy. The second is employing statistics to explore patters of correlation. The question then is to what degree causal models can be gained from statistical methods, or whether it is possible at all. 

This is the issue that Noah Smith's post is getting at.

Noahpinion
"Theory vs. Data" in statistics too
Noah Smith | Bloomberg View columnist

Richard D. Wolff — Economic Theorists: The High Priests of Capitalism

Richard Wolff traces a pattern of advocacy in social, political, and economic explanation. One might also call it persuasion.

Truthout | OpEd
Economic Theorists: The High Priests of Capitalism
Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a visiting professor of economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). His work is available at rdwolff.com and at democracyatwork.info.

Also

Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism
Mark Karlin interviews Richard D. Wolff for Truthout
See also

Stumbling and Mumbling
Cognitive biases, ideology & control
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Steve Randy Waldman — Attributions of causality

On Brexit, but more important for the thoughts on causes versus conditions and factors.

Interfluidity
Attributions of causality
Steve Randy Waldman

Lars P. Syll — ‘New Keynesianism’ – neat, plausible and wrong

Econometric fol-de-rol. Or fool-de-rubes?

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
‘New Keynesianism’ — neat, plausible and wrong
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Econometrics Beat: Dave Giles' Blog

Econometrics vs. Ad Hoc Empiricism
Dave Giles

Lars P. Syll — What is an explanation?

One of the most important tasks of social sciences is to explain the events, processes, and structures that take place and act in society. But the researcher cannot stop at this. As a consequence of the relations and connections that the researcher finds, a will and demand arise for critical reflection on the findings. To show that unemployment depends on rigid social institutions or adaptations to European economic aspirations to integration, for instance, constitutes at the same time a critique of these conditions. It also entails an implicit critique of other explanations that one can show to be built on false beliefs. The researcher can never be satisfied with establishing that false beliefs exist but must go on to seek an explanation for why they exist. What is it that maintains and reproduces them? To show that something causes false beliefs – and to explain why – constitutes at the same time a critique of that thing.
This I think is something particular to the humanities and social sciences. There is no full equivalent in the natural sciences, since the objects of their study are not fundamentally created by human beings in the same sense as the objects of study in social sciences. We do not criticize apples for falling to earth in accordance with the law of gravitation.

The explanatory critique that constitutes all good social science thus has repercussions on the reflective person in society. To digest the explanations and understandings that social sciences can provide means a simultaneous questioning and critique of one’s self-understanding and the actions and attitudes it gives rise to. Science can play an important emancipating role in this way. Human beings can fulfill and develop themselves only if they do not base their thoughts and actions on false beliefs about reality. Fulfillment may also require changing fundamental structures of society.

Understanding of the need for this change may issue from various sources like everyday praxis and reflection as well as from science....

This cuts to the core of the Western intellectual tradition that began in ancient Greece. Aristotle said that speculation begins with wonder. The satisfier, he concluded, was a causal explanation. This launched the investigation into causal explanation that is still very much underway.

Socrates, the teacher of Aristotle's teacher, Plato, famously said that a life not reflected upon is not worth the living. Human life should be a critical process if one is to live up to one's potential as a human being whose goal is to live a good life in a good society with others of good will. This doesn't just happen naturally since humans have tendencies they share with other animals that are instinct-driven as well as controlled by selfish desires like lust, anger, and greed, as well as rational tendencies that are driven by intellect and modulated by noble desires like love and the altruism it leads to.

Lars goes on to show how closed systems cannot adequately represent social reality, which requires open systems since human behavior is reflexive, adaptive, and emergent — in other words, complex. Moreover, social behavior is culturally and institutionally influenced.

With a non-reductionist approach we avoid both determinism and voluntarism. For although the individual in society is formed and influenced by social structures that he does not construct himself, he can as an individual influence and change the given structures in another direction through his own actions. In society the individual is situated in roles or social positions that give limited freedom of action (through conventions, norms, material restrictions, etc.), but at the same time there is no principal necessity that we must blindly follow or accept these limitations. However, as long as social structures and positions are reproduced (rather than transformed), the actions of the individual will have a tendency to go in a certain direction.

Where I disagree somewhat with Lars is over his contention that reality is independent of mind and that through a properly scientific approach, we can approach "reality" in our explanatory theories. Being a constructionist and pragmatist, I take "reality" to refer to experience rather than "things in themselves." Human construct their reality in groups and tend to associate in groups that validate their experience. Humans structure their experience in terms of an overarching model or "worldview" (Weltanschauung). Social reality is different from individual reality as personal experience, in that groups influence the way that people experience, interpret their experience, and construe it linguistically. See John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1996).

There is a great deal of divergence in worldviews even within overarching worldviews such as the Western worldview in contrast with the Chinese worldview, the Islamic worldview and the Indian worldview. While a single worldview is emerging with globalization it will take considerable time to develop into a coherent worldview. A great deal of the present political and economic turmoil is a result of the attempt to impose a Western and specifically American worldview on globalization.

A person that would be regarded as insane, superstitious or ignorance in a group seldom either associates with such a group other than out of necessity or else conceals one's real views from those who do not share them, and especially when this would result in a disadvantage.

Science is not merely a method of observation and theory construction. It takes place within a social milieu with an established culture and institutions, using ordinary language. Wittgenstein showed in his later work that ordinary language embeds a worldview (Weltbild). The use of "Bild" emphasizes that this is a model constructed in logical space.

To use a metaphor from physics, humans don't act as simply cameras recording objects existing in relation to each other in absolute space. Rather, humans experience in terms of a field having certain affects some of which are objective, e.g., sense data, but much of which is imposed subjectively, e.g., norms. While there is a great agreement based on sense data, as shown by the inter-translatability of languages, there is also not a one to one correspondence, also shown by the difficulty in translating many concepts precisely owing to nuance of context and construction.

Cognitive science has since supported this view. See, for example, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), as well as Metaphors We Live By (1980). We think in terms of conceptual models built from metaphors traceable to experience. These metaphors are both cognitive and affective.

The issue is that while sense-experience is more or less the same for all humans given the shared physiology, the agreement stops there for the most part. Even the "facts" are often in dispute in that the same data is structured differently as information. The quality of the signal is then compared not only with the data but also with the worldview in which experience is embedded. The same input can be construed in many ways and there are no absolute criteria independent of worldviews.

Therefore, the criterion is "experience," which is not only the fundamental criterion of science but of naive common sense. But as history reveals, naive common sense has often been wrong about the seemingly the most obvious things like the sun rising and setting. Coupled with the religious teaching of the centrality of Earth, it was a logic step to conclude that Earth is the center of the universe. While "science" subsequently showed the error in logic, how to be sure that contemporary science is not subject to similar errors.

For example, the worldview of mystics the world over is radically different from that of science, which takes the reality of ordinary experience to be actual reality. Mystics report exactly the opposite based on their non-ordinary experience, and those who follow spiritual paths report having similar experiences. Some of these have been or are scientists. Some Western scientists who do not assert such experience have also held that this view makes the most sense. Who is correct? How to decide?

What is an explanation?
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks Some, But Too Little, Labor Debate, Possibly Too Late

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Here is another example of how more people in more professions every year are "just eking out a living" - without any explanation for why we should settle for that outcome.
The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate
   (hat tip John Leonard)

With this kind of dis-coordination, our Output Gap must be - voluntarily - off the charts. We've been slogging away at our current course for over 30 years now. Isn't it past time to stand up, look around, and consider other options more carefully?

As a start, who are they, exactly, who are volunteering us for this suicide mission? Why? And to what purpose?

And if both their motives and desired outcome are suspect, where are the legions declaring "Hell No, We Won't Go" quietly into a state of total dis-coordination? If reducing our Output Gap is an alternative goal, then halting compliance with the anarchists is an obvious, early step. They can't volunteer us for self-assisted suicide if we simply refuse to cooperate.

If return-on-coordination - i.e., teamwork - is the highest return, by far, why are we throwing it away, instead of discarding stuff we DON'T need anywhere near as much? What other selections might we be making, instead? If there are so many options, why aren't we exploring them?

This is natural selection at work, folks, and at the moment WE are not selecting wisely. Is the sad death of the entire US Middle Class really our choice?

John Carney — How Home Ownership Causes Unemployment

Before the housing market in the United States went into convulsions, you heard a lot of talk about the positive "externalities" of home ownership. The Bush administration made something of a fetish of the idea, saying its goal was to create an ownership society.

The best-known dissenter was the British economist Andrew Oswald. As early as 1996, Oswald was producing papers that forcefully argued that home ownership causes unemployment. The effect Oswald claimed to have discovered was strong: Every 5 percent rise in home ownership resulted in a 1 percent rise in unemployment. Oswald's original paper set off a cascade of others that largely confirmed his results. 

Oswald is out with a new study, co-authored with David Blanchflower, that sheds more light on the link between unemployment and home ownership rates:

CNBC NetNet

How Home Ownership Causes Unemployment

John Carney | Senior editor

An interesting conundrum. 

John proposes an Austrian solution based on "malinvestment." But I tend to regard that kind of explanation as giving a reason instead of showing a causal factor. 

There's a big difference between reasons and causes. There are lots of reasonable explanations. The challenge of scientific explanation is to identify which of the many reasons are actually causal factors.

Peter Radford — The state of economics: Krugman is wrong

Where I disagree with Krugman in his blog today is his references to the economics profession.

In his discussion this morning he is critical of a defense of the hedge fund managers made by Jesse Eisinger. That defense rests on the notion that economists have no clue about the economy as demonstrated by their inability to predict the bubble and subsequent collapse. There were, of course, many economists who did predict the bubble, but they were not influential enough to have an impact. They remain mostly without influence due to their being outside the profession’s orthodox traditions. Krugman, however, defends the profession against Eisinger’s criticism, and this is where he goes wrong.

It does not matter that some economists were correct. The central orthodoxy of the profession, the source of most advice to policy makers and business people, and the basis of most commonly taught textbooks, totally missed both the possibility and then the existence of the bubble. Economics was horribly wrong. It hasn’t recovered since. Instead it is stuck in an unproductive self-examination that has yet to have much impact. Those who were wrong still pronounce and influence policy. They continue unabashedly to teach and perpetuate their errors. The profession, such as it is, is splintered into ideological warring camps making no progress towards a newer or more complete understanding of actual economies where things like asset price bubbles can, and evidently do, exist.

In short economics is a mess and is completely deserving of the skepticism Eisinger attributes to the hedge fund managers.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
The state of economics: Krugman is wrong
Peter Radford

Lars P. Syll — What makes a good explanation in economics?

Philosophy of economics and social science, or do you know what you are doing? Economists especially attempt to emulate or even mimic physics, but the social sciences are inherently different from the natural sciences because the subject matter is inherently different. Therefore, explanation will be different in the social sciences, including economics, than it is in the natural sciences.

Lars puts forth a realist theory in opposition to positivist and subjectivist theories. These are the dominant theories at present, but they are not the only possible ones, such as semiotic, pragmatist and idealist. All of these views have something to contribute, and none of them has proved itself to be so compelling as to exclude the others. History shows that different approaches exchange dominance. This is as a result of changing context, and it also shapes context.

Lars asserts that only one approach is to be preferred as optimal, otherwise relativism results, and that approach is "realism." In the absence of an absolute criterion, I don't see "relativism" as a problem. Lars would say that "reality" is that criterion, but what "reality" may be is one of the perennial questions on which there is no universal agreement, and some (Ludwig Wittgenstein) hold that the question is not answerable at all in that this lies beyond the limits of language to capture.

Then there is the idealist view expressed by Max Plack based on his view of quantum mechanics as foundational:

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. • As quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931)

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." • Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve." • Where is Science Going? (1932)

From Wikiquote.

Lars P. Syll's Blog
What makes a good explanation in economics?

Lars P. Syll | Professor of Social Studies and Associate professor of Economic History at Malmö University

David Fields — A Short Note on Social Theory and Enquiry

Brief summary of the epistemological conditions that influence methodological options is the social sciences. Fields know how to pack a paragraph. Very nice.

Short translation: Everyone has a POV and that POV introduces epistemological presuppositions as methodological assumptions into all theoretical enquiry. Methodological assumptions function as norms in selecting and organizing data, for example, through prioritizing.

Naked Keynesianism
A Short Note on Social Theory and Enquiry
David Fields

Daniel Little — New thinking about social systems

There is a great deal of important international work underway today within the philosophy of social science on the general topic of social ontology. How do social structures relate to the actions of socially situated actors? How does causation work in the social realm? Can we say anything rigorous about the nature of "levels" of the social world -- micro, meso, and macro? And is there such a thing as an "emergent" social property or entity?

Understanding Society
New thinking about social systems
Daniel Little | Chancellor, University of Michigan at Dearborn

Lars Syll — Phelps smacks down on Lucas’ rational expectations putsch

Adaptive expectations v. rational expectations.

As usual, It's the assumptions, stupid. Or better, the stupid assumptions.

Lars P. Syll
Phelps smacks down on Lucas’ rational expectations putsch
Edmund S. Phelps in Rethinking Expectations

Against Friedman: Why Assumptions Matter

I have previously discussed Milton Friedman’s infamous 1953 essay, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics.’ The basic argument of Friedman’s essay is the unrealism of a theory’s assumptions should not matter; what matters are the predictions made by the theory. A truly realistic economic theory would have to incorporate so many aspects of humanity that it would be impractical or computationally impossible to do so. Hence, we must make simplifications, and cross check the models against the evidence to see if we are close enough to the truth. The internal details of the models, as long as they are consistent, are of little importance.

The essay, or some variant of it, is a fallback for economists when questioned about the assumptions of their models. Even though most economists would not endorse a strong interpretation of Friedman’s essay, I often come across the defence ’it’s just an abstraction, all models are wrong’ if I question, say, perfect competition, utility, or equilibrium. I summarise the arguments against Friedman’s position below.

Unlearning Economics
Against Friedman: Why Assumptions Matter

Lars Syll — How do we attach probabilities to the world?

There are no such things as free-standing probabilities – simply because probabilities are strictly seen only defined relative to chance set-ups – probabilistic nomological machines like flipping coins or roulette-wheels. And even these machines can be tricky to handle. Although prob(fair coin lands heads|I toss it) = prob(fair coin lands head & I toss it)|prob(fair coin lands heads) may be well-defined, it’s not certain we can use it, since we cannot define the probability that I will toss the coin given the fact that I am not a nomological machine producing coin tosses.
No nomological machine – no probability.

Lars P. Syll's Blog
How do we attach probabilities to the world?
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Similar to transmission mechanism in causal argument. No mechanism and the argument is just handwaving.

Mepoc — A word on the explanatory power of MMT: The euro crisis explained before it happened

Links

Read it at Mepoc
A word on the explanatory power of MMT: The euro crisis explained before it happened

Some weekend reading — Daniel Little on social causation

On Thursday, March 8, 2012, I posted Daniel Little — Coleman on the elementary actor. Here is some follow-up on the methodological debate among sociologists, in particular between methodological individualists and institutionalists.

In Causal Pathways through Colman's Boat, Daniel Little examines the relationship of macro explanations and microfoundations.

In Microfoundations and Meso Causation, Daniel Little examines how macro explanations are not incompatible with microfoundations even when not traced out specifically in detail as narrow conceptions of methodological individualism require.

See also Daniel Little, New ideas about structure and agency for more on the debate between methodological individualism and institutionalism.

Finally, here Daniel Little's Current issues in causation research report on Causality and Explanation in the Sciences (2011), which summarizes the major current positions regarding causal explanation in the sciences.

From this, it should be pretty clear that most of the causal "intuitions" one sees on blogs by the non-rigorous are, well, not rigorous.

Peter Cooper shows how this methodological analysis applies to macroeconomics from an MMT viewpoint in Thinking in a Macro Way.

These few short posts cover a lot of territory if you have a chance to get to them.

Intellectual substance abuse — Parnell McGuinness

Open-ended thinking is being undermined by the noisy demands of advocacy.

There has been a lot of discussion of what the Occupy movement stands for, or perhaps now stood for, and whether it is like the US Tea Party movement. On a trip to the US in October I spent maybe an hour together talking to whoever would talk to me at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Washington DC. Here I formed the view that the resemblance is striking. But my slipshod sample swore blind they had nothing in common. Their distinction was clearly capitalised: they are Left while the Tea Party is Right and this seemingly simple fact overrides any commonality.

I say ''seemingly simple'' because I made an earth-shattering discovery a little while ago: both the right and the left care about creating a healthier, happier, more prosperous society. An economist of my acquaintance, who had the misfortune to find himself on the right after a promising career start as a Marxist, once even admitted (in a moment of weakness, no doubt) that he entered the profession to study how people could be best served. His alignment, he claimed, had moved along with his honest opinion of what type of economic management would allow for the best outcomes.

Despite the accusations hurled at each other by ideological opponents, my contact with both so-called "left" and "right" has convinced me that in general the two sides share common goals while disagreeing only on implementation. Perhaps it is time for each side to stop dismissing the other as shadily-funded stooges and use the intellectual rigour in their opposites as a whetting stone for their own ideas.

Read the at The Age (AU)
Intellectual substance abuse
by Parnell McGuinness
(h/t Senexx via Twitter)