Racism is a framework, not a theory — Andrew Gelman

I am posting this for its relevance to philosophy of logic and philosophy of science rather than specifics. It draws a useful distinction between frameworks that generate theories and which are themselves not testable (hence falsifiable) and the theories a framework is used to generate.

This is obviously relevant to philosophy of science, but why philosophy of logic? In his later work, Ludwig Wittgenstein sought to show that the overarching frameworks of a culture as a way of life are deeply embedded in the structure and function of ordinary language.

Such frameworks are "world pictures (Weltbilden) that function as a world view. Although many of the propositions they generate appear to be descriptive, many are normative in operation. For example, the fundamentals of a world views are criteria for valuation and judgment, hence, they are stipulations that cannot be falsified from within that world view. For example, in doing science methodological naturalism is fundamental.

As a result many make the illogical jump from a methodological assumption to a metaphysical assertion (materialism) in neoclassical economics methodological individualism, microfoundations, rational maximization, market forces and equilibrium are key fundamentals that are assumed as criteria. This is a reason that neoclassical economists reject "heterodox economics" out of hand.

World views and ideologies are similar and need to be distinguished. A world view is a way of seeing the world that is embedded in ordinary language based on interpretation of context. They are subconscious and very difficult to articulate since they are the basis for using a language to communicate. This applies even to formalizations to the degree that assumptions are stipulated that link that symbols to life. (Pure math says nothing about the world. It is about how the rules for sign-use work in a particular syntactical system.)

Conversely, ideology is articulated at least in outline and people within a single world view can recognized differences of expression based on competing ideologies. Politics functions in this way, for instance. American liberals and conservatives degree but they function within the same framework.

So the application of the point that statistics professor Andrew Gelman is making goes far beyond the context of racism.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Racism is a framework, not a theory
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Andrew Gelman — Our hypotheses are not just falsifiable; they’re actually false.

On the practical side of philosophy of science. Adding nuance to Karl Popper on falsification.

Further argument for the view that theories are useful but not "true." This may seem to contradict the realist view that theories are general descriptions of causal relationships. But I don't think that this is what is is implied. Rather, useful theories can be viewed as fitting the data because they reveal underlying structures that are not observed directly but only indirectly. 

There is a often a tendency to transfer simple analogies too complicated and complex situations and events. Some causal relationship are observable, as it a hammer driving a nail, with the physical theory explaining it in terms of simple variables related in a function. 

But most interesting issues are much more complicated and nuanced and may be complex, e.g., subject to emergence owing to synergy. There may a constellation of factors involved, and this may be difficult to order in a hierarchy. Some factors may be catalysts that are necessary for an operation but do not themselves enter into it. These may be presumptions that are hidden assumptions.

In addition, statistics is by definition "inexact" in that it deals with probabilities, unlike deterministic functions in which the variables are all known and measurable, and are expressible in terms of a simple function.

While physics is mostly tractable other than at the edges, life sciences are less so, and social sciences and psychology even less. Economics combines social science and psychology, especially macroeconomics and political economy. Economic sociology and economic anthropology take this into account, global economic history also demonstrates it.

This is coming to the fore now as some critics of MMT, the Green New Deal, and "socialism" demand to see data-based model that "prove" proposed solutions have worked in the past. Of course, the record is important, but the demand for "proof" requires a degree of stringency that is not applied in social science and psychology because it is unattainable. Nor is this standard applied to conventional economics either, its econometric approaching being based on formalism rather than being empirically based.

Another important point that Andrew Gelman makes is the futility of pitting theories against each other. That is a recipe for disagreement in that the party that determines the framing wins. Whose assumptions are going to set the criteria? Why?

And, no, I don’t think it’s in general a good idea to pit theories against each other in competing hypothesis tests. Instead I’d prefer to embed the two theories into a larger model that includes both of them.

This is a good suggestion but it is general. Often, the disagreement is over fundamental criteria that determine a frame of reference. This should be obvious in the different approaches to economic theory and economic practice., e.g., econometric and institutional, static and dynamic, simple and complex, natural and historical.

Obviously, a short post like this can only suggest matters that need deeper reflection, open inquiry and sincere debate aimed at solutions to pressing design problems. This is no long just "theoretical." Humanity has to get this right to survive, let alone prosper. We have seemingly dug ourselves into a hole based on policy that is has turned out to impractical in the extreme, such as socializing negative externalities that have led to environmental degradation and threaten ecological collapse if not addressed successfully in a timely fashion. So, let's get with it.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Our hypotheses are not just falsifiable; they’re actually false.
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Bill Storage — Science vs Philosophy Again

Interesting post and I get a shout out.

The Multidisciplinarian — Bill Storage on engineering, innovation, and interesting problems
Science vs Philosophy Again

Bill Storage | Visiting Scholar in Science, Technology, Medicine & Society, UCAL, Berkeley, and vice-president of LiveSky, Inc.

Lord Keynes on Mises and epistemology

Lord Keynes put up two interesting philosophical posts recently. I did want to comment on the first post, which is a good summary of the issues, but haven't had time. However, I did just write up a response to the second about Mises, putting it in historical perspective.

Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
Epistemology and Kinds of Knowledge

What is the Epistemological Status of Praxeology and the Action Axiom?
Lord Keynes

Mises action principle is Aristotle's every agent acts for an end (telos). Aristotle's approach to biology is teleological. This principle of causality was reiterated by Aquinas and was fundamental to Medieval Scholasticism as rational explanation of articles faith, contra the credo quia absurdam est, misattributed to Tertullian. Long and venerable tradition deeply embedded the principle of causality in the Western psyche. 

Hume attacked causality as a principle based on his assumption that knowledge is either from sense data or logic and no sense data correspond to causality other than observation of constant conjunction. Kant attempted to counter this move by moving causality from intellectual intuition to the logical structure of the mind that imposes a necessary connection between cause and effect in structuring knowledge. Aristotle's intellectual intuition of cause (aitia) as a real principle known through intellectual intuition become instead a category inherent to reason that is imposed on knowledge of that which is given in experience.

Not a bad move in retrospect in that it is being borne out somewhat in cognitive research on brain function. But this says nothing about reality outside the mind, which is really Hume's skeptical argument. In Hume's view, humans believe in an external world but know only sense data, which is then structured in terms of logic.

Kant's solution was no escape. It is simply the claim that humans cannot think beyond the bounds of spacial and logical categories — space and time, and existence and causality. The question remains that, although humans are hardwired to think within and in terms of these boundaries, does knowledge correspond actually to reality and do we know this for sure. For Kant it is impossible to know the thing in itself since knowledge as for Hume occurs within the confines of experience, which is structured subjectively. In the attempt to escape Hume, Kant has landed in subjective idealism instead of Aristotle and Aquinas's subjective realism in trying to avoid Hume's skeptical conclusion.

Kant did not realize (and probably could not at the time) that his categories don't always match up with scientific theory and findings. De eloped over a century later, QM and relativity are counter-intuitive, for instance, and suggest that reality is much more complex than the classical world of ordinary thought and observation in which Kant's epistemic categories apply "necessarily". Moreover, there is increasing reason to think that so-called reason cannot be separated from feeling ("passion") categorically, or nature from nurture. There is no "pure reason," anymore than there is an "invisible hand".

In addition, the the Kantian categories function as epistemic substitutes for the metaphysical "essences" that the ancients asserted were intuited intellectually. Hegel realized this in setting forth logic as metaphysics. 

Now anthropologists and sociologists are finding that these categories are culturally determined to a far greater degree than previously realized. Philosophy is turing out to be much more anthropological and sociological that Western thinkers had suspected previously. Wittgenstein made use of these anthropological and sociological discoveries in his later work exploring the logic of ordinary language.

The upshot is that Mises generated yet another metaphysical system. Metaphysical systems assume or posit their own criteria, which leads to circular reasoning, or assume unspecified criteria that lead to an infinite regress. This is no ticket to avoiding skepticism, as the failure of metaphysical systems to be universally compelling goes to show.

Scientific method was devised to counter subjectivity, but even science cannot avoid the issue of skepticism since its appeal is to experience and science has not shown how to bridge the gap between the knowing subject and objects of knowledge in that science presumes that immediate knowledge of objects and events is dependent on the senses.

But science makes skepticism a virtue in that scientific theories are general descriptions and general descriptions can only be falsified but never confirmed indubitably if the description is of an open set not all of whose members is known. Nonetheless, the question about the relation of knowledge and reality remains without an answer that is able to overcome skepticism as the view that human knowledge is relational, hence, relative to the knower rather than immediate knowledge of reality independent of the knower. This knowledge is inferred from the inability of the knower to control the known, and this inference depends on the principle of causality, which itself is in question.

Hume was not the first to put forward an argument for skepticism, and his is not the strongest case owing to his flawed assumptions. But he did put the ball in the court of those who wish to claim that there are universally compelling criteria supporting an intrinsic connection between subjectivity and objectivity that yields true knowledge of reality such that it is not influenced by subjectivity, and it is possible to know this for sure, that is, based on adequate criteria.

Mises is stuck in his own mind, which he has confused with reality, and has ruled out empirical testing on the grounds that he matter is settled — he says. No wonder Hayek ran away from that dogmatic claim.

Unlearning Economics — Falsification in Economics

A remarkable characteristic of economics is the sheer staying power of theories, even with a lack of empirical evidence to corroborate the propositions of these theories. In my experience, it is not uncommon for lecturers to remark that the lack of evidence for a theory has been a ‘problem’ for economists (though apparently not enough of a problem for them to throw out said theory). Often textbooks, lectures and discussions of theory make no reference to evidence whatsoever, and where they do it is trivial (for example, representative agent intertemporal macroeconomic theory predicts that governments will run periods of deficits followed by periods of surplus).

In the paragraphs that follow, I’ll examine a few cases of where I believe economics has gone off the mark in this respect. Specifically, I evaluate Marginal Productivity Theory, Walrasian Equilibrium, and The Solow Growth Model. I avoid theories such Real Business Cycle models and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, partly because they have been done to death, but more importantly to demonstrate that the bad theories in economics are not merely the result of a few ‘wild cards’ at Chicago. On the contrary, I believe an anti-empirical approach is institutionalised within mainstream economics and that economics must undergo a paradigmatic shift to move away from these theories.

Unlearning Economics
Falsification in Economics