Bringing Social Structure Back into Economics: On Critical Realism and Hayek’s Scientism Essay
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper offers a critique of the critical realist (CR) interpretation of Friedrich Hayek’s famous essay Scientism and the Study of Society presented in Tony Lawson’s recent Economics and Reality. It is argued, contrary to Lawson’s reading, that Hayek’s social structures (1) do have an existence over and above the conceptions of the individual actors and (2) serve as a precondition for human action on the lines proposed by CR. Some links are made between Hayek’s essay and the theory of social reality recently proposed by John Searle, and some comparisons drawn with CR.
منابع مشابه
Critical Realism and Econometrics. Working Paper 4/2003
In “Economics and Reality” (1997) Tony Lawson advocates a perspective on social reality labelled critical realism. Critical realism maintains that strict regularities between observable events are the exception rather than the rule in the social world. This is a negative argument for econometrics which is seen to rely on the identification of such regularities. By contrast, the notion of explan...
متن کاملF . A . Hayek : The Liberal as Communitarian
At the heart of Friedrich A. Hayek’s social philosophy is a regard for the socially-constituted nature of man: the individual is not taken to be asocial or pre-social, but rather it is recognized that society defines the individual. The neglect of this aspect of Hayek’s work by both liberal and communitarian, as well as libertarian, writers within political philosophy has led to his position be...
متن کاملThe Study of Critical Realism Implications in Evaluation of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Making
Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify and extract the implications of critical realism for science, technology and innovation policy-making as one of the later research traditions in social sciences. Nevertheless, its main focus, according to the different stages of the policy-making cycle and extent of its contributing factors, is on the stage of "policy evaluation". Methods: Thi...
متن کاملRobbins as Innovator: the Contribution of an Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science
Lionel Robbins’s An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) made at least three important contributions: (1) constructing a more modern, focused, and general definition of economics, which continues to inform the best contemporary practice, (2) exploring the legitimacy of, and relationship between, empirical and a priori analyses in economics, and (3) demonstrating the f...
متن کاملSome Claims Made for Critical Realism in Economics: Two Case Studies
Instead of examining critical realism directly, this essay critically examines claims made by two prominent critical realists, namely Andrew Collier and Tony Lawson, on behalf of their philosophy. These are (a) that critical realism supports Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and (b) that critical realism is illustrated by the workplace organisation theory of the relative...
متن کامل