Philosophy of Social Science - Science topic

Dear Yoshinori,

I apologize for the delay in responding to your generous comments on my previously published articles. I did not have enough time until now. I answer you now your interesting question.

Saari and Simon's criticisms focus on the adjustment processes known as Walrasian tâtonnement, where 1) there is no exchange, production, or consumption activities during disequilibrium, and 2) prices are adjusted according to the law of supply and demand or Newton's iterative process, explained as if they result from perfectly competitive mechanisms where a Walrasian auctioneer sets the prices. In these cases, the stability results depend on the shape of the excess market demand functions for each commodity. According to the SMD theorem, this presents a significant problem and a huge limitation for such stability results.

In contrast, the Hahn and Fisher adjustment processes are different: 1) they are not Walrasian tâtonnement processes (Hahn's process involves exchanges, and Fisher includes also consumption and production activities), and 2) firms or individuals set prices through more or less monopolistic competitive processes. Most importantly, their stability results do not depend on the shape of the excess market demand functions for each commodity. Therefore, they are not constrained by the SMD theorem.

It is a shame these adjustment processes are not as well known or taught in our economics courses.

Best regards,

Martin

Thanks.

Research made simple by "Dr. Patrick Ndalama".

“Is it possible to consider that consciousness is a kind of energy ?”

- really the question above looks as rather, if too, vague scientifically, since to answer to it, it is necessary before to understand – what are “consciousness” and “energy”; and, at that, it is necessary to understand what are some really fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all in this case “Matter”, “Space”, “Time”, “Information”; and “Consciousness” and “Energy”, which really fundamental phenomena/notions as well;

- whereas all these phenomena/notions are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational in mainstream philosophy and sciences; and for the posters in the thread.

The fundamental phenomena/notions above can be, and are, scientifically defined/understandable only in framework of the philosophical 2007 Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s “The Information as Absolute” conception, recent version of the basic paper see

https://arxiv.org/abs/1004.3712 , more see at least a couple of dozens of pages in this link.

If briefly – “Matter” – and so any material structure, and any “Consciousness”, including human’s one, are fundamentally different informational systems, which are based on fundamentally different sets of basic laws/links/constants, and so exist and operate, i.e. change their states, say if some Matter’s particle moves, or some consciousness thinks, in fundamentally different spaces, which only a bit partially intercrossed. If Matter’s space, and a motion in the space are well instinctively observable, however nobody saw where some thought is.

Energy fundamentally isn’t something either material or relating to a consciousness, that is – really rather mystic till now even in the SS&VT conception above phenomenon, however about which it is known already that energy is absolutely fundamental phenomenon - a “Quantity”, which isn’t some concrete informational pattern/system, however it is absolutely fundamentally necessary for any pattern/system could change, including be created.

So really “consciousness on Erath” that every living being has, just so Life on Earth exists, though more correctly every, again – fundamentally non-material - consciousness – a bacterium’s of a human’s one, uses fundamentally practically material living beings’ organisms [animals, including humans – body+brain] as stable residence and power supply that provide specific energy consumption by non-material consciousness functional modules.

The practically material brain is only power supply module and an auxiliary functional module at consciousness operation, say, it is used as “mother board” and “hard disk” in the “computer+program” system “consciousness”;

- etc., more see the link above, to read the SS&VT initial functional consciousness model in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329539892_The_Information_as_Absolute_conception_the_consciousness it is useful as well.

Cheers

episodic memory associations can be encoded and retrieved in a context-sensitive way; thus it can be evidenced.

They are interrelated somehow.

There are two articles that show this gap from different perspectives and that can be complemented. One takes it from education in general and the other from education for health practice. I hope they serve you, best regards.

Problem of what counts as a good scientific explanation... Salmon, W. C. (1984). Scientific explanation and the causal structure of the world. Princeton University Press.

I have this feeling that "causal inference" and "natural-born storytellers" are so different from each other - already at the level of the underlying logic - that it is impossible to lump them both together under a single category. To use the conventional terminology at the moment: on the one hand there is 'evidence-based research' that presupposes the Western 'dualism' between facts and symbols, objectivity and subjectivity, going back at least as far as Descartes - the other is narrative, which presupposes a tale told by an individual person, of the 'this is what I have seen/experienced' type. This is after all the common heritage of the 'West', and most especially the Protestant North of Europe: this acceptance of a fundamental 'difference' between the objective here, the subjective there. From what you write, one has this feeling that what you call 'linearity bias' presupposes that this distinction between objectivity and subjectivity in the above sense no longer holds. Would you be prepared to elaborate on why you think this is so?

RE: «Isn't it better to speak & write in terms of "conditions-for" instead of 'causes'?»

Wouldn't the conditions have to be casual conditions? Sure, causal explanation is pragmatic or interest-relative, and we focus on a causal factor that's relevant to us. So to light a match I think of causing it to light by striking it, our usual practice. I suppose in a certain kind of anaerobic environment, a more salient action might be injecting oxygen at the moment and point of striking.

My advice to a student who would ask such a question is:

1. Find a question for which you really want to know the answer but you can't find an answer in the current literature.

2. Discuss with your advisor and similar individuals how doable they think finding this answer is. Go from there.

Best wishes, D. Booth

If you define pragmatism as that articulated by Peirce, James and Dewey, then whatever helps us to achieve homeostasis or accommodation to the environment that permits us to live is the best thing. It is not so much that there is no metatheoretical commitments but rather that they are different from those of other philosophical schools. In this case, what you would do is to try various methods of alleviating poverty until you find the one that works the best. There is no single, correct approach. It will vary based on the solution. I have I'm sure grossly over simplified pragmatism but I hope that I am close.

There are several issues related to your question, and while people have been talking about this problem for a long time (e.g., Meehl on differences between physics and psychology, Rosenthal on the file-drawer problem), there has more recently been proposals that will likely increase the likelihood of non-significant results being published. This include pre-registration and editors telling reviewers not just to look for significance. A problem though, with both significant and non-significant results, is that many studies are under-powered. If researchers have not collected enough data to provide measurement that are precise enough for the purpose, reviewers should recommend rejection.

I think the original question was asked because the person asking it already had what they believed to be an answer. the skills developed through tertiary study are to strengthen critical thinking and expose us to as many ideas as possible and obviously they can't all be correct. (I'm a philosophy student so the approach to truth is different than in the sciences but there is still a truth which the questions asked relate to.)

It Kant be denied that there are foundational texts and concepts but there is nobody saying that Kant, or any of the dead whites, was correct. If you can find out why they aren't then that should be what motivates you. Education is a conversation, training is dogma.

Psychology is a soft science but studying neurochemistry or neurobiology is not psychology's sphere. Although it is possible to identify the brain function, it is not possible to identify the mind function (yet). The chemistry of the brain might be unbalanced and there are ways to treat that but what causes the unbalance? What biological function produces the idea of self? That is closer to what psychology is looking at. The scientific methods used in psychology don't necessarily mean it is aspiring to be a science that it can't be, just like Spinoza or Heidegger used scientific/geometric structures in their work as a way to express their notions to a scientifically literate community.

Finally, I don't know of any discipline that isn't concerned with finding answers to the questions that emerge from that discipline. And to say that one discipline can answer better than others is not to privilege any approach but to acknowledge that each discipline has different tools and methodologies. I wouldn't get a plumber to fix something electrical.

Dear Brad,

Through the lens of functionalism, we can say that memory cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the context in which it was formed. This is not an easy question to explore; nevertheless, it is an important one. The nervous system, indeed the entire body, acts as an integrated whole. Therefore, memory must play an important role in maintaining the integrity of that whole. How memory was formed may implicitly or explicitly play a role in how and when it will be used. Context, hence, must play an important role.

This will be a meaningful dialogue to engage in and I hope to hear back from you. Please take a look at the meta-analytic study by Smith and Vela (2001), which I have attached so that we can use some shared language for future conversations.

Best wishes,

Micah

First of all:

Bloom’s Taxonomy Verb Lists both verbs under "Analysis". While "Test" falls under evaluate...

Investigate .... examine...Test

Investigate: The verb investigate means carry out a systematic or formal inquiry to discover and examine the facts of (an incident, allegation, etc.) so as to establish the truth.

Example: Investigate Leadership & Gender using a specific research methodology [Quantitative, Qualitative, Mix,...]

Examine. The verb examine means to study something carefully and in great detail. You can examine a book, a painting, a person's face and so on. Right now, you are examining the meaning of examine. Examine means to look at something very closely and usually with the purpose of making a judgment.

Example: Examine Decision making [process, or other]

Test: The verb Test means a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use.

Example: Test Hypothesis Females are more meticulous in their decision making

I try to impress upon students that in order for person P to know datum X, then (1) P must believe X; (2) X must be true; (3) P must be either justified (externalism) or warranted (internalism) in believing X. Then it's just a matter of explaining justification and warrant. That seems to be a simple recipe.

A good textbook I've used is Louis Pojman and Lewis Vaughn, Philosophy: The Quest for Truth, 10th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2016). It is a primary source reader.

Have a look at Binmore: Natural Justice.  Rawls's reflective Equilibrium or Paul Edwards The Logic of Moral Discourse are both accounts of how we can arrive at some 'objective' measure of the good.  

The micro and macro specification in the manner of Raudenbush and Bryk  makes it clear that the macro variable involved in the cross-level interaction is trying to account for unexplained differences in the random 'slopes' (or random differentials in your case of gender as the level 1 predictor). Moreover there could be unexplained differentials for  the higher level unit that remain after the inclusion of a macro variable and correctly estimated standard errors need to take this into account. For both these reasons I would model the random differentials at level 2 associated with the included level 1 predictor. While I do not agree  going maximal in terms of random coefficients with each and every predictor (with concomitant problems of over specification and non-convergence)  I think  that is important that you do so here - you may be interested in this submitted paper

Dear Yoshinori,

Thanks for your kind words. I perfectly agree with you that Say never fully understood Ricardo and was perhaps even intent on not understanding him or rather misunderstanding him. I attach a paper Christian Gehrke and I published in 2001 on Say and Ricardo on value and distribution.

That utility matters in order for goods to have value was not disputed by Smith or Ricardo, but neither of them was a utilitarian. They also did not object to the view that demand and supply matter in determining market prices, but they disputed that they play a role in determining natural or normal prices. Supply in this context was taken to be a given actual offer and not a supply function. Similarly, demand was used in an everyday language and not in the sense of a definite quantitative relationship between the amount demanded and the price of a commodity. Representatives of the German use value school, who invented the concept marginal utility, did not see their ideas in conflict with Adam Smith's theory, but rather as adding some flesh to it. (See my piece on the German and Austrian schools.)

John Stuart Mill interestingly stated that due to Ricardo's achievement the theory of value was complete. However, when dealing with the problem of joint production he abandoned this view and claimed that demand plays an important role. Alas, in discussing the case of two products being produced by means of a single process (e.g. wool and mutton) he assumed that there is only one process available and the system of equations is thus short of one equation to determine all unknowns. Had he allowed for two (or several) methods of production he would have had to develop a more sophisticated argument. (I published a paper on "Early Classical and Marginalist Economists on Joint Production"  in 1986 in Metroeconomica.)

Ricardo was not well received in Germany, which was under the spell of old cameralist traditions and later of Say. People abhorred abstract reasoning and understandably had difficulties to come to grips with it. But there were notable exceptions to the rule. These included Hermann and von Thünen in the first half of the 19th century and then towards its end von Bortkiewicz, to name but a few.

Best,

Heinz

Are you looking for a symbolic qutation from a famous charactor, or "a" good one about your suject matter, in general? A good qutation could come from an experienced native individual, without any influence of outsiders, too.

Dear Shiozawa sensei and ResearchGate community,

I could not agree more with you when you state that all data-first theorist like Hoover, Hendry, Juselius, Johansen, Spanos are deeply influenced by F53. In the end, all of them follow a marshallian approach. According to the four aspects of scientific research, they start from (3) and end up in (1). Regarding (3), it is necessary to recall that "Data-First" theorist do not transform or curate data since they are "market processes" and, according to Hendry (2011), are subject to three kinds of unpredictabilities: intrinsic, instance and extrinsic. In other words they "let the data speak for themselves".

However, I don’t think the vast majority of economics are influenced by F53 Positivism or Popperian Falsificationism in strict sense inasmuch as RBC and DSGE models (the widespread models in Economics), whose predictive power is not good, have not being ruled out. Professor Mário Amorim Lopes explanation about popperian epistemological approach on social sciences was really clear and contundent. For instance, these models were not able to predict 2007/08 Financial Crisis, they were not able to survive falsifications, albeit they are still used for the vast majority of Central Banks in several countries. Kirman (2010) stated that “The Economic Crisis is a Crisis for Economic Theory”.

Now the question is, are DSGE models the best theory available? Are there other theories which are able to predict Economic Crisis? Kirman (2010) supports the idea that Shiozawa sensei stands for (so do I): viewing an economy as a complex adaptive system, a set of interdependent elements (agents) organized in networks (without a central control) which produce emerging aggregates and have the properties of adaptation and self-organization. In that sense, to overcome DSGE scenarios with representative agents, rational expectations, walrasian law (markets empying) and stochastic trend; it is necessary to build models that explain and predict economies with contagion, interaction, interdependence, networks and trust.

So far, we have identified that it is necessary to construct models which consider Economic Crises as inherent to the evolution of the complex system. But can we identify the evolution of the system? This responsibility lies in two different hypotheses: i) Former economic theories that have been ignored like the Financial Instability Hypothesis by Hyman Minsky; and ii) Approaches from other disciplines such as: Econophysics (see Jovanovic, F. y Schinkus, C., 2013; Rickles, D., 2008 and Sornette, D., y Zhou, W., 2007).

Allow me to discuss some ideas on Econophysics (I am deeply interested in this field). First of all it is necessary to recall that Financial Markets Data present certain stylized facts: i) Fat-tailed distributions (Instance Unpredictability, Hendry (2013) – Taleb’s Black Swan); ii) Volatility; iii) Autocorrelations (memory); iv) Leptokurtosis and v) Clustering. According to this, the normal distribution, martingales and random-walks which are the battlehorses of Eficient Market Hypothesis by Fama and therefore DSGE models, does not shed a light on Financial Market Data. On the other hand, Econophysics put forward the use of “Truncated Levy-Pareto” distributions which address all those stylized facts stated above. These distributions are bell-shaped like Gaussian distributions but unlike these ones, they assign bigger probability to the events in the center and the tails of the distribution (Economic Crises). (Jovanovic, F. y Schinkus, 2013).

In that sense, given that Econophysics view the economies as a Complex Adaptative System and provides a good explanation on Economic Crises, why DSGE models are still used? I think he answer to this question responds to interests (professor Karlsson emphasized on it above) and the arrogance of most Orthodox Economists. They are reluctant to ruling out DSGE models and accept developments coming from other disciplines outside economics. I do agree with Moisés Naím when he states that “while there may be budding intentions to appeal to other disciplines in order to enrich their theories (especially psychology and neuroscience), the reality is that economists almost exclusively study—and cite—each other”.  (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/economists-still-think-economics-is-the-best/390063/)

To sum up, I think neither Friedmanian Positivism nor Popperian Falsificationism is followed in strict sense by the vast majority of economists. The current bulk of models do not care about predictions, they just follow the “discipline of equilibrium” (Representative Agents, Walras law and Rational Expectations). I exposed the example of Economic Crises and Financial Markets inasmuch as it is the most important falsification of DSGE models, but there are other falsifications in other fields like Economic Growth and Development (my dissertation states about it but unfortunately it is in Spanish and I have not translated it to English yet, my apologies).

Thanks a lot for sharing your valuable concepts on this related topics

Édgar    

REFERENCES

1. Hendry,D. (2011). "Unpredictability in Economic Analyis, Econometric Modelling and Forecasting," Economics Series Working Papers 551, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

2. Jovanovic, F. y Schinkus, C. (2013a). Towards a transdisciplinary econophysics, Journal of Economic Methodology. Volume 20, pp. 164-183

3. _______________________ (2013b). Econophysics: A new challenge for financial economics? Cambridge University Press, 319-352.

4. Kirman, A. (2010). The economic crisis is a crisis for economic theory. CESifo Economic Studies 56: 483-535.

5. Rickles, D. (2008). Econophysics and the complexity of financial markets, Handbook of the philosophy of science, Volume 10, pp. 133-152.

6. Sornette, D., y Zhou, W. (2007). Self-organizing ising model of financial markets. The European Physical Journal B, 55(2), 175-181

A hypothesis is a tentative proposition or posit based on insufficient knowlege to be sure that it is factual. A hypothesis is proposed for testing.

If much testing affirms the correctness of a hypothesis, and it is generaly accepted, it then can become accepted as a theory. However, theorys can still be challenged and they may be modified or even discarded altogether, if much contrary knowledge is acquired and presented.

If a theory is rock-solid and apparently is beyond any dispute, it can be accepted as a law. There are laws in physics, for example. However laws are very scarse, or non-exsitent, in other diciplines such as biology.  

Paradigms  are also interesting, if you are keen. They are, very roughly, generaly accepted principles within which research is coducted, but they may be overthrown and replaced by a new paradigm during a scientific revolution.

Note that in non-scientific language, in common speech, even an idea or a train of thought may commonly be referred to as a 'theory', and the word hypothesis is not generaly known or used, and law is usualy used only to refer to the legal system.

I hope this helps Alex,

Regards,

Keith

Glaser, Strauss and Corbin.

Grounded theory can be very useful research technique and would probably fit well with your research aim. However many of the interpretations of the original theory have been seriously disputed by its originators.  So, while it is always good practice to do so, in this case it is essential to read the original works.  Having said that I have found that Karen Lockes Grounded Theory in Management Research is a good reprise, so perhaps a starting point

I know very little about the details of Spain under Franco other than I have read of the civil war in the literature of Laurier lee and George Orwell, however I feel if you take 'traditional music' to be the folk music of countries or regions the use of song as a way of carrying news and ideas has a very long history in human communication. 

In this I don't think you could determine any particular bias toward the political left or right, I'm sure both the incumbent regime and its opponents used traditional music within their communities as a device for both social interaction and ideological propaganda.

whether one variant of traditional Spanish music was particularly usurped by the Franco supporters you will know better than me. 

Speaking of someone who, with Latham, has developed one of the most successful theory building projects in the history of psychology, I will say that it is a gradual, inductive process-feelings come and go like rain drops but they do not lead to a validated theory without extensive cognitive work-

Literal meaning of the word science: comes from the Latin SCIENTIA which means KNOWLEDGE. Therefore, the scientific method is a method to ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE. And what is knowledge? The perception of physical reality that rational beings acquire through their senses. In the case of the human species, that would be what we see, touch, hear, smell and taste and incorporate into our neural connections and use in our interaction with the physical world to increase our odds of survival. Now, would somebody tell me when exactly the perception of reality and the pursuit of survival went out of fashion? Regardless of religious persuasion, ideological preferences or simple wishful thinking, we, as material beings, are bound to the laws of physics. That, thank Infinity, does not change.