ReSES ID Seminar: Progress in Economics
Speaker: Catherine Herfeld (University of Hannover)
Discussant: Uskali Mäki (University of Helsinki)
Time: 2 November 2023, 14:15-15:45
# ABSTRACT of the talk
This is a work in progress. In this talk, we discuss a specific kind of progress that occurs in most branches of economics today: progress involving the repeated use of mathematical models. We analyze how economics progresses by discussing not only when progress occurs in economics but also when it does not. By analyzing progress in economics enabled by mathematical models, we also attempt to understand when progress is altered and how new methodological developments are considered to be potentially progressive.
To do so, we draw on the recent literature on model making, model transfer, and model application in philosophy of science to look at the case of economics. Particularly, we start from the template account of understanding models as based on what Paul Humphreys and others call “templates,” which are mathematical or computational forms that are flexible enough to be applicable to various kinds of target systems (Humphreys 2002, 2004, 2019, Knuuttila and Loettgers 2016, 2020). Generally, a template constitutes “a pattern that can serve as a common starting point for the development of a product but that can be adapted for the purpose at hand” (Humphreys 2019, p. 116, fn. 20). The concept of a template is used to clarify how using such templates within one domain, such as a discipline or subdiscipline, aids “the acquisition of explicit knowledge and understanding, and to explore similar questions when they are applied across domains” (ibid., p. 114).
Thinking of economic modeling as grounded on templates allows us to see how the application of economic models to other target systems within economics might ensure a repeatable process that leads to the definition and solution of new problems in the respective domain. Economics is chiefly a problem-solving science, in particular where model making and application predominate. We can even observe instrumentalist attitudes in economics which can best be captured by the functional account of progress (Shan 2019). To fruitfully discuss how large parts of economics progress, we thus adopt such a functional account of progress in this talk. We argue that progress in economics occurs through the use of what we call “common recipes” and model templates for defining and solving problems of relevance for economists. We thus argue that progress in model-based economics occurs when a model is considered sufficiently useful to be reapplied to define and solve pending or new problems. Progress is disrupted when models are considered useless for those purposes and advances again when a model is developed that proves useful in this respect.
We further support our argument by discussing the case of 20th century business cycle research. More specifically, we discuss a template that Jan Tinbergen formulated to model the business cycle a specific as a case for formulating and applying a model template in economics. By presenting this case study in detail, we show how model templates are not only reapplied to different phenomena. We also show how scientists first develop them and how, once they are considered less useful, they are replaced with new ones. Finally, our case also illustrates that it is not only the mathematical structure that is reused but that such reuse also requires a shared conceptual vision of the core properties of the phenomenon to be studied. Our analysis reveals that functional progress in economics occurs when a shared conceptual vision of the phenomenon allows a model template to be reused to define and solve problems. Progress can be hampered when templates are considered useless for specific problems, for which a change in the conceptual vision of the phenomenon can be responsible. However, functional progress can continue, once a new model template is developed and the conceptual vision underlying it is accepted.
# CATHERINE HERFELD
Catherine Herfeld is Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Hannover, Germany. Her research interests fall into the fields of philosophy of the social sciences, history of economics, and philosophy of economics. Catherine has recently received an ERC Starting Grant for a project entitled Model Transfer and Its Challenges in Science: The Case of Economics, which allows her to conceptually and empirically study why and how models are transferred across different scientific domains and what such model transfers imply for our understanding of scientific progress.
Hello everyone welcome to another episode of our RS ID seminar today we will have cine hareld on the progress in economics and our discussant will be us Maki this seminar is a part of our project called reinking the serviceability of Economics to society which is funded by The Finnish cultural
Foundation this project is the public phe of our research project called economics is serviceable social knowledge which is funded by the Academia of Finland our main speaker today is Katherine haral she’s a professor of history and philosophy of Economics at the University of Hanover in Germany her research interests fall
Into the fields of philosophy of the social sciences history of economics and philosophy of Economics cine has recently received an ERC starting grant for a project entitled modal transfer and its challenges in science the case of Economics which allows her to conceptually and emperically study why and how models are transferred across
Different scientific domains and what such model transfers imply for our understanding of scientific progress our discussion today is usal Li Maki who is a professor emeritus at the University of HSI he is the leader of 10 Center for philosophy of Social Science he was the director of tin Center of
Excellence between 2012 and 2017 previously before hinki he and between 1995 and 2006 he was a professor at arasmus University of rdam where he was the academic director of arasmus Institute for philosophy and economics a he was a co-editor of the Journal of economic methodology between 1996 and 2005 founding member Executive Board
Member and uh between 2017 and 2008 chair of the international Network for economic matter Island and he has been a research area coordinator for the European Association for evolutionary political economy since 1992 before we start I should note that the seminar will be recorded however we
Will stop the recording after uh cine St and USC’s uh comments so that we can have a more relaxed discussion so thanks everyone for being a part of our seminar and particularly thanks to our speaker Katherine and discussing usali thanks very much for agreeing uh to contribute to our seminar series Katherine thanks
Very much and the floor is yours well do you see the slides all right yes we do great um yes so thank you very much um for this uh invitation for this kind of invitation I’m very glad that I’m uh here being able to present um something about progress in
Economics uh what I present mainly is work in progress with Marcel balans from the from the University of or utre university and we have recently um finished a very first um paper on this topic um it’s a book chapter which is published in yafen Chan’s edited volume volume on scientific progress which is
Entitled uh new philosophical perspectives on scientific progress and has just come out I think with rout Lich and although this uh paper is published for me this is a certainly work in progress in the sense that I’m only starting to look into this uh this topic mainly as emra mentioned in the context
Of my starting Grant where I look into model transfers in science and to look into the question of how model transfers in economics mainly can be considered Progressive um and the other part for why this is work in progress for me uh especially is that uh the case study
That I’m going to present today is a is a case study in history of um econometrics and there Marcel of course is the expert so what I’m going to do just to give you a little bit of context um what I’m going to do in the future is
Take these rough ideas that I’m going to present today to you on progress in economics and try to apply them to different cases uh different other cases uh in the history of Economics but also in contemporary economics to also understand um the ways in which these uh reapplications or model transfers um
Across disciplines uh are progressive and I think that’s important it’s an important background to know just on understand the kind of approach that we are taking to the topic so I’m going to um uh I I very much look forward to the discussion afterwards and of course to to the comments uh of
Uskali so um the starting point today is uh first the observation when you look into the literature that there is of course a lot of um research in general philosophy of of science that has been uh discussing uh scientific progress um when you compare this uh with philosophy of Economics uh
Literature discussing progress you see that uh comparatively philosophers of Economics have not that much engaged with the question of whether there is whether economics is Progressive and if so when progress in economics actually occurs and if you find such discussions most of them um have focused mainly on the assess ment of theoretical
Achievement in economics so on questions around Theory Choice rational Theory choice and Theory change and thereby mainly committing to the idea when discussing progress that econ progress in economic occurs when economic theories approximate the truth about the economy so there is an underlying notion of progress here that has been
Dominating the literature and philosophy of economics and those discussions um can of course mainly being considered uh alongside the more General debates in fio science about progress that have been uh taking place in the 20th century uh that were very much dominated by poper lacos Lorden and others um who in
General focus very much on the uh the role of scientific theories um in progress and pushing progress in in science and in this paper we don’t want to uh dismiss those discussions of course progress can be theoretical in this way and we um we have a lot of uh
Work uh in economics about you know developing further developing economic theory um we however think that such theoretical progress is not any longer what economists mainly aim um to achieve in economics um and we think uh and you can see this also when you read uh economists talking about progress
That there is or has been for a very very long time um maybe even since Adam Smith you would want to say there is has been this unchanged or almost unchanged theoretical core in economics which is enshrined ultimately in utility Theory and its variance if you want to include
Prospect theory as a similar in going into a conceptually similar Direction and this core has not really been changed and does not it does not seem to be the long-term goal to replace this you know theoretical framework by any other in economics so there seems to be
Some kind of consensus at least among mainstream economics that theory is not the thing that we want to develop further uh in in you know as a priority let’s put it that way rather when we look into economic practices and of course many philosophers of econom economists have argued for this and have
Also shown this when uh you know when looking into the history of Economics we can clearly see that the main activity consists in uh using models um you normally mathematical models and often times as uh as also Morgan and morson have argued those models are used in as
As a way of you know as a form of instrumentation that mediate between the the theory uh the economic theory and the world but those models have an autonomous status and thereby cannot you know be equaled with economic theory so they are different in that they have a a
Very different role to play and those practices of course they’re not new and many people have discussed them but um they have been so extensive in economics in recent decades that we think that um uh thinking about progress in economics we should consider that this is the main
Thing that economists are doing using those models as mediators so our goal in this paper is to make sense of this ongoing of these kind of ongoing modeling practices H and think about ways in which we can think of those practices as being Progressive in economics and more specifically we uh
We want to discuss how progress in economic models in economics um occurs via using those economic uh sorry via using those mathematical models not only by using them but also building them and reapplying them within economics but also across economics and the idea behind that is that mathematical models in economics are
Most of the time used for targeting very specific purposes um the underlying idea that we also want to uh accept I’m not going to discuss uh this any further but just to have this in mind is that we think that thereby by thinking about uh what economists are
Doing with mathematical models they take um you know the validation of mathematical models uh through um observing how well they fit the purposes that economists are applying them for so that’s the underlying say uh or the the the activity that we uh that we want to um characterize further in terms of um
Of a notion of progress that we think might be conducive so against this background the general question that I will pose in this talk is um when does a progress in economics as a modelbased discipline occur and the goal really is to defend an account of progress that is grounded
In economic practices that means that captures this idea of of um of um of economists you using mathematical models in this kind of um You Know instrumental way and the claim that I would like to defend and that we also defend in this uh in this paper that I mentioned is
That progress in economics is functional um and this means that it is functional through the successful reuse and use uh of so-called model templates and I’m going to you know develop in this talk what I mean by successful here what I mean by model templates and so forth and
You can break this uh claim down further into two uh sub claims if you will or two statements that I try to support namely First Progress in economic economics occurs in in a case in case a model is considered sufficiently useful for being applied or reapplied to not
Only solve pending pending or new problems but also Define them and at the same time progress in econ omics can be disrupted when models are considered useless for problems but uh then progress might Advance or economics might Advance again progressively when a new model is developed and applied that
Proves useful so um all of those uh termin you terminological aspects I will try to develop uh further as we go along uh in this talk so um the agenda for the talk will be then to um in order to make this proposal is that I will um very quickly
Look into a recent one of the most recent proposals for progress in economics by Anna alexandrova and Robert northcot uh to then introduce what has been called the new functionalist account of scientific progress um that I think will be fruitful for thinking more General generally about um progress in
Modelbased economics and then the rest of the talk I will try to make more explicit how this general account of functional progress could be worked out and we uh did so in the paper by drawing on um the so-called template account of scientific models um that helps us to
Make more explicit and concrete what it means for models to be used and reused uh in economics in a pro Progressive Way and in order to support this proposal further I looked into a case study from uh the history of econometrics and uh discuss which lessons we can uh draw
From this case from this particular case to think about progress or functional progress in economics before I conclude so before uh we go into the uh recent discussions about progress in economics that the little discussion that has taken place in philosophy economics um I would like to quickly
Mention the four accounts of progress that uh have been developed in recent philosophy of General philosophy of science uh to then see which account uh has mostly been applied in or discussed in economics um the first account and you might all all know this is the epidemic account that defines progress in terms
Of knowledge and here the idea is that an episode of the history of science is Progressive it it shows the accumulation of scientific uh knowledge and that’s an account that has not yet as far as I know been discussed by many phos of Economics uh in terms of how it would be
Fruitful to think about progress in economics and um it has various problems on its own that I’m not going to discuss uh but nevertheless I would like to mention it here just for uh you know just to have it in mind maybe it comes up in the discussion and second the the
Further proposal is the so-called notic account which fin no Delson has developed recently which formulates um the idea that science progresses when it enhances our understanding of about the world of course you might know that there’s a lot of um discussion about what understanding really is what it
Amounts to and so forth that’s also not account that that I’m going to discuss here and that I to my knowledge has also not been discussed as uh very prominently in economic in philosophy economics what has been U mostly discussed in philosophy economics is as I mentioned before the sem the so-called
Semantic account of progress and here it um the idea is that um science progresses um in the moment where it shows either the accumulation of true scientific beliefs or it um increases um or it shows an increasing approximation towards true scientific belief so the idea being that we science
Progresses progresses in the moment where it approaches um truth um about or truths about the world and poer is Mo probably the most famous representative of this account and that’s an account that has been taken up a lot by philosophers of Economics mainly also because here um the notion of progress
Is defined in terms of uh Theory change or rational Theory Choice and then lastly there is the functional internalist account of progress which I would like to make popular which construes progress in terms of the functions of Science and according to this account an episode of the history
Of science is Progressive if it shows the success of the Fulfillment of certain functions so for instance the function of problem solving where um the Fulfillment of the function is judged by the scientists themselves so this is why it’s called an internalist account um scientists themselves judge whether uh
Those functions that they set themselves are successfully fulfilled and here Defenders are Thomas and Larry Len and others um so most of the discussions have centered around the semantic account when it comes to um to at least that’s my sense when it comes to philosophy of economics and two philosophers that have
Criticized um this semantic account in economics are uh Anna Alexandra and Robert nocot and they rais three points against the applicability of this account in economics and I uh largely agree with them and first they stress that it has been of course shown in the literature uh that it is impossible to
Give a satisfactory account of very similitude that refers to the idea of poer thinking about how we can think about a science approaching the truth um and it’s very hard to actually capture what that really means philosophically and so we can’t really on this basis uh take this as a
Criterion for Theory choice and furthermore of course we know and this is what I would add to their account is that uh you know very similitude is of course not the only Criterion for Theory Choice uh in in science and thereby uh um thereby we could call it uh um not
You know uh the most useful Criterion when we think about uh progress in science because we have other CR IA as we know from we have epistemic virtues um theories can be chosen because they are particularly simple because they make predictions and so forth um but and nor does the Criterion
Of very similitude guarantee the choice of the most useful Theory I mean we know this um from Einstein’s theory which when it’s compared to Newton’s theory that the L of course is often times much more useful to apply whereas the other one Einstein’s one we would consider to
To probably approximate the truth uh better and second even and that’s the point that alexandrova and nocot are making even if we consider the fact that economics is a model-based discipline and leave this idea of theories approaching the truth they what they argue is that the most uh most economic models are so
Idealized and that they are therefore very far away from even approximating the truth Soo this idea uh that semantic account um um presupposes that we approximate the truth is really something unfeasible in economics and it doesn’t hold up against uh what we observe what economists are actually
Doing and third even if we accept an account of models for instance such as the isol isolationist account of um of models by usali um they argue that a search for truth of economic models is not only challenging of course but it might might also neither be necessary
For economics we might not even care about the truth nor is it often wanted by economics that’s also an argument from economic practice and therefore it’s really hard to locate a search for truth in most contemporary economic practices and um I tend to agree with them and with their critical attitude
Towards the usefulness of the semantic account uh although you know we would we can discuss this later on um whether economists are never concerned with truth there might be sometimes but it’s not the only most prominent um activity I think that they are engaged them so they propos their own uh
Account um and they give bring up an alternative proposal which they call um an an account on the basis of a notion of Engineering Process and they uh in order to push this account they are characteriz account they claim that economic progress is not through theory development but through what they call
An engineering knowhow which they think is a skill of applying economic theory to a problem in a specific context so rather than developing a theory further it’s rather it’s developing the skill to apply that theory and they take the example which they discuss um from Game Theory namely the case of game theoretic
Models being applied to the ca the the Spectrum Spectrum auctions um and this type of progress is according to them very context specific because of course it targets a skill set uh um in order to apply a model to a concrete problem and this means that the kind of knowledge
Produced is very limited in in exporting um that knowledge to new context so to my understanding that that notion of progress is not necessarily cumulative either um it however the they presuppose in order to make this notion prominent they presuppose theoretical progress in that it um that their notion of Engineering
Process uh progress um presupposes the existence of theoretical knowledge um that is enshrined in in economic models and um that become and those models then become applied but uh theory is Progressive only in so far as it generates useful new aids to the engine Engineers so um I see three challenges with this
Account um although I agree with some of the issues that they rais um first an open question is of course whether we should consider theoretical developments per se as not being Progressive uh if they are not um helping us to um you know Target some or if they’re not
Instrumental to address some kind of engineering problem the the second um aspect that I would like to highlight is that of course not every problem economics is an engineering problem such as the case of spectrum auctions um there might be conceptual problems there might be you know empirical problems
There might be uh all sorts of other problems that come up in economics that have that don’t um are not captured by this idea of engineering uh problem and third the strong concern for problems in economics uh is uh is good uh which I I think they
Which they um highlight however um some of those problems change of course over time and then um while we try to understand or address them in economics um the ways in which we address them might also influence back on the practices the methods and the tools in
Economics and this by itself can be Progressive so that means that uh the change of problems uh can lead to conceptual changes in economics can lead to theoretical changes um changes in modeling practices and so forth that by itself could be considered Progressive and so it’s not a one-way Street uh this
This uh this idea of um or the idea of progress in economics should not be seen as a one-way Street I think from from uh modeling or the using theories and models to then solve the engineering problem but also it comes back to how we Define those problems and
What kind of methods we are going to use so to capture the nature of progress in modelbased economics I think uh it uh would be fruitful to um apply a different kind of account of progress uh namely the new functional account of progress as it is um and this is an or
As it has been called uh in that way by yafang Shang he has formulated this uh con this account of progress recently and it builds upon this functional internal list account of progress that I mentioned before uh grounded in and uh others and on this view science Progressive if more useful research
Problems and their corresponding Solutions are proposed and I think one major advantage of Shan’s account over traditional functional approaches um is that instead of emphasizing only the problem solution he only stresses the definition of problems uh so and this is how this uh element of feeding back from
Problem addressing to changing the kinds of um methodologies we use for addressing these new problems what I just mentioned as a criticism of Alexandra vosot can be built into into this uh account and furthermore his account commits to a very broad notion of a problem that includes engineering
Problems um but it also includes problems like causal hypothesis formation uh formulation theory development and and other conceptual elements U or conceptual uh developments and the way in which we uh can uh think about you know the different kinds of problems that economic practice entails
Um in such a broad way allows us for those developments to also be considered Progressive um other um aspects that could also fall under this categories of course model construction processes can be considered a problem but and also model transfer as I mentioned before what the things that I’m interested
In um and this the these advantages of his account um become um clear when you consider what he thinks uh science is doing on the one hand um science or what science is doing when it is Progressive on the one hand um science is Progressive when it defines or refines
An old or new problem um and the activities that he describes are activities like problem proposing problem refinement and problem specification always in exchange with uh the kinds of methodologies that we have available and second science is Progressive when it provides a solution to an existing or a newly uh defined
Problem um and so in order to make this more clear Sean develops this idea of a common recipe that is um you can think about this as a general conceptual framework and set of activities uh that we use for problem solving which is based on a series of uh
As such on of intertwined activities of also experimentation problem with refinement conceptualization hypothesizing and reasoning of of course that’s really broad but the idea here being that we use a a set of um ingredients um and we combine them in different ways but we oftentimes use a
Similar set of ingredients um in order to solve different kinds of problems that are that come up in science so one key aspect of this account is an emphasis on what Shan calls usefulness of problems def problem definitions and problem Solutions so only when we give um useful definitions
And solutions science is uh Progressive and how does he Define it both things both definitions and solutions are useful when a practice that addresses those problems can be repeated so it can be um the the kind the process that is characterized by these activ activities that I just mentioned uh can be
Repeatedly used by other scientists and thereby the result can be uh replicable or is replicable to some degree and second um this solution or this common recipe has to provide a reliable framework that is also Rea applicable so not only can It should it be um should other scientists be able to
Repeat it but also they should be able to reapply to many different kinds of problems and um the more Pro problems uh are solved and generated the better that is now uh how is this repeatability and re applicability ensured um and this is and uh I just want to highlight this particularly
Although I mentioned it already this is um introduced by his notion of a common rep recipe so scientists of course always solve problems in different ways and to capture the idea of a common recipe he identifies a set of components and activities as I just mentioned um
That are often present in a problem solution and a problem definition but they are not exclusive and you might even change them around so it’s just it’s a recipe that is to some degree flexible so the way in which he characterizes this is a solution to a research problem usually consists of the
Following components a vocabulary which is a set of the concepts employed in the problems and solutions a set of practical guides which specify all the procedures and methodology as means to solve the problems a set of hypothesis which are proposed to solve the problems and a set of patterns of reasoning which
Indicate how to use other components to solve the problems and um here just as as an aside because that’s important for us hypothesis of course can can be theoretical statements but also they can be more generally um understood as models as Sean makes very clear so these are the um main
Ingredients of this functional account of progress and of course that seems very abstract uh and we can think about science uh scientific progress in general on along these lines but it’s hard to or at least for us it was a bit hard to actually see how we can
Concretely uh apply this to economics and how we can make this very abstract account of um yeah uh uh common recipe common recipe uh based science to um to model more make it more concrete um to apply to modelbased economics and think about progress uh in economics
So what what we uh try to do is to make uh these elements of a common recipe and problem definition and solution um more specific by drawing on the so-called template account um and um we wanted to capture not only the function of Economics uh economic models uh as representations but also we
Want to wanted to go as I mentioned before um beyond their representational role of economic models and see how we can think about them more flexibly um when we uh see how economists use them when they you when they Define and solve uh new problems and
Um what we propose is to think about these common recipes in terms of um Paul humer template account of scientific models and on this account models can ultimately be thought of and as consisting of uh what Humphrey calls templates and he has various Notions of templates that he specifies um as he
Goes um and depending on what kind of uh disciplines he looks looks at um but the basic idea is that those templates are fairly General these are usually um you know mathematical or computational structures uh that first come without any specific interpretation and as such they are subject in dependent they can
Be thereby uh given uh all sorts of interpretations that we want but first of all they are not you know tied to any uh discipline or Target set of Target systems and then they can be used to describe very general relationships between sets of variables um sometimes
They occur within a theory this is what he calls when this happens this is what he calls a theoretical template but oftentimes they come independent of a of a scientific theory and then they are as they are usually formulated mathematically they are very general and flexible and um which is
Good when we think about you know these templates uh constituting com these common recipes that Shan has in mind in order to reapply them to multiple problems and um change them over time uh and they need to be if they are going to be applied to some kind of
Problem they need to be refined and adapted to a specific Target domain in order to make them applicable and he Humphrey has a hre has a very sophisticated way of um explicating this whole process I’m not going to go into this now we can go
Into this into in the Q&A H where he thinks of this refinement adaptation as a model construction process so we use basically these templates um in order to ground um models on that basis or construct new models on that basis uh that we can then apply and that are
Tractable and tractability is another very uh interesting and good feature for um or attractive feature that explains why these model templates are reapplied across across disciplines but also within the discipline and the examples are the lot voltera equations some all sorts of statistical distributions Network models r Choice models and so
Forth so you might want to think of those kinds of examples as really these General templates that are used in model uh construction um and I just said that uh that the idea here is um you know um using those templates in the process of model construction um I’m I’m skipping over
This now a little bit but the the the important point is that the role of temp templates and economic models we think offers um a a very different understanding of modeling practice uh that goes beyond this the dominant accounts that we have oftentimes in philosophy of Economics that take models
To be mainly um instruments of representation or models as rep representation um so one thing that is uh problematic with humr when it comes to thinking about cases of um you know um Progressive model reapplication economics is what tatila and Andrea lutar have stressed recently in another
Paper uh and they developed this account of humph further um to to make it more even more applicable and um and show how we can explain the the reapplication of these templates and they stress that what is missing in humre account is really the role of analogies um because
If you have this very abstract General template uh without any kind of interpretation then it’s unclear what exactly it is that helps scientists to see uh that this that these templates can be reapplied to structurally similar problems and they say well it is the analogies that are coming with the
Templates that allow us uh to reapply those templates and um without um um stressing this uh aspect of analogies too much they say well templates usually come even if they really abstract come with an underlying conceptual vision of the general structure of the phenomenon
Or of the target system uh or if the of the problem if you will um attached to it um and this conceptual V vision of that that is somehow um existing in in the Target system to which we want to apply this model for instance that this
Conceptual Vision then helps us to to actually see that the model is attractive for this particular Target system and uh helps us then to explain uh these model reapplication processes and so the way in which they Define then ultimately a what they call a model template which is just a
Reformulated notion of a of a humr template notion is a formal platform for minim model construction coupled with very general conceptualization without yet any subject specific interpretation or adjustment and those are the kinds of things that we think are underlying most of economic models and that we um and we
Find this notion fruitful in order to think how you know economic models are then be applied in this form um and uh thereby contributing to progress in the field okay so um to illustrate this kind of um the pro the this kind of progress functional
Progress that we have in mind via um the reapplication of these model templates what we did was we looked at uh um the very first modeling effort in economics which was the attempt in the 1930s to model the business side mechanism and along that line uh other macrodynamic phenomena such as for
Instance economic growth and the main protagonist here was um J tinbergen and he could not yet draw on any templates because they model building was not or I mean he could have um but um there were not no templates or models U around in economics not at least not that
Prominent and he had to come up with his own template and the the mathematical theories at U that were available at the time were of course equilibrium Theory and utility Theory but they were not considered suitable for modeling the business cycle just because um of course equilibrium Theory
Um was a non-dynamic theory the business cycle is a macro phenomenon that is dynamic and also requires not a micro Theory but a macro Theory and so um he had to come up with his own uh template to actually model the business Cy what he called the business cycle mechanism
And he was therefore in search of a formalism or such a such kind of template that I just mentioned that could best represent uh this kind of dynamic behavior and our on our view uh tin Bergen proposed exactly this kind of common recipe when he came up with his
Template that Chan has in mind um and um that included what he called tber called A methodology but you can think of it as a as this General template and included a vision of what the business cycle actually is um and then it also included a number of requirements prescribing how these
Cyclical movements of the economy um should be or could be um explained um for tinber it was also very important that reminds us also of this notion of a model template it was very important to distinguish the mathematical form from um the mathematical form of the mechanism that he tried to describe and
U with this template and the economic interpretation of these uh equations that he came up with um because for him it was really the mathematical form that determined the nature of these possible movements that he saw uh reflected in the business cycle and not the economic interpretation per se and then what he
Did was he drew on Maxwell’s method of formal analogy for arguing that the mathematical form could be this that he came up with this template could be reapplied in very different systems that characterized by the same mathematical relations that he um specified there because they show the same movements uh
In econ in variables or in economic variables if you will so um he F first found this math iCal form having a specific conceptual vision of the business cycle in mind and then he provide an economic interpretation of uh the components of the of the template the equations okay so
Um what we propose in this paper is then that besides this economic interpretation that was um that he gave to the mathematical equation tin Bergen’s conceptual vision of the business cycle was um already expressed in the mathematical equations that’s why we think of it as a model template and
Um thereon the equations needed in economic interpretation to fix how these equation terms represent aspects of the mechanism name on or um you can also he calls it mechanism but he thought of it as uh he thought of this mechanism as basically the economic system so and without going into the details Marcel
Knows of course much more about this than I do um tin Bergen proposed the template that you see here on the slide uh in form of a general difference differential in integral uh equation and um he did not want to describe the data uh directly the data that you see on the
Um in Illustrated on the left hand side of the slide but rather he wanted to um describe the behavior of the economic variables that you see on the right hand side of the slide um which shows the business cycle conceptualized by tinbergen as an as a harmonic oscillation and this conceptual Vision
Then of the business cycle gave him the mathematical forms that then required an interpretation um and then he had uh I’m not going into the details now because of time reasons but then he had of course specify how the different variables um uh behave uh he had you know in specif
This D what he called the dynamic element and the cyclical element by giving them also um you know specific um or describing the behavior of these variables in specific ways such that this conceptual Vision was actually uh captured in this template okay so he developed Timber developed
This template very with this very clear uh conceptual vision and and um of the of the business cycle and um it also shows how the conceptual vision of of of um of this business cycle was coupled with the mathematical structure um and this template was then really
Taken up and you um elaborate upon um generalized mainly by Paul Samuelson that you see here on the slide and it was reapplied extensively so um uh Paul Samuelson turned it into a general modeling methodology really uh to to think about um you know all sorts of problems microeconomics and then later
On um there were two textbooks two main textbooks U by alen and tan that uh outlined and Illustrated and defended this kind of methodology based on this template um that timberg had come up with that um also accepted this conceptual vision of the main characteristics of the not only the
Business cycle but all sorts of phenomena that you could describe uh that had a similar um you know structure underlying them at least uh when it comes to the conceptual Vision that Economist had um so they uh took this to to be a temp a model template that could be reapplied
And it was reapplied um via these textbooks of course and then you know went through a lot of macroeconomics to then study similar kind or Define and and solve similar kinds of problems and this is the way in which we think that captures this idea of a common recipe
Um so this case of tinbergen shows um how a template is applied and defined uh to solve multiple problems and maybe also redefine uh new problems but we can also see that the template in this process is not um reapplied on its own but it’s um re it’s reuse in um for
These various problems crucially depends on a shared conceptual vision and if that conceptual vision is questioned or there are certain considerations that call it um or that that lead even to its abandonment then progress might be hampered um because these model templates are then not um reapplied
Anymore and that happened also in this case um this slide just show is meant to illustrate how um tin Bergen’s conceptual vision of the business cycle became fundamentally questioned um when ragna frish uh thought and you see this in the um on the uh the picture on the
In the in the figure of the in the SL in the middle of the slide ragna frish came up with a very different conceptual vision of the business cycle um that he captured by his concept of impulses um and because the problem that PO that um that Timber was confronted with was that
His model didn’t really always um describe the business cycle really well and ragna frish um came up with this concept of of impulses to really explain these irregularities that you could also observe in the um cycle by the idea of uh introducing or or that by the idea
That there might be erratic shocks that this disturb the economic system and that was something that Timber couldn’t address and so um frish con started to think about a new conceptual vision of the characteristics of the business cycle and ultimately replaced tin berens model template with a template that
Combined um or that modeled the business cycle um by way of uh you know in terms of a stochastic process and uh with another model that you might have heard the rocking horse model that you might have heard not but it’s not important um for this presentation but rather the
Idea is that in the moment where the conceptual Vision was questioned um and it was further questioned by work by sloty and um and also Fisher in the moment where conceptual vision of the business cycle was questioned uh and revised um Timber’s methodology could not um could not be reapplied anymore and
Um when this this questioning of the conceptual Vision uh happened and there was a whole you know bunch of literature that was produced in order to address the the kinds of problems that tinbergen couldn’t address anymore that led ultimately to a new set of um models modeling uh or templates if
You will that um led to the uh what we now know as the dynamic stochastic General equilibrium models so in terms of the history that’s the that was the result where an under the underlying conceptual vision of the business of the of dynamic processes are is very
Different so in that sense if that vision is not sh uh shared anymore um that is underlying model templates um progress can be hampered uh or even halted um by not re allowing for this Rea applicability of those templates anymore okay unless and in the moment where they
Where scientists agree on a new conceptual vision and can combine this with a new uh template that is Rea applicable then progress might continue or start again let’s put it that way okay what does this case study show us in light of what I said before about scientific progress and functional
Progress in particular we think that it reveals how model templates are not only used and reused in economics but also how scientists really initiated initially create models and how once they are considered less useful those kinds of models because of maybe not um the a problematic conceptual Vision such templates are oftentimes
Replaced with new ones and that came that can uh be still Progressive um but in the moment where we abandon this conceptual Vision then this might uh be a problem the case study also illustrates that it is not only the mathematical structure that is reused but it’s what is also reused is this
Shared conceptual vision of the phenomenon that under that uh that comes with the with the template together it also shows that if a vision is no longer shared that’s what I mentioned before a model template can become useless and can be um or has to be replaced um and sometimes this happened
Against huge resistance of course Timber was resistant against that and it has to be replaced with a different one in order to for for um SS to progress again and it thereby underscores how the con this case I mean underscores how the concept of a model transfer model
Template might play a key role in enabling functional progress in economics and thereby also allowing us to think um or to support the the the point that progress in economics can be meaningfully thought of as functional in chance terms so Um in light of this case study to put this more generally um we take away from that that progress in modelbased economics is often functional uh because we’ve take this case to be representative of a lot of modeling practices uh that um that take place in economics and um also the way
In which model use model reapplication model replacement happens over time and this functional progress manifests in the repeated reapplication of mathematical models that are part of a common recipe used to define and solve old and new problems the co-creation of the conceptual Vision um through a formal template um as I mentioned before
Um Timber first came up with the the template and then um had a conceptu of Vision that uh allowed him to refine or um further explicate or further formulate this temp template more specifically with the business cycle mind which enables the templates application to various phenomena with similar character um
Characteristics and um the shaping and reshaping of the conceptual Vision underlying a mathematical template um has to become accepted only then it is that um a discipline like economics can progress as long as it uses models we think that it is um descriptively accurate of a lot of modeling practices in contemporary
Economics and um although we think that we of course don’t think that all progress in uh economics is functional most likely not even all modelbased um economics is um progressing in in this in this way but nevertheless we still think that um although of course the details have to
Be worked out we still think that the functional account of progress is a fruitful way to think about um modelbased economics and to conclude then um it’s basically repeating a little bit what I just said the practices in economics in modelbased economics consist often times of these repeated and reliable applications of model
Templates that are part of common recipes and these model templates are integrated combinations of conceptual vision of the phenomenon to be modeled and a highly mathematical form that is needed for actually modeling them that’s um that’s what we at least observe in economics um as we do in all sorts of
Other fields of course that use mathematical modeling um those model templates are applied and reapplied if economists consider them useful useful defined as Shan defines it um and then if economists share the conceptual Vision underlying them and those model templates are dismissed or replaced if the conceptual Vision becomes questioned
And thereby progress is hampered thank you very much thank you this great now move to usal who will provide his comments uh usal you have 10 to 15 minutes uh and then we will move on to the QA session okay now you can hear me I suppose yes we can great
Great okay thanks Katherine this was uh very very inspiring I feel very privileged by being in this position to today especially because of this very neglected Topic in the philosophy of Economics I’m going to uh have a few rather tough questions I apologize in advance but uh hopefully some of them
Are based on some misunderstanding okay now here is one one ISS issue that appears also in your paper there are rival judgments about whether progress has occurred in economics or not there are those who say that for the last two centuries or so there has been no uh progress uh of any
Uh important sort at least technical improvements and the like whereas the theoretical Vision has remained more or less unchanged I mean you you site Lucas and then there are these heterodox economies they seem to be agreeing on this uh but they draw very opposite conclusions the heterodox blame mainstream economics for
Dogmatism Etc and from the point of view of progress I mean this could be at least the possibility should be considered that this is a case of stagnation or something like that lack of progress I mean you say that most economists lack an interest in pursu doing thir the theoretical progress this
May be correct but what does this tell us about whether economics is Progressive or lacks opportunities for making further progress Etc so I guess this gives rise to further interesting uh questions also for you and then then there are those who say that yes sure I mean if you ask practicing Economist and
Say that hey you haven’t made any progress for the last 200 years they say sure there has been a lot of it especially recently theories models meth data whatever all of them have improved so this is a very contested issue and I I would imagine that the position one takes depends on
On the chosen level of abstraction as it were and I think this must be included in in whatever comments the philosophers of Economics make on this matter so the by the way I have written in in in the red whatever questions I have for you what’s your view exactly is it closer to
Now or in between and on what grounds Etc this might be too big for having actually a discussion on it because of the lack of time okay progress in economics as a topic for philosophy of Economics I think uh it’s important and here we have but generational issue I would I would say
In the philosophy of Economics Community those of us who have been around for for somewhat longer do recollect that this was a major theme in the prefield stage and the early days of the field of philosophy of Economics po slus slon Etc you actually I I would say you
Mischaracterized the the um focus and the nature of progress that these guys and and philosophers of Economics applying these ideas to the study of Economics had in mind I I would say this was it was mainly epistemic it was not semantic as you suggested I mean nobody in so far as I
Can tell applied the idea of very similitude to to the study of Economics it was mainly about trus trus issues of justification and progress progress in terms of just increased justification Etc and uh also um discontinuities in K’s case and and and things like that so it’s not that very
Similitude was the notion that was adopted from poer it was falsification falsifiability and and all the rest of it and then of course the the modifications in lcan so forth okay uh so it’s good to have different Generations represented in the in the community so the memory still
Functions uh and and surely now it’s an under examine topic and this this actually parallels to developments in philosophy of science it’s there has not been as much interest in progress as there was in the say 70 60s 7s and so forth but it’s it’s it’s restarting it
Seems um but of course in in philosophy of Economics I mean still there was this book that I I told you about is there progress in economics and edited volume a pretty thick volume 2002 that draws on an sad conference organized in grats um maybe the previous
Year but I was there too so I I I do remember but anyway because of this uh lack of sufficient interest in issues of progress I’m I’m I’m very happy that you have taken up this this topic and uh and praise you uh for that uh okay now I’m beginning my
Comments on on because there was a paper I’ve read the paper too the title progress in economics it promises too much I’m sure you are aware of this it covers just a very small set of kinds of issues of scientific progress and I actually I might even question whether it deals with progress
Seriously after all but more on that in a moment um okay and it deals with un uses for illustration a very small fragment of economics uh so but this is no big problem it’s equally easy to meet this criticism by simply rephrasing the title to communicate the narrow Focus so this
Was not very serious at all uh this might be a little bit more serious the question of what’s new here and because there is this General phenomenon not just in philosophy of Economics but fwhere too that the same or similar issues are addressed using different terms and Frameworks sequence
Eventually or parallel to one another without paying much critical attention to the other or previous attempts to to address these issues and this often means that cumulative progress in the philosophical study of Economics is weaker than it could be otherwise and there will be ever new
Fresh Starts as it were as if no prior research has been done there is I mean everybody recognizes this novelty fetish in uh not just in philosophy of Economics but all over the place in in the academic world and it’s not just you know internally um developed it uh it has
Some external conditions as well but anyway I I started asking whether there is any of this in here so what’s new here what’s better and especially is there any progress here in thinking of progress I think this is a worthwhile question to ask the paper itself doesn’t
Recognize such progress it seems to me because it doesn’t recognize predecessors so it’s it’s a paper in a historical vacuum as it were um but the question that needs to be asked is that whether there are new and better ideas uh proposed here or is it mostly old ideas newly
Named this is a question no no claims made then the very phrase here functional Pro progress I’m very puzzled by by this uh this phrase itself now now look at what how you how you define progress progress involving the repeated use of model templates and then you say
It’s best captured by the functional account of progress I failed to see the sense of functional as an attribute of progress here why functional I mean there are these these primitive terms here used like usefulness problem defining problem solving reuse reapplication and things like that and I wonder if it’s it would
Be better called pragmatic or something like that I’m not even sure if that would be the best uh um label for it but if you if you look at chance 19 paper progress as fulfillment of certain function like this this would be a justification for using this terminology of functional in front of
Progress this uh idea of fulfillment of a certain function it fails to distinguish uh a any account separate from all other this account separate from maybe all other accounts the epistemic the semantic the noetic all of them could be construed uh as suggesting that progress amounts to a fulfillment of some
Functions so so I I I just I’m I’m still looking for justification for this terminology but that but concerning the substance here my question is where is progress I mean very I mean repeated use of model templates why would this that qualify as progress and my my suggestion is that
Some further conditions must be met and then the question is what are those for further conditions of course this this thing happens there is repeated use of model temp plates Etc but in order for that to qualify as progress some further conditions must be made but let’s let’s
Then use look at some some of the key Concepts here usefulness problem and so forth this is from slide number 14 in the in the longer version that you had sent to me so maybe maybe not not the one that you presented today problems and their Solutions are useful if and
Only only if they are addressed in a process that is repeatable provides a reliable framework that is fre applicable so so if and only if this is serious I mean it’s so strong so this actually implies that nothing short of Meeting those two requirements is useful and this would be very strongly against
Our ordinary notion of usefulness so this is a very spe special and peculiar notion of uh usefulness you just need to think of examples of things that we might find useful here is a stter that you might try to check if if it would be useful for your
Purposes namely we need to ask useful for what usefulness is relational so something is used for something else and then something is when when something is successfully used for something else then we may say that this something is useful for is something else this would be the most
General way of uh articulating the notion of usefulness and uh and then we we would need to leave behind the are very strong if and only if uh claim set it about okay then look at uh what Shan says in this 19 paper science progress is if more useful research problems and their
Corresponding Solutions are proposed useful research Pro problems what what are useful research programs uh what are they useful for I mean we need to ask what are they useful for there needs to be something for which they are useful otherwise they are not useful problem then uh these problems and solutions are
Proposed mere proposal would be would amount to progress I I’m not so sure I mean this would be strange because it would not require anything like acceptance or adoption by the scientific Community just proposal would be enough for making prop progress this cannot be the case also the idea of
More research problems and solutions does this just denote a mere number more than before or whatever mere number what about the importance of these problems I mean it can’t be that just any problem can can be counted regardless of their degree of importance but generally I think what’s
Lacking here is is some further reflection on on what what a problem is what makes a problem a problem there are a vast range of types of problems and we need to ask which ones are relevant for Science and for scientific progress and maybe especially if we think that progress in E economics
Might be somewhat peculiar different from progress in other fields then what’s what uh problems are relevant for progress in uh economics these are questions that arise when when when reading both Sean and and and your P then then the idea of problem solution this was I mean in the previous longer
Version of your slides slide number 15 but you also showed it Sol solution is a definition of a solution or at least it says that the solution to a problem usually consists of the following components so and then there’s a list of these components but this seems to
Suggest that a solution to a problem has has its components the means for solving the problem these are these listed things are among the means for solving the problem but the my puzzlement here is that I don’t see any idea of what the solution that is produced generated by these means so
What is a solution I think it’s it’s missing here and of course in order to answer that question we need to have answer the first the prior question of what a what what what is a problem what makes a problem a problem and what kinds of problems there are especially those that
Are worth the wi of of inquiry and here I think is a very very important observation that I think is missing in your paper uh progress is a normative no it’s not just any change from an A to a b would qualify as as progress not just any
Reapplication of a template to a new domain main or addressing a new problem so providing a solution Etc would qualify uh for a change to qualify progress it it must be touched to be good desirable advisable Etc it must meet some normative standards the change must be an
Improvement and this this this was this was missing uh is of far as I could uh I could tell and here is I think a very very big question for you what’s your normative standard because without it you cannot have an account of scientific progress proper at all and I actually that’s why
I said that I’m not sure that you have provided an account of progress in economics because your normative standards seems to be missing okay um and here we go so if if we look at science uh as problem Sol problem setting and problem solving and then uh develop a notion of progress in
Those terms a thir questions arise such as is this also trivial because all of science all of human life involve setting and solving problems of many many kinds okay so what what’s the news here uh and and then uh once you recognize this this vast range of problem solving activities
Then you might also recognize the possibility of regression even if there is apparent progress in terms of setting and solving problems because you might set problems for yourself or for your research community that are easier to solve than prev and previous problems were too difficult so let’s leave them behind and
Let’s set easier problems for us to to solve and then we manage to solve them and then you might say there is progress here but this might actually be a matter of regression rather than than than progress because you you failed to solve the more difficult uh
Problem or you might just set problems for yourself and your community just for the sake of problem solving itself and turning science into playing chess or playing games in general with no further interest in anything but hey let’s have a nice problem here and uh and let’s see
How how it can be solved and that’s it okay so my my my uh idea here is that on top of problem solving we need to ask what else is going on inside science and maybe in human life too and and uh so by means of setting
And solving problems what else might be pursued and attained in science I here are the I mean the good oldfashioned ideas maybe reliable knowledge maybe discovery of new and unapparent facts maybe some truths maybe not the truths maybe better explanations improved understanding and all those things that are covered by this
Alternative accounts of progress actually my view is that problem solving must be eventually regulated and constrained by some such higher standards If You Wish U wherein problem solving then plays instrumental roles problem solving alone just by itself cannot be the key of uh progress it it may be an instrument that promotes prog
Progress but but Pro progress does not uh amount to problem solving successes okay kinds of progress uh now humre youze humre look at humre templates and their reapplications to new domains contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding T sounds like uh the progress uh in the sense of the epistemic account
Knowledge no ethic account understanding and then there is this unificationist flavor here repeated application of model templates to Define and solve old and new problems uh and here I think this is because of this idea of reuse and reapplication plays such a prominent role in this account I think it only
Would on how this relates to unification is in in the of old the versions I mean those that are already in the market as it were uh and because these have already been examined in the context of Economics I mean by myself and by me and Karina marani and
So to to see how this idea of re application is related to the idea of expans unification which has a very similar Spirit actually so my question here is might might this help specify why repeated use of model templates can be considered progress might might these ideas provide
You with the normative standard of progress that could be associated with the idea of problem setting and problem uh solving well here I just is this relates to the unification is the uh idea in your in your account I you have this idea of mathematical structure conceptual
Vision I mean instances of a familiar General pattern sounds like ontological uni unification my turn conveyed by this conceptual vision and then we have kitcher Philip kitcher which is a bit more more organized or there are more elements in features account of these sematic sentences filling instructions classification Etc and stringency
Requirements and all of this then can be used for uh unifying uh diverse expona uh that after the unificatory accomplishment do not appear as diverse anymore okay this is and this is where uh oops uh my work and katerinas might be relevant well so there are these two Frameworks yours and
Kit uh they seem similar or at least somewhat related and then would be interesting for you to to check what the relations exactly are uh then you have this idea of ma mathematical structure and conceptual Vision being intention with with one another here you envision this situation
Where the this conceptual Vision must be reshaped or shaped uh uh because uh a mathematical template having been accepted so it’s kind of it’s a conceptual Vision that yields and uh adjustments is are are being made in in the conceptual Vision under the pressure of the newly adopted mathematical template or something like
That now this would be interesting to compare with my work on on model and an ontological Vision a model is constrained by available formal and other resources and ontological vision that I call the the way convictions about the way the world Works triple W and here I envision and
And I show some examples from the new microeconomics uh in case there’s a tension between these two which looks like very similar to your tension between mathematical structure and conceptual Vision it’s the ontological vision that pressures the formal model to undergo changes so it’s the reverse from your uh
Case and then again my question is are these about roughly the same or are they different well maybe this is this is because I never bought uh alexandraa and norcot ideas in that in that handbook paper especially the the criticism of the isolation by idealization account of models
Etc uh here is just an example my my paper 2004 on on how this can be used for when when combined with erotic approach to progress progress uh conceived in terms of questions and answers of different kinds and when so new new questions may arise and that that’s already the
Possibility of a progress and then when they are answered you make another kind of progress so this is the combination of the isolation by idealization framework with the erotic framework of questions and and answers again would be nice of course but but to hear your views on on
This but uh anyway I’ve I’ve said too much already and uh and I as I promised some of the questions might be tough uh but uh I leave it here thank you thanks M Skully Katherine would you like to respond so yeah sure um that was a lot
Um um maybe I start so I try to um you know follow and write down the points that you made I might forget one or two but let me start by before I go into into to them um by saying how the paper came about because it is a bit
Misleading to take the paper to rep fully represent My Views in the sense that in this P so we were supposed to write a very very short handbook introduction into progress in economics and of course there is you could I mean this is um this is very constraining and
So um we focused on this very specific uh aspect of what we think um might be interesting to think about namely the the dysfunctional account and although it almost um never I mean it almost um or it does not engage with almost any literature because there was no space we um try
To um stay at as broad as possible by saying well economics is a a science that uses mathematical models and I think almost everything in economics is more or less related to using mathematical models that’s why you know you might think it’s a little bit broader than you now sketched it it’s
Not like this tiny little fraction I think but we can discuss this so in the moment where you want to think about modelbased economics as Progressive we thought okay what are the kinds of accounts of models that would help us to think about this and the idea that we
Took up and of course that also Marcel’s um say background is this idea by Mary Morgan and Morrison namely models as mediators having this autonomous status and in that once you take this idea up um it uh constrains you a little bit in the sense that a lot of what you just
Mentioned the literature that is out there including by yourself and but by Katarina is a literature that mainly thinks of models in a very specific way namely as you know representational um and in heavily relying or in some way very closely related to scientific theories so if you talk about the
Unification appro the unificationist approach of course you talk about theories basically and so we wanted to uh we thought of um focusing in this uh chapter mainly on thinking about those kinds of or those practices in economics that are not about using Theory primarily so maybe you can see it as a
More complementary way rather than something that is meant to replace these views maybe we should have been more explicit in the chapter um and we tried to do that a little bit but um I mean it was I don’t know six th000 words or so it was very
Hard to actually because you say also you said also it’s um ahistorical I mean there’s no way in which we engage in the history of um in the philosophy of science of progress and how it has been debated that that’s just a matter of space to be
Honest um so now going through the points that you made Um uh first of all or and or let me say this um once you take up the idea of um models as mediators and a very practice-based approach of course an internalist account of progress becomes attractive because you mentioned a lot about you know uh that there is a normative
Standard missing by which you can measure when something is actually Progressive and so forth and I agree but the problem with the functional internalist approach is that it takes the standards from the scientists so in that sense a problem is solved D in a useful way if it is and you you asked
For what for being uh or for helping scientists to fulfill the function of their field that’s why it’s called functional it’s called functional because the idea here is that science progresses in the moment where it can actually fulfill its functions and if you um help solving problems in uh a certain way that
Science can f can um can reach this goal of fulfilling its functions then this is considered to be Progressive but but of course that’s a you take all the the normative standards from the scientists themselves because they say what the functions of their field is they say um
They uh when something when a problem has been usefully solved in order to fulfill these functions and so forth now you can say well you don’t have to you can also come up with your own normative standards that would be something that we could Al would ultimately do I’m not
Sure whether Mel and I am going to work further on this together but certainly that’s something that I would uh want to think about further as I said I’m my thinking on this is very at at the very beginning but on the functionalist account it’s it’s taken from the
Scientists um now this is the point that relates to um what you said is it then trip maybe and also is it maybe not progressing but rather is it um um regressing uh in the moment where you take the standards by the scientists and the problems and the solutions um and
How do you evaluate them from the scientist then you might yeah you might also run into a community that give you know that sets themselves very low standards might set themselves to solve very simple problems and here I take this point that it might become um difficult to some degree to
Talk of these developments in terms of progress um but this is something I would like to think further about um the way in which we thought of focusing mainly on problems is uh and um you know I don’t think this is unusual is that since of course there’s a
Lot of at the latest there’s a lot of this thinking that well you know it’s mainly problem so that’s what scientists are doing and then um you mentioned what what kind of problems are they after of course that’s something that we need to specify further but the idea was just in
This paper to say well it’s at least broader than engineering problems or the kind of technical progress that Lucas talks about uh but I agree that we have to say something about what these problems are and not just take them them for granted from as well from the scientists in
Order to meaningfully talk about progress ESC specifically in economics um so you said let me just um also engage with this point about this is not new this is all old stuff and new bottle so to say um that might be to some degree true but I think the novelty is
Comes in the concepts that are used in in the sense that there has been this tendency in general philosophy of science in you know more broadly that it is very hard to come up with the notion or the concept of scientific progress for every field so it is an attempt to
Say something more specific about economics and the most general account that is available that is as gener you know sufficiently generic to do that and then requires uh further specification I think is the functionalist account um so I think it’s not completely uh it’s not uh old wine and
New bottles but rather it takes the idea seriously that we should focus more on specific uh disciplinary developments when thinking about these very broad questions um but maybe to leave it this you know little bit time for for other people people to ask question I maybe
Should stop here and usal we can engage on this further if you want um in some other occasion em would that be a good idea I feel like otherwise we just talk too much yeah I think that’s a good idea we we are we we used our time already so
Let’s uh switch to the q& session but before that I just want to uh thank you catri in and thank usali for agreeing to give this talk and for being a discussant and I want I would like to thank our team for making all these uh seminars
Possible now um thanks to all our uh audience for being here and now we can stop the recording and move to the question and answer um part part of this sem