Abstract
I argue that understanding idealization as a conceptual act that can be distinguished into three kinds: isolation, stabilization and decomposition is a promising way for making sense of many important characteristics of economic modeling. All three kinds of idealization involve the conceptual act of variable control which amounts to omission of information. I particularly highlight the point that in addition to isolations and stabilizations an implicit (and occasionally explicit) feature of idealization in economics modeling is decomposition, i.e. the idea that we set apart within our model descriptions clusters of factors that we assume to influence the behavior of the target system by abstracting from the complex natural (or social) convolution of things in the actual world. These features of idealization are explicated with reference to particular examples of scientific models.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Amongst others, this is largely due to the work of Ernan Mcmullin, “Galilean Idealisation”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16, 1985, pp. 247-273; Frederick Suppe, The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific Realism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1989; Leszek Nowak, The Structure of Idealization. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company 1980; Nancy Cartwright, Nature’s Capacities and their Measurement. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989.
- 2.
See for instance, Ronald Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1988; Margaret Morrison, “Models as Autonomous Agents”, in: Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison (Eds.), Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999, pp. 38-65; Cartwright, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999; and Newton da Costa and Steven French, Science and Partial Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003.
- 3.
The more recent attempts to explore the functions of models also allow, for example, older philosophical debates to be reborn albeit within a new framework and a new language. One such instance is the debate on the methodological character of economics, and more generally the social sciences, on the significance of prediction as opposed to understanding (see Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, “From Erklären-Verstehen to Prediction and Understanding: The Methodological Framework of Economics”, in: Matti Sintonen, Petri Ylikoski and Karlo Miller (Eds.), Realism in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003, pp. 33-50).
- 4.
From Uskali Mäki, “Models and the Locus of their Truth”, in: Synthese 180, 2011, pp. 47-63, p. 50.
- 5.
Ibid. p. 50.
- 6.
Ibid. p. 51.
- 7.
Mcmullin, Ibid. p. 258.
- 8.
In fact, many authors blend the two notions. For instance, Nowak, Ibid., blends them into his notion of ‘idealization’. Similarly, Morrison, “Models, Pragmatics and Heuristics”, in: Dialektik 1, 1997, pp. 13-26, blends them into her notion of ‘computational idealization;’ and Steven French and James Ladyman, “Semantic Perspective on Idealisation in Quantum Mechanics”, in: Niall Shanks (Ed.), Idealisation IX: Idealisation in Contemporary Physics, Poznan Studies. Vol. 63, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1998, pp. 51-73, also blend them into their notion of ‘idealization’.
- 9.
Not all philosophers agree with this idea. For example Cartwright, Nature’s Capacities and their Measurement, claims that two distinct thought processes are involved; that of idealization, which she conceives as the act of distortion of the target of a model, and that of abstraction, which she conceives as the act of omitting causally relevant factors from the model description. Similarly, Suppe, Ibid., makes the same distinction on roughly the same grounds. Although I shall not argue for this, I side myself with Mcmullin and Mäki on this issue and understand idealization as the conceptual act of abstracting from the complexities of the target system, or purposefully eliminating factors altogether or some of their features from the model description.
- 10.
This is not a claim that there is one perspective of analyzing idealization which is of utmost significance, but I do think that from the perspective of the cognitive act (or thought process) behind idealizing assumptions we can learn something of interest and value to idealization and to scientific modeling.
- 11.
Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children. International Universities Press: New York 1952.
- 12.
I borrow the term ‘stabilization’ from Renata Zielinska, “A Contribution to the Characteristics of Abstraction”, in: Jerzy Brzezinski, Francesco Cogniglione, Theo Kuipers and Leszek Nowak (Eds.) Idealisation II: Forms and Applications, Poznan Studies. Vol. 17, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1990, pp. 9-22, in which it is used to express a more or less similar idea.
- 13.
E.g. Cartwright, Nature’s Capacities and their Measurement, op. cit.; Michael Weisberg, “Three Kinds of Idealization”, in: The Journal of Philosophy CIV, 2007, pp. 639-659.
- 14.
Mcmullin, Ibid., comes close to the idea of idealization as decomposition in what he dubs ‘subjunctive’ idealization, by which he means conceptually setting apart causal lines. Decomposition, however, is much more general; and subjunctive idealization seems to me to be one of its particular modes.
- 15.
See Robert Sternberg, Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985.
- 16.
In Quantum Mechanics this reintroduction very often falls within the realm of perturbation theory.
- 17.
As I mentioned earlier, decomposition is usually an implicit feature of the idealizing assumptions of a model. Only rarely is decomposition a relatively explicit feature of a model. Most examples I know of such kind are to be found in physics and in particular quantum mechanical modeling. I have explored one case of explicit decomposition in Demetris Portides, “Why the Model-Theoretic View of Theories Does Not Adequately Depict the Methodology of Theory Application”, in: Mauricio Suarez, Mauro Dorato, and Miklos Redei (Eds.), EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science, Volume 1. Dordrecht: Springer 2009, pp. 211-220.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Portides, D. (2013). Idealization in Economics Modeling. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5844-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5845-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)