If No Capacities Then No Credible Worlds. But Can Models Reveal Capacities?

By Nancy Cartwright. 2009

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper argues that even when simple analogue models picture parallel worlds, they generally still serve as isolating tools. But there are serious obstacles that often stop them isolating in just the right way. These are obstacles that face any model that functions as a thought-experiment but they are especially pressing for economic models because of the paucity of economic principles. Because of the paucity of basic principles, economic models are rich in structural assumptions. Without these no interesting conclusions can be drawn. This, however, makes trouble when it comes to exporting conclusions from the model to the world. One uncontroversial constraint on induction from special cases is to beware of extending conclusions to situations that we know are different in relevant respects. In the case of economic models it is clear by inspection that the unrealistic structural assumptions of the model are intensely relevant to the conclusion. Any inductive leap to a real situation seems a bad bet.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed8536f41da37a5ddd6ecdcd6e6f8049e53c8829

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Jay Odenbaugh
2. Jaakko Kuorikoski
3. Aki Lehtinen
4. Anna Alexandrova

Citations in the corpus

• Credible Worlds, Capacities and Mechanisms (2009, unknown): “Cartwright, N. (2009).”
• Buyer beware: robustness analyses in economics and biology (2011, background): “For reasons to reject these views see Cartwright (2009), Gruene-Yanoff (2009), Alexandrova (2008), Alexandrova and Northcott (2009), and Odenbaugh (2006).”
• Incredible Worlds, Credible Results (2009, background): “For example, Nancy Cartwright is concerned that auxiliary assumptions introduced through the very structure of economic models might create irremediable errors in them that in her words "overconstrain" the results (Cartwright 2009).”