Critical Realism and the Ontological Turn. A Rejoinder to Lewis

Steele, Gerald (2011) Critical Realism and the Ontological Turn. A Rejoinder to Lewis. Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 23 (1-2). pp. 231-235. ISSN 0891-3811

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Abstract

I agree with Paul Lewis that mathematics has a valuable but not all-encompassing role in economics, that event regularities must be supplemented with a persuasive narrative, and that inferences can inform our understanding of economic behavior. However, Lewis's full-throated defense of critical realism does little to allay my original concerns. It is absurd to maintain, as critical realists do, that mainstream economics has nothing valuable to offer heterodox economists, as their critique of the quantity theory of money tries to demonstrate. More crucially, critical realists—unlike Austrian economists—neglect to provide an epistemological explanation of economic actors’ perceptions, which is necessary if we are to bridge critical realism's own division of the social world into the “actual,” “empirical,” and “non-actual real.”

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/libraryofcongress/hb
Subjects:
?? ECONOMICSPOLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHB ECONOMIC THEORY ??
ID Code:
55017
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
13 Jun 2012 08:48
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
21 Sep 2023 01:17