UMO-2013/11/B/HS4/01074
Dr hab. Łukasz Hardt
True but not (always) universal. On the nature of economic laws
Project objectives/Research hypothesis
The goal of the project is to analyze the nature of economic laws. I am to show that they are true
but not (always) universal. Also, it will be demonstrated that economic laws are not natural laws in the
sense of deductive-nomological model of explanation.
Moreover, one of the tasks of the research will be to give some arguments for the claim that economists
explain by isolating (U. Mäki’s thesis) and referring to natures of explaining items (N. Cartwright’s
idea). An important part of the project will be also the reconstruction of the ways economists – from
Smith, Ricardo, and Mill till Samuelson and Friedman, understood economic laws. Last but not least, I
am to focus on analyzing the very idea of the ‘truth’ of economic laws.
Research project methodology
This project is situated within the framework of philosophy and methodology of economics. The
central thesis of the project, i.e., that economic laws are true but not (necessarily) universal, is to be
investigated using the research apparatus taken from the philosophy of science, e.g., I am to refer to the
studies analyzing the logic of explanation if natural laws are excluded from the deductive-nomological
model as well as to the works focusing on the role of powers and capacities in forming various types of
explanations, the Popperian notions of corroboration, corroborability, and verisimilitude, are also to be
used. I hope to add some insights to the already growing philosophical literature on the nature of
economic laws (see, e.g., contributions by Maki, Cartwright, Reiss, Frigg i Alexandrova). The
philosophical perspective of the project is to be supplemented by the methodological one, i.e., particular
ways of conceptualizing economic laws by economists as such are to be analyzed. This is due to a
general shift in the philosophy of science (including economics) from formulating the suggestions of
what form the science should be to just focusing on the ways the researchers do science (here:
economics).