It is argued that rather than a well defined F-Twist, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of positive economics” offers an F-Mix: a pool of ambiguous and inconsistent ingredients that can be used for putting together a number of different methodological positions. This concerns issues such as the very concept of being unrealistic, the goal of predictive tests, the as-if formulation of theories, explanatory unification, social construction, and more. Both friends and foes of Friedman’s essay have ignored its open-ended unclarities. Their removal may (...) help create new common ground for more focused debate in economics. Here I show how F53 can be reread/rewritten as a socially constructivist fallibilist, and realist statement – in contrast to the received instrumentalist interpretation. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall defend two main claims. First, Friedman’s famous paper “On the methodology of positive economics” (“F53”) cannot be properly understood without taking into account the influence of three authors who are neither cited nor mentioned in the paper: Max Weber, Frank Knight, and Karl Popper. I shall trace both their substantive influence on F53 and the historical route by which this influence took place. Once one has understood these ingredients, especially Weber’s ideal types, many of F53’s (...) astonishing sentences like “the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions”, make good sense. Second, I shall claim that the much-discussed question whether Friedman’s essay espouses an instrumentalist or a realist position, is the wrong question to be asked. I shall illustrate that by a comparison with examples from physics in which also unrealistic assumptions are made. Also there, the question whether these assumptions are indicators of instrumentalism or realism is not appropriate. Cleared from these misunderstandings, F53 presents itself as an interesting and reasonable but much less controversial contribution to the methodology of economics. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall defend two main claims. First, Friedman’s famous paper “On the methodology of positive economics” (“F53”) cannot be properly understood without taking into account the influence of three authors who are neither cited nor mentioned in the paper: Max Weber, Frank Knight, and Karl Popper. I shall trace both their substantive influence on F53 and the historical route by which this influence took place. Once one has understood these ingredients, especially Weber’s ideal types, many of F53’s (...) astonishing sentences like “the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions”, make good sense. Second, I shall claim that the much-discussed question whether Friedman’s essay espouses an instrumentalist or a realist position, is the wrong question to be asked. I shall illustrate that by a comparison with examples from physics in which also unrealistic assumptions are made. Also there, the question whether these assumptions are indicators of instrumentalism or realism is not appropriate. Cleared from these misunderstandings, F53 presents itself as an interesting and reasonable but much less controversial contribution to the methodology of economics. (shrink)

Of the six sections composing «The Methodology of Posive Economics», the first one («The Relation between Positive and Normative Economics») is apparently the less discussed in the F53 literature, probably as a result of being the shortest one and the less relevant for the realism issue, all at once. In view of Milton Friedman’s subsequent career as a political preacher, it seems difficult not to wonder whether this first section ruled it the way the other five directed Friedman’s scientific performance. (...) After all, the role of prediction in defining positive economics was already advanced therein: when an economist predicts, her results are «independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgments». This is also why positive economics is a politically relevant discipline: as long as the differences about economic policy –among disinterested citizens– derive only from different predictions about the economic consequences of taking action, these differences could be eliminated by the progress of positive economics. Our plan in this paper is to present, in the first place, the role of political motivations in the development of Friedman’s methodological stance. As we will discuss in §2, Friedman was involved in the policy-making process right from the beginning of his professional career, and could experience at first hand the relevance of economic predictions in generating a consensus not only among politicians or the public opinion, but among the profession itself. Conversely, Friedman could also appreciate how difficult was to reach a consensus on a particular policy when the economists disagreed on its practical consequences. In this respect, as we will see, «The Methodology» attempted at guaranteeing the political efficiency of economic research. However, the sociological turn in science studies suggests to question on what basis can we deem a prediction neutral. Is it simply that economists produce these positive predictions disinterestedly, even while deeply engaged in political debates? In §3, we analyse how Friedman himself produced predictions immediately before «The Methodology» was drafted, and how this procedure lies at the core of his Marshallian approach, which he contrasted to the Walrasian strategy on the grounds of its higher political relevance.. (shrink)