IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jecmet/v31y2024i1p1-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ontological wars in economics: the return of supervenience

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandre Müller Fonseca

Abstract

In this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases scenarios, the corresponding macroeconomic sets are fixed by their micro bases that codify weather events and thereby fix the macro. This is so because the microeconomic base must include institutional facts; they are as much necessary as the facts about people’s conditions. In so doing, we re-establish bottom–top determination from the micro to the macro, rescuing the applicability of global supervenience.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandre Müller Fonseca, 2024. "Ontological wars in economics: the return of supervenience," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 1-16, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:31:y:2024:i:1:p:1-16
    DOI: 10.1080/1350178X.2023.2271932
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1350178X.2023.2271932
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1350178X.2023.2271932?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:31:y:2024:i:1:p:1-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.