Mentalism Versus Behaviourism in Economics: a Philosophy-Of-Science Perspective
Mentalism versus behaviourism in economics: aphilosophy-of-scienceperspective Franz Dietrich & Christian List⇤ First version 1 April 2012, this version 17 May 2015 Abstract Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social- scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people’s behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobserv- ables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, espe- cially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. Keywords: Mentalism, behaviourism, revealed preference, decision theory, scientific realism. 1 Introduction Economic theory seeks to explain the social and economic behaviour of individual human agents (and sometimes that of other agents, such as firms). It usually does so by (i) ascribing, at least in an ‘as if’ mode, certain mental states, such as beliefs and preferences, to the agents in question and (ii) showing that, under the assumption that those agents are rational, the ascribed mental states lead us to predict, and thereby to ⇤Contact details: F. Dietrich, Paris School of Economics & CNRS, CES-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106-112 Boulevard de l’Hˆopital, 75647 Paris cedex 13, France; URL: <http://www.franzdietrich.net>. C. List, London School of Economics, Departments of Government and Philosophy, London WC2A 2AE, U.K.; URL: <http://personal.lse.ac.uk/LIST>.
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