Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: I present a mechanistic explanation consistent with reduction-ism in economics. I claim that pure individualist explanations are, prima facie, a type of mechanistic reduction in economics or the social sciences. Economists may acknowledge the reality of other entities embedded in their explanations since the external stimuli that impinge on agents’ minds are correlated and, therefore, understandable in terms of agents’ interpretation. Positive reductive explanations enable a unified causal principle shared amongst dissimilar agents to explain macro phenomena and can be applied to theoretical and/or empirical models.
Author: Alexandre Müller Fonseca
Institution: Insper
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7154744111
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