Musatova Maria, Boulavsky Andrew

Failure of contemporary economics in the last 50 years has became apparent. According to realist analysis, a culprit of this failure is a mode of expalanation like deduction. Deductivism explains something, deducnig a statement from a statement of intitial conditions plus universal laws. These laws, however must be ubiquitous.

Positivism is a theory of knowledge, its nature and limits. The positivistic conception supposes reality to be consisting of the objects and experience. Empirical realism is a theory of ontology and deductivism as a generalized form of explanation.

Event regularities are hardly ubiquitous, but arise in special circumstances. According to this approach, the world is composed of 3 domains:

• empirical – experience and impresiion;
• actual – actual objects of direct experience – events;
• non-actual ("deep") – structures, mechanisms, powers, tendencies;

However, these domains are out of phase with each other.

There are 2 mistakes in ER from the point of view of TR:

1. "Epistemic fallacy" (use of category);
2. An essential feature of reality is being experienced ( real is something that can be seen or experienced).

ER: Science is just an elaboration of universal constant event conjunctions.

TR: Science has to identify and illuminate the structures, mechanisms, powers and tendencies.

ER: deduction. – general Þ particular.

TR: petroduction reasoning – surface phenomenon Þ "deeper"causal.

Now it’s clear that TR and ER greatly differ in the viewing of the world.