A critical review on the contemporary epistemic status in Economics and Law

Abstract

Contemporary research in economic science and legal science shows conceptual and methodological frameworks that often emphasize a strong positivism, empiricism and utilitarianism based on a pretended objectivity and neutrality that are mostly justified in data, numbers, mathematical models, probability and statistics. In social sciences, the classic method of dialectical interpretation, typical of Humanities, has been replaced for those of the natural sciences. Obviously, the great epistemic utility that for the social sciences implies to carry out their analysis of the phenomena of reality under said tools can not be ignored. The challenging question that arises here is that behind this dominant paradigm, the personal and motivational background of human actions are frequently diluted when the analysis that is made from these tools entails mechanistic and deterministic propositions or assumptions. This work aims to argue that this reductionist perspective on the use of empirical and quantitative tools has been a key cause behind the sterility of many of the epistemological and methodological stands and the way of setting up and validating current economic and legal theories.

Contemporary research in economic science and legal science shows conceptual and methodological frameworks that often emphasize a strong positivism, empiricism and utilitarianism based on a pretended objectivity and neutrality that are mostly justified in data, numbers, mathematical models, probability and statistics. In social sciences, the classic method of dialectical interpretation, typical of Humanities, has been replaced for those of the natural sciences. Obviously, the great epistemic utility that for the social sciences implies to carry out their analysis of the phenomena of reality under said tools can not be ignored. The challenging question that arises here is that behind this dominant paradigm, the personal and motivational background of human actions are frequently diluted when the analysis that is made from these tools entails mechanistic and deterministic propositions or assumptions. This work aims to argue that this reductionist perspective on the use of empirical and quantitative tools has been a key cause behind the sterility of many of the epistemological and methodological stands and the way of setting up and validating current economic and legal theories.