How Do Economists Perceive the World Around Them?
MS958 Research Philosophy
Essay Assignment (Resubmission)
Theocharis Kromydas
You are asked to write an individual essay that reflects upon the research literature within your own discipline, and through a process of careful analysis, to characterise the dominant paradigm within your field. This argument must be supported critically with evidence drawn from the relevant literature(s). You should then go on to consider the fit between your own research objectives and this dominant paradigm, and to explore potential flexibilities in the underpinning philosophical assumptions that might offer the possibility of a better fit. How might these flexibilities be incorporated into a methodological argument that is appropriate for your intended research?
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the philosophical underpinnings behind the existent and dominant paradigm in the Economics discipline explaining the ontological and epistemological rationale that is based on. So, how economists perceive the world around them? What sensors do they use for getting the vibes from that world? How they evaluate them? Who they want to inform and for whose sake? In fact, what’s the meaning of Economics as a profession and who are those that want to change that meaning and redefine it differently? All these questions will be somewhat narrowly discussed below, given the essays’ extremely limited word count for such task, trying to figure out what sort of philosophical stance or arrays of stances can accommodate any research I am intending to conduct throughout my PhD research journey
1. A very short Introduction to Ontology and Epistemology.
Firstly and most crucially, I find appropriate to provide a very brief overview of the two main ontological (Objectivism and Constructivism) and the three main epistemological stances (Positivism, Interpretivism, Critical Realism) of social science. I am using the classification of ontology found in Bryman (2004)
Essay Assignment (Resubmission)
Theocharis Kromydas
You are asked to write an individual essay that reflects upon the research literature within your own discipline, and through a process of careful analysis, to characterise the dominant paradigm within your field. This argument must be supported critically with evidence drawn from the relevant literature(s). You should then go on to consider the fit between your own research objectives and this dominant paradigm, and to explore potential flexibilities in the underpinning philosophical assumptions that might offer the possibility of a better fit. How might these flexibilities be incorporated into a methodological argument that is appropriate for your intended research?
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the philosophical underpinnings behind the existent and dominant paradigm in the Economics discipline explaining the ontological and epistemological rationale that is based on. So, how economists perceive the world around them? What sensors do they use for getting the vibes from that world? How they evaluate them? Who they want to inform and for whose sake? In fact, what’s the meaning of Economics as a profession and who are those that want to change that meaning and redefine it differently? All these questions will be somewhat narrowly discussed below, given the essays’ extremely limited word count for such task, trying to figure out what sort of philosophical stance or arrays of stances can accommodate any research I am intending to conduct throughout my PhD research journey
1. A very short Introduction to Ontology and Epistemology.
Firstly and most crucially, I find appropriate to provide a very brief overview of the two main ontological (Objectivism and Constructivism) and the three main epistemological stances (Positivism, Interpretivism, Critical Realism) of social science. I am using the classification of ontology found in Bryman (2004)
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