Subjectivime et science économique : l'apport de l'épistémologie poppérienne à la démarcation entre économie et psychologie
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Aix-Marseille 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
In economics since the marginal utility revolution, subjectivism is altogether the excuse and the justification of an alleged realism in describing the individuals' actions. The reference to subjectivism introduces two major methodological problems. The first one is linked to the hypothetico-deductive or deductive status of the methodology of research, and involves therefore the questions linked to methodological individualism or to the rationality principle. The second problem is related to the hypothesis grounding the individualistic pattern in economics, and the way other social sciences such as psychology can bring revisions on them. Psychologists are focused on introspection, and economists imported the notion into their field because they thought the notion had been scientifically explained. Here a critic can be raised against introspection: psychologists refer to this theory in order to preserve the richness of the description of the individuals, which does not permit the economists to achieve at the universality of the explanations required by economics. In psychology some non-inductivist theories had been developped by specific schools, represented today by popper's "objective knowledge" theory. One who accepts popper's non-inductive (anti-psychologic and anti-psychologistic) thesis provides the individual with a large epistemic density. At the same time, subjectivism becomes a theory running the economic models without reference to the detailed and singular features of an isolated individual life. This analysis of the maximisation hypothesis, or of the rationality principle, entails a demonstration of the strict necessity to add an institutional analysis of the situation the individual behaves in to the mere individualistic explanations. The mengerian analysis focused on the economicity of the goods, it has to be broaded to the economicity of institutions as considered and enforced by individuals.
Abstract FR:
Dans l'analyse economique et depuis la revolution de l'utilite marginale, le subjectivisme represente tout a la fois le pretexte et le fondement du realisme des actions individuelles. La reference au subjectivisme pose deux problemes methodologiques distincts. Le premier est relie au statut hypothetico-decutif ou deductif de la methode de la recherche, et pose tous les problemes lies a l'individualisme methodologique et au statut du principe de rationalite. Le second concerne les hypotheses de depart qui fondent la demarche individualiste en economie, et la facon dont les recherches dans les sciences sociales voisines, la psychologie en particulier, peuvent conduire a les reviser. Les psychologues se concentrent sur l'introspection, une notion importee par les economistes qui considerent qu'elle a ete traitee scientifiquement en psychologie. Ce statut est critiquable : les psychologues ont recours a l'introspection pour sauvegarder la richesse des descriptions individuelles, mais cette demarche ne permet pas d'atteindre le niveau d'universalite requis par les lois economiques. En psychologie, des theories non-inductives existent, dont karl popper est l'heritier. Proposer avec lui une theorie anti-inductive (anti-psychologique et anti-psychologiste) permet dans le meme temps de donner une densite cognitive a l'individu de l'analyse economique, et de faire du subjectivisme le principe methodologique qui permet de constituer des lois universelles en gommant les constituants singuliers de la vie empirique. Comme theorie d'animation des modeles economiques, le subjectivisme (c'est-a-dire l'hypothese de maximisation, ou encore le principe de rationalite) permet de demontrer que la prise en compte de donnees institutionnelles extra-individuelles est une condition indispensable de l'analyse economique, qui elargit la demarche mengerienne centree sur l'economicite des biens a l'etude de l'economicite des institutions.