The naturalistic turn in economics: implications for the theory of finance
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
No 105, Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series from Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
Abstract:
Economics is increasingly adopting the methodological standards and procedures of the natural sciences. The paper analyzes this 'naturalistic turn' from the philosophical perspective on naturalism, and I discuss the implications for the field of finance. The theory of finance is an interesting case in point for the methodological issues, as it manifests a paradigmatic tension between the pure theory of finance and Behavioral Finance. I distinguish between three kinds of naturalism: mark I, the reduction of behavior on psychoneural phenomena, mark II, the transfer of patterns of causal explanations from the natural sciences to the social sciences, mark III, the enrichment of the ontology from observer-independent to observer-relative facts. Building an integrated naturalistic paradigm from these three ingredients, I show that naturalism in economics will only be completed by a simultaneous linguistic turn, with language being analyzed from the naturalistic viewpoint. I relate this proposition with recent results of research into finance, especially connecting Behavioral Finance with the sociology of finance.
Keywords: Naturalism; causation in economics; neuroeconomics; behavioral finance; social ontology; sociology of finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B41 D87 G00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27874/1/588456985.PDF (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:fsfmwp:105
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series from Frankfurt School of Finance and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().