It is generally agreed that mainstream economics follows John Stuart Mill's economic methodology. Since Mill's deductivist methodology was explicitly anti-empirical, this raises the question of to what degree economics is an empirical science. To help answer this question, Gerald Holton's notion...

This paper makes a critical assessment of some contributions of John Searle of direct relevance to social science-his theory of rationality and his theory of institutions. The former is criticized for being able to account for how people can act for "external reasons," as opposed to their...

Tony Lawson has made use of transcendental arguments, as developed by Roy Bhaskar, to criticise mainstream economics. This importation of Kantian ideas into economic methodology is commendable, since they offer the best means available for diagnosing and overcoming the empiricism that underlies...

Tony Lawson has argued that the methodology of neoclassical economics is deductivist: in constructing their formal models, economists hope to be able to provide explanations based on laws, as described by the deductive-nomological model of explanation. This article argues in contrast that...

Searle's notion of the Background, a set of non-intentional mental states which makes intentionality possible, is receiving increasing interest from social theorists. This paper points out two commitments that the notion entails of which social theorists should be wary. The first is Searle's...