A teleological causal mechanism for economics. Socio-economic machines.

Abstract

In the last years, given the problems of the so-called ‘received view’, a new kind of explanation has appeared in the realm of the philosophy of science, the causal mechanism explanations. This kind of mechanism has been applied to different disciplines. In the area of social science we can mention the works of John Gerring (2008, 2010) and Colin Wight applying it to politics. The paper proposes to combine Nancy Cartwright’s conception of capacities and nomological machines with Amartya Sen’s capabilities in order to enact a causal mechanism for economics.