ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we saw that early methodological discussion about the relevance of economics experiments did not follow a process of effective criticism. Experimenters evaded the methodological and epistemic issues at stake. They were particularly unable to put forward arguments that justified the possibility of generalizing experimental results to real-world situations. The generalization of experimental results has been recently addressed by the philosopher of science Francesco Guala. In this chapter I first present the contribution of Guala to the analysis of the relation between experiments and real-world contexts, or the external validity of experimental results. I then argue that the appraisal of the epistemic value of experiments is still incomplete. It leaves unexplained a significant bulk of experimental work that does not have a specific real world target as a reference. In order to fill the gap, I introduce the notion of generic inference.
