ABSTRACT
The purpose of the first chapter is to introduce the reader into the philosophy of causality, define the purpose of the book, and describe the method of inquiry. I start by arguing that the philosophy of economics has put limited attention to studying economists’ views on and methods of causal inference. A brief look at the chronological development of the philosophical debates on causality shows that there currently are several opposing views on what causality is (ontology) and how causal relations can be uncovered (epistemology). To reconstruct what economists mean when they use the causal label for putting forward causal conclusions, I employ referentialist semantics. According to this theory of meaning, we can understand the meaning of words by studying their referents (extensions). Given this, I elaborate on my approach to studying causal inferences in economics: the question of how economists define causality can be addressed by analyzing the types of relations that can be uncovered and represented by research methods. At the end of the introductory chapter, I discuss the structure of the book.
