ABSTRACT
The chapter argues for the impossibility of structural objectivity (or value-independence) in causal modeling in contemporary macroeconomics. It derives the impossibility of structural objectivity from four premises: the premise that in macroeconomics, causal hypotheses are non-sporadically underdetermined by empirical evidence; the premise that scientific values (e.g. simplicity or conservatism) will influence selections of hypotheses from pools of competing causal hypotheses if causal hypotheses are underdetermined by empirical evidence; the premise that the scientific values (e.g. simplicity or conservatism), on the basis of which macroeconomists select hypotheses from pools of competing and empirically underdetermined causal hypotheses, have no epistemic priority over the opposing ones (e.g. non-simplicity or novelty); and the premise that macroeconomists prefer one scientific value (e.g. simplicity) over another (e.g. non-simplicity) on the basis of non-scientific values like ideologies, moral judgments, or group interests. The chapter also explains to what extent the argument for the impossibility of structural objectivity in contemporary macroeconomic causal modeling is and is not a macroeconomic application of Helen Longino’s argument from empirical underdetermination.
