FRIEDMAN INSTRUMENTALISM AND CONSTRUCTIVE EMPIRICISM IN ECONOMICS

This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the po intlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to th is thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establi sh radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called ''instrumentalist'' thesis, when applied by Friedman to econ omics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious pro blems than the standard instrumentalist thesis devised by some methodo logists of physics. To disentangle these ambiguities concerning realis m and instrumentalism applied to physics or to economics, this paper r efers to Van Fraassen's ''constructive empiricism'', which is helpful in reformulating, in a more satisfactory way, the essentials of Friedm an's considerations about empiricism and anti-realism.