Who would win in a fight between Dupre and Cartwright?
I take issue with both Dupre and Cartwright’s characterization of a machine or mechanism in the context of economics. Considering economics as a problem-solving field concerned with production and distribution (as defined by Samuelson), it seems unwise to address the mechanism problem (as Dupre defines it through essentialism, reductionism, and determinism) by introducing additional machines beyond the universe itswelf, whether these are Cartwright’s model-machines or Dupre’s pluralistic “family of machines.” A more parsimonious approach would be to consider how the universe-as-machine can generate new “submachines” (e.g., organisms, human societies, artifacts, or cultural constructs). I argue for an instrumentalist approach, drawing on Rosenberg’s concept of supervenience and the (albeit limited) success of econometrics. These provide both a theoretical framework and a methodological approach for knowledge production without requiring us to possess Laplacian omniscience. Given that economics aims for useful models rather than fundamental truths (conceding to Dupre’s point about the inseparability of normativity from economic facts, while still viewing normative judgments as epiphenomena, much like economic phenomena themselves), I propose that economics should view this pluralistic abstraction of the “machine” merely as a tool for constructing a better society (with subjectivity in defining “better”).