B41 - Economic MethodologyReturn

This article analyses opinions and teleological approach of Czech economist Karel Engliš (1880-1961) and his relation to the Austrian Economics during the first three decades of the 20th century. He grew out from the Austrian subjective psychological school although he later refused its methodological psychological subjectivism and value theory. Engliš formed an original teleological economic school upon Kant's noetics. This paper describes Engliš's relation to the Austrian school: the polemic approach of Karel Engliš to Austrian Economics, followed by Engliš's agreement with certain postulates of the Austrian School. Engliš supported the conclusions of the Austrian School regarding irreplaceability of economic individualism as the basis for a modern economic market system.

This paper contributes to the debate about the role of realism and instrumentalism in social science. It asserts that the debate should distinguish between ex-ante and ex-post perspectives. Ex-post, i.e. once the research is done, instrumentalism might be given priority because in this situation, significant predictive power is the key. On the other hand, ex-ante, i.e. before any model revealed its predictive power, only realism may give a hint of which direction is promising to pay off the effort. Thus both realism and instrumentalism play their role in the scientific activity, depending on the stage of the research. In this paper I argue that in order to develop economic realism, we should have recourse to phenomenology. Phenomenology analyses the thought constructs of ordinary people, classifies them and seeks the underlying invariant structure. Realistic social science should build on these invariant structures; only then the link to social reality is not lost.

The model of Homo economicus has often been criticized as unrealistic. In particular, it has been found lacking for allegedly assuming that people are selish, an assumption which is contradicted by both introspection and empirical evidence. The aim of this paper is to show that never in the history of the economic discipline has selishness constituted the core of the Homo economicus model. In fact, the standard economic model of behaviour which has been used by economists for more than a hundred years is reticent about the motives of behaviour. Critics thus do not criticize Homo economicus but a straw man - Homo stramineus. Three possible reasons for confusing Homo economicus with Homo stramineus are identiied: malicious intent, ignorance and an attempt to avoid the tautological model of behaviour.