As a matter of context, this paper was published in Philosophy of Science. This tells you quite a bit about its goals and audience.
The central claim is "Our claim is that economists are willing to accommodate mere computation more readily than simulation mainly because the epistemic status of computational models is considered acceptable while that of simulation models is considered suspect." and "We argue that a major reason why simulation is not granted independent epistemic status is that it is not compatible with the prevailing image of understanding among economists." (pages 306-307)
Somewhat surprisingly, they also write "The claim that economists shun simulation for epistemic and understanding-related reasons is a factual one. Our aim is to explain and evaluate these reasons by considering the philosophical presuppositions of economists." (page 306)
These claims make sense from the tradition of philosophy, where the study of meaning and knowledge is central. But, from the perspective of a practicing economist, you have to question how many are conscious of (or aware of) the biases and preferences of economics when it comes to what counts as valid knowledge, experimentation, and reasoning.
In addition to the explanations inside the paper, it is implicitly or indirectly promoting the importance of the field of philosophy of science. Put this way, if economists were more aware and open to their biases, they would be more likely to "break away from ... methodological constraints" (page 326) and escape the constraints of traditional economic orthodoxies.
In particular, I'd be interested to see a survey of economists to see how many have been exposed to the key concepts from the philosophy of science.
I had Dr. Tesfatsion (from whose page this paper is hosted) for a Masters-level intro to macroeconomics course. This is a course that all first-semester graduate students in economics take at Iowa State, and Dr. Tesfatsion begins the course with a small examination of the epistemology of economics, and a discussion of where it fits between the "soft" and "hard" sciences.
I was taking this course in 2009, and we spent much of the course discussing the assumptions that economists make in building their models in light of the economic meltdown of the previous years. The course was heavy on traditional Keynsian-derived macro theory and the many historical assumptions that have eventually been shown to be problematic, but it also included an analysis of economics through diverse methods that included behavioral psychology and game theory, many of which emphasised testable small-scale interactions and the way in which they which may lead to larger-scale emergent patterns. (Tesfatsion is very much into agent-based simulation of markets)
I was coming from a religious liberal arts background and an engineering program which was fairly heavy on the philosophy of science, and I appreciated a well-rounded and diverse approach to the analysis of economic systems. I'm not sure, however, what my peers thought of all of this.
The central claim is "Our claim is that economists are willing to accommodate mere computation more readily than simulation mainly because the epistemic status of computational models is considered acceptable while that of simulation models is considered suspect." and "We argue that a major reason why simulation is not granted independent epistemic status is that it is not compatible with the prevailing image of understanding among economists." (pages 306-307)
Somewhat surprisingly, they also write "The claim that economists shun simulation for epistemic and understanding-related reasons is a factual one. Our aim is to explain and evaluate these reasons by considering the philosophical presuppositions of economists." (page 306)
These claims make sense from the tradition of philosophy, where the study of meaning and knowledge is central. But, from the perspective of a practicing economist, you have to question how many are conscious of (or aware of) the biases and preferences of economics when it comes to what counts as valid knowledge, experimentation, and reasoning.
In addition to the explanations inside the paper, it is implicitly or indirectly promoting the importance of the field of philosophy of science. Put this way, if economists were more aware and open to their biases, they would be more likely to "break away from ... methodological constraints" (page 326) and escape the constraints of traditional economic orthodoxies.
In particular, I'd be interested to see a survey of economists to see how many have been exposed to the key concepts from the philosophy of science.