"Mindless Economics"

I recently happened upon a working paper from 2005 by Princeton economists Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer entitled, "The Case for Mindless Economics."  The paper provides a response to what the authors call "the neuroeconomic critique" of economics.  Here's an excerpt:

Assertion I: Psychological and physiological evidence (such as descriptions of hedonic

states and brain processes) are directly relevant to economic theories. In particular, they

can be used to support or reject economic models or even economic methodology.

. . .

In section 5 of this essay, we argue that Assertion I of the neuroeconomic critique misunderstands

economic methodology and underestimates the flexibility of standard models.

Economics and psychology address different questions, utilize different abstractions, and

address different types of empirical evidence. Neuroscience evidence cannot refute economic

models because the latter make no assumptions and draw no conclusions about the

physiology of the brain. Conversely, brain science cannot revolutionize economics because

the latter has no vehicle for addressing the concerns of economics. We also argue that the

methods of standard economics are much more flexible than it is assumed in the neuroeconomics

critique and illustrate this with examples of how standard economics deals with

inconsistent preferences, mistakes, and biases.

Comments

[Anibal]

With all my respect, but their conclusions are totally misguided.
Even the most abstract of all science-mathematics-with its objects, can be reduce to physical operations of the brain, or at least to what an intelligent man can assimilate, the so called "cognitive view" of science (science facts are there to be discovered by cognitive beings and cognitive processes are instantiated in the nervous system in some manner or other) The chiasm in methodological purposes between economics an neuroscience nowadays, is jst a transient moment untill more realistic models of human economic behaviour provided by neuroscience will appear.