Abstract
By critically reviewing the mainstream positive meta-methodology of economics-i.e., the regularity-based meta-methodology-and examining a case of the practice of theorizing in macroeconomics, this paper points out that, contrary to what is generally thought, assumption-manipulation and the application of ceteris paribus law are not only important in economic theorizing but are also methodological requirements. These requirements originate from the character of economics itself: economics is a discipline that is constructed on the basis of economists’ examination of the capacities of, and the causal structure of, economic variables. Based on this recharacterization of economic theorizing, this paper further argues that the received covering-law model of scientific explanation is not an adequate model for explicating the pattern of economic explanation; consequently, an alternative new explanatory model-the causal structuralist model-is proposed. This paper concludes by maintaining that economics can indeed be regarded as a positive science if the pattern of explanation of the targeted economic phenomena is interpreted within the framework of the causal structuralist model. Moreover, this model, in turn, constitutes a general framework of economic theorizing that is inductively derived from the methodological procedures that are actually adopted by economists in the process of theory-construction.