Economists who have emphasized uncertainty have tended to draw a sharp epistemic distinction between an ascertainable past and an unknowable future. But in one critical respect – in extracting causal relationships – the epistemic distinction is unsustainable. Many types of causal arguments in economics depend on counterfactual reasoning. Counterfactualizing entails the construction of fictions about what would have happened or would happen in the world absent an event that is taken to be causal. But that alternative world is foreclosed the moment the causal event occurs. Complicating matters, there is no dependable method for ascertaining the uniquely true counterfactual. Distinct research methods, and distinct economic paradigms, generate alternative plausible counterfactual accounts. This implies that causal claims in economics, too, are irreducibly fictitious – regardless of whether the subject matter concerns the past, or the future.

强调不确定性的经济学家倾向于在可确定的过去和不可知的未来之间做出明显的认知区分。但在一个关键方面——在提取因果关系方面——认知区分是不可持续的。经济学中许多类型的因果论证依赖于反事实推理。反事实化需要构建关于在没有被认为是因果的事件的情况下世界上将会发生或将会发生的事情的虚构。但是，在因果事件发生的那一刻，那个替代世界就被取消了。使事情复杂化的是，没有可靠的方法来确定唯一真实的反事实。不同的研究方法和不同的经济范式产生了替代的似是而非的反事实账户。这意味着经济学中的因果主张，