This paper aims to challenge the widespread view that economists' usage of as if formulations implies an instrumentalist (i.e. anti-realist) methodological perspective. Based on an account of the role played by as if propositions in scientific theorizing, it argues that they are also compatible with a realist posture. To undertake the foregoing task, it scrutinizes what as if formulations amount to and goes on to identify some realist and instrumentalist uses of them in the actual practice of economics and evolutionary biology. More fundamentally, the present work puts forth the idea that as if might receive a realist interpretation if it consists of a simplified counterpart of an explanation that explicitly describes evolutionary processes that bring about patterns of behavior in the real economic world.
methodology; as if; instrumentalism, and realism