It’s been over a year since I joined this site. I have to admit that I’ve learned a lot from Mises and these boards. I never expected that I would spend this much time here. However, I think my knowledge of Austrian economics is now almost sufficient for my purposes, and it’s nearing time to move on and explore other schools of economic thought. But before I do, I would like to take all that I’ve learned and develop it into a thorough critique of what I think is wrong with the fundamentals of Austrian economics. Many have tried to critique Austrian economics before, but so many of these critiques seem peripheral and miss what is at the core of the school—its praxeology. While praxeology is invaluable when correctly understood, I think that Mises’s conception of human action is fundamentally flawed right from the first chapter of his magnum opus.
This thread will seek to explain Mises’s misconception and how it applies to several basic concepts. I would also like to explore how it relates to other concepts (e.g. value, money, economic calculation, division of labor), but those critiques will have to wait until later. This thread will contain the following sections:
I. The Category of Human Action
II. Means and Ends
III. Exchange
IV. Profit
V. Time Preference
There are several posters here who I have a good deal of respect for. I hope to hear from them. Any honest feedback will be useful, as I plan to eventually revise and complete this critique to publish elsewhere.
Good luck, I’ll be interested to see what you come up with, just so long as it’s interesting and well thought out. With that said I will not go easy in a critique of your critique
With all due respect, praxeology is regularly criticized by professional economists from competing schools of thought, so though I’m interested to hear what you have to say I have my reservations that your critique will add anything original to the conversation.
Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life.
So “human action” is will and behavior. We might say that it is behavior caused by will. But we must be careful with this, for it is not causation in the normal sense of the word. The relationship between will (or reason) and behavior is not a temporal relation. Properly speaking, reason does not precede behavior—though thought might. To see why this is the case, it is useful to look to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, an important predecessor of Mises’s project.
Kant distinguished between noumena (the things-in-themselves) and phenomena (the appearances of things-in-themselves). He considered space and time to be transcendentally ideal—that is, space and time are not properties of the outside world, but the means by which our intuition perceives the relationship between objects of the outside world. In his Third Antinomy, Kant considered the problem of free will. He concluded that if we are considering only appearances, than determinism is indeed true. All appearances follow from other appearances according to natural law. However, since the will is a function of reason, of noumena, it is not of the empirical world nor bound by its laws. Thus, in this sense, the will can be said to be free. This concept is of vital importance to Mises’s category of action—of the relationship between reason and behavior. Kant explains:
The action, in so far as it can be ascribed to a mode of thought as its cause, does not follow therefrom in accordance with empirical laws; that is to say, it is not preceded by the conditions of pure reason, but only by their effects in the [field of] appearance of inner sense. Pure reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, nor consequently to the conditions of succession in time. The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not, in producing an effect, arise or begin to be at a certain time. For in that case it would itself be subject to the natural law of appearances, in accordance with which causal series are determined in time; and its causality would then be nature, not freedom. Thus all that we are justified in saying is that, if reason can have causality in respect of appearances, it is a faculty through which the sensible condition of an empirical series of effects first begins. For the condition which lies in reason is not sensible, and therefore does not itself begin to be. And thus what we failed to find in any empirical series is disclosed as being possible, namely, that the condition of a successive series of events may itself be empirically unconditioned. For here the condition is outside the series of appearances (in the intelligible), and therefore is not subject to any sensible condition, and to no time-determination through an antecedent cause.
The same cause does, indeed, in another relation, belong to the series of appearances. Man is himself an appearance. His will has an empirical character, which is the empirical cause of all his actions. There is no condition determining man in accordance with this character which is not contained in the series of natural effects, or which is not subject to their law—the law according to which there can be no empirically unconditioned causality of that which happens in time. Therefore no given action (since it can be perceived only as appearance) can begin absolutely of itself. But of pure reason we cannot say that the state wherein the will is determined is preceded and itself determined by some other state. For since reason is not itself an appearance, and is not subject to any conditions of sensibility, it follows that even as regards its causality there is in it no time-sequence, and that the dynamical law of nature, which determines succession in time in accordance with rules, is not applicable to it. (Critique of Pure Reason, 475-476)
Mises refers to means and ends, but will does not refer to either one of these. Its relationship to behavior is not mediated by time. What reason does is select a certain behavior against another possible behavior during a singular moment of time. Time is something beyond our control. A good way to look at this is to imagine yourself on a runaway train that can’t be stopped. At various points the track splits and you have the ability to decide which of the two routes the train takes. But you do not have the ability to decide between your current spot on the track and your future spot on the track. Human action does not choose between moments in time.
A graph helps to illustrate the general form of human action:
The x axis refers to time. The y axis refers to varying hypothetical spatial relationships over the same amount of time. Choice A and Choice B refer to the arbitrary end of hypothetical actions occurring over the same time. The two choices are mutually exclusive—only one can occur. The lines issuing from Time 1 represent the divergent means necessary to achieve these differing spatial configurations. Spatial configuration refers to anything observable or empirical. Thus, as you can see, the chosen spatial configuration diverges instantaneously from the alternative as the means are employed. Reason cannot be placed on this graph because it does not exist properly within space and time. The only way in which reason is represented is in the difference between Choice A and Choice B and their corresponding means lines.
Mises seems to grasp this at first. Consider the following:
Praxeology consequently does not distinguish between “active” or energetic and “passive” or indolent man. The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events. Wherever the conditions for human interference are present, man acts no matter whether he interferes or refrains from interfering. He who endures what he could change acts no less than he who interferes in order to attain another result. A man who abstains from influencing the operation of physiological and instinctive factors which he could influence also acts. Action is not only doing but no less omitting to do what possibly could be done.
This passage makes sense within our conception. Man does not have to change the spatial configuration in which he lives. Strictly speaking, it might not be possible to maintain the same spatial configuration. The passage of time inevitably involves spatial change, things decay for example. But loosely interpreted, you can see what Mises’s is saying here. Since action refers to the selection between intratemporal states, choosing to remain still is a form of action because one could do something different. However, things begin to become murkier when we consider what Mises says about contentment:
We call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness. A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care.
Here Mises seems to be saying that a man who remains still does not act. But by our understanding, any man who is aware of alternatives is acting. Additionally, Mises introduces here the notion that action is about “changing” things. Action is not so much about changing things as it is about selecting things. From one perspective, time always changes things. From another, man constantly chooses not to change. Tradition and routine are examples of this. The first paragraph is the more sensible position, in my opinion, and this is how I will interpret Mises unless he explicitly states otherwise. But his inconsistency does not end here unfortunately. Look at what he says about happiness:
In colloquial speech we call a man “happy” who has succeeded in attaining his ends. A more adequate description of his state would be that he is happier than he was before. There is however no valid objection to a usage that defines human action as the striving for happiness.
Here, Mises makes a critical error. He says that a man who achieves his ends is “happier than he was before”(emphasis mine). But this is not apparent in the category of human action. The category of human action only tells us about the intratemporal relationship between possible ends. We can conclude that one thinks that one will be happier achieving his chosen end versus achieving a different end. But this does not tell us anything about the intertemporal relationship of happiness. We cannot conclude that one is happier after achieving an end than one was before achieving it; in fact, we cannot even conclude that one expects to be happier after one achieves the end.
Let’s consider an example. You are walking through a forest when a bear appears out of nowhere and prepares to attack you. You do the reasonable thing and curl-up into a ball, covering your face with your arms. The bear attacks you. You suffer some injuries, but you have saved the vital parts of your body. Thus, you have succeeded in achieving your ends—you are better off than if you had not curled-up into a ball—but you are not better off than if you were not attacked. You were healthy before the attack, but now you are injured. Successful human action does not necessarily make people better off than they were before. If that were the case, we would continually get happier and happier. In using praxeology, we cannot compare Choice A, Time 2 with Time 1. Action is not about a relationship of time. We can only compare Choice A, Time 2 with Choice B, Time 2, or Choice C, Time 2, etc.
Murray Rothbard makes Mises mistake in conceiving time even more explicit. For Rothbard, time is “scarce”:
A man’s time is always scarce. He is not immortal; his time on earth is limited. Each day of his life has only 24 hours in which he can attain his ends. Furthermore, all actions must take place through time. Therefore time is a means that man must use to arrive at his ends. It is a means that is omnipresent in all human action.
Action takes place by choosing which ends shall be satisfied by the employment of means. Time is scarce for man only because whichever ends he chooses to satisfy, there are others that must remain unsatisfied. (Man, Economy, and the State, ch. 1)
For Mises and Rothbard, man exists outside of time but is not immortal. And thus being outside of time, he is able to employ time as a means. And being mortal, time is scarce. This is clearly confused. In Kant’s philosophy, space and time are not properties of phenomena but relations between phenomena. From this perspective, it is incorrect to view time as a means since it is just the succession of phenomena in perception. We do not control time as such but things within time. Although we often speak of “using” time, time cannot in fact be used in the same sense as other things can be. We cannot choose whether to employ time for a particular end. As Rothbard says, time is omnipresent. But means are not omnipresent. And this leads to Rothbard’s other absurd assertion, that time is scarce. To justify this assertion, he notes that a day has 24 hours in it. This is like saying space is scarce because a foot has 12 inches in it. The implication of Rothbard’s position seems to be that the indefinite extension of man’s life (immortality) would somehow change the nature of economics—that time would no longer have to be “economized.”
For Rothbard, “Time is scarce for man only because whichever ends he chooses to satisfy, there are others that must remain unsatisfied. … these scarce means must be allocated by the actor to serve certain ends and leave other ends unsatisfied. This act of choice may be called economizing the means to serve the most desired ends. Time, for example, must be economized by the actor to serve the most desired ends.”
Thus, what makes a means scarce for Rothbard is the fact that it can satisfy more than one end. For Rothbard, what makes something an end is not that it is preferred over alternatives but that it is somehow wanted in “general,” outside of any context. Only after we figure out what we want in general, then we determine the ranking of these ends. If this is not the view of Mises and Rothbard, then it would not be possible to say that human action necessarily results in wants going unsatisfied—or in the words of some, that humans have “unlimited wants.”
In ordinary language, scarcity refers to a relationship of means with time. Something is an end because it is the preferred state for a given period of time. Let’s consider a situation where I have three eggs for a given day. I want to eat breakfast from 8:00-8:30. I would prefer to eat three eggs at this time, no more, no less. I prefer to be eating lunch from 12:00-12:30. I also want to eat three eggs for lunch. Then I prefer to eat three eggs for dinner from 6:00-6:30. The problem is that I only have three eggs for the day and I need nine eggs to satisfy this preference. Thus, the eggs are a scarce resource. Instead of eating three eggs for breakfast as I prefer, I may decide to economize them and eat one at each meal. For the rest of the day, I would prefer to spend all of my time playing Diablo III. Since I own the game and a computer to play it on, Diablo III is not a scarce resource. Now suppose a different scenario where I have nine eggs. Then there is no scarcity whatsoever. Scarcity only results when I can’t achieve my first choice for a given time period.
Despite this, I may be able to give secondary preferences for the given time periods and secondary uses for the given resources. If for some reason I can’t play Diablo III from 1:00-2:00, I might prefer to throw eggs at a target. So in the case that I can’t play Diablo at that time, my eggs become scarce again. But even if I can play the computer game all day, Mises and Rothbard would still say that the eggs are scarce. The fact that I don’t get to throw eggs at a target is an “unsatisfied end” and the eggs thus become a “scarce means” because they can satisfy more than one end. This is an obfuscation that doesn’t really mean anything. We can’t speak of unsatisfied ends if we never actually want to satisfy them. When we say that food is scarce in Ethiopia, we do not mean that corn can also be used as decorations. We mean that there is not enough food for those who want to spend time eating it. When we say that housing is scarce in Berlin, we do not mean that houses can also serve as offices. We mean that there are not enough houses to accommodate the people who want to live there. The fact is that scarcity is not omnipresent, and time is not a means.
I like a lot of what you say, but I find a few flaws which I will now post about here.
The relationship between will (or reason) and behavior is not a temporal relation. Properly speaking, reason does not precede behavior—though thought might. To see why this is the case, it is useful to look to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, an important predecessor of Mises’s project.
You make this claim, and then you show a chart which contradicts your point completely (it shows Time 1 - the time of reason or choosing - as preceding Time 2, where the choice is actually carried out.
space and time are not properties of the outside world, but the means by which our intuition perceives the relationship between objects of the outside world.
You quote Kant, but who is to say that he is right? I think most scientists would disagree that space is an internal element. If space did not exist but in our minds, then how would there be any relationships between objects? And how come the space we all perceive is almost universal if not objective? For example, none of us sees the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower right next ot each other. Am I misunderstanding you?
The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not, in producing an effect,arise or begin to be at a certain time.
Maybe Kant needs to be reexamined in light of more recent neurobiological insights. Decisions we make are results of chemical pathways and signals in the brain - physical processes which must, as all processes, start at one point and end in another in time.
What reason does is select a certain behavior against another possible behavior during a singular moment of time.
This I like.
Reason cannot be placed on this graph because it does not exist properly within space and time.
This I don’t. First, I wonder why this matters at all. Second, I explain above why reason does have a place in objective time although maybe not in subjective time.
The only way in which reason is represented is in the difference between Choice A and Choice B and their corresponding means lines.
You mean reason is a difference in space? While scientifically I’d agree that reason results in a different chemical/activation state of your brain, I do not agree that reason is in itself the difference in the positions of objects in the outside world, which is what you seem to claim.
Since action refers to the selection between intratemporal states, choosing to remain still is a form of action because one could do something different.
Well stated.
Here Mises seems to be saying that a man who remains still does not act. But by our understanding, any man who is aware of alternatives is acting.
Perhaps then the conclusion is that a content man is impossible/contradictory?
Additionally, Mises introduces here the notion that action is about “changing” things.
I hope you don’t read every book as if it were the 100% precise word of God. I think Mises slipped here (“A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things.” - although it’s true he wouldn’t have reason to change things, as you point out action is not only about change. Mises just slipped)
We can conclude that one thinks that one will be happier achieving his chosen end versus achieving a different end.
This I agree with.
But this does not tell us anything about the intertemporal relationship of happiness. We cannot conclude that one is happier after achieving an end than one was before achieving it;
I like the distinction between inter and intra, and it’s been something I’ve been wondering about for some time (related to some other things in economics).
As to your claim, I think you might be right. Take, for example, a kid who decided to play with fire. When he attains his end, he gets burned, and in loose terms we can tell he is not happier for having achieved it.
Although we often speak of “using” time, time cannot in fact be used in the same sense as other things can be. We cannot choose whether to employ time for a particular end.
I agree with you about the ambiguity in using the word “using.” I don’t think this semantic critique matters, however, because we’re still using our bodies in an instant of time as a means, and that is certainly scarce.
The implication of Rothbard’s position seems to be that the indefinite extension of man’s life (immortality) would somehow change the nature of economics—that time would no longer have to be “economized.”
Again, this is why I dislike Rothbard’s language. I propose a change to his description - marginal time has to be economized. As in this moment of time is scarce, because with the specific moment of time I can do X or Y. Again, the language can be rearranged to not use the word time but “our bodies in an instant of time.”
For Rothbard, what makes something an end is not that it is preferred over alternatives but that it is somehow wanted in “general,” outside of any context.
I highly disagree here. Nowhere does he state that. Furthermore,
It is clearly within the marginalist framework that no goods are preferred “in general” but at the margin. This critique is simply foolish.
He says " This act of choice may be called economizing the means to serve the most desired ends." - Saying “most desired” implies choosing over alternatives.
Now suppose a different scenario where I have nine eggs. Then there is no scarcity whatsoever. Scarcity only results when I can’t achieve my first choice for a given time period.
Again, not at all. We already concluded that “what makes a means scarce for Rothbard is the fact that it can satisfy more than one end.” The nine eggs you have could alternatively be used to hit yourself in the face. Although not your top choice, the eggs are clearly able to satisfy more than one end (eat or hit face with). Either way, this is an issue of semantics (your definition merely appears to disagree with his).
We can’t speak of unsatisfied ends if we never actually want to satisfy them
I think I agree with you here. Hence, if you literally had no other desire for what to do with the eggs, they might not be scarce… to you. However, I think you will be hard pressed to give evidence for a situation in which resources have NO other possible use for the user.
When we say that food is scarce in Ethiopia, we do not mean that corn can also be used as decorations.
I think your intuition is hence “scarcity is the inability to satisfy the wants of everyone in regards to a particular end/resource.”
However, at least for this example, I think that Rothbard’s definition can accomodate your example - the corn can either be used to feed group of people X or group of people Y. With alternative ends, it is hence scarce. Because there are alternative uses that are not allowed to occur, the resource cannot satisfy all wants.
Now, the question is “if I’m stranded on an island and I have only one piece of cheese, is it scarce?” This I need to think more about.
Actually, I think I might have changed my mind on scarcity. The definition I see as best would be “a state where not enough of a resource exists to satisfy all desired ends.” We see that Rothbard’s definition is a special case of this definition - when you have two competing, both-wanted ends, then the limited resource that would be used to satisfy these is inherently scarce - because it can’t satisfy all ends (if, again, there is not enough of it).
I say “both-wanted” ends because it is not at all certain that when accomplishing the end ranked 1 on your preferences you will then want to accomplish the #2 spot. For example, if my preferences are 1) kiss girl 2) break up with girl, I certainly don’t want to do both - only one of them. If I cannot have 1, then I will want to do 2. Yet if I have 1, then I do not want 2 in that case. Hence the “both-wanted.”
As you see, Rothbard’s observation about a particular case of scarcity flows from my definition, which also satisfies your scenarios and my proposed question.
You make this claim, and then you show a chart which contradicts your point completely (it shows Time 1 - the time of reason or choosing - as preceding Time 2, where the choice is actually carried out.
You know, I had worried that the graphs might cause more confusion than clarity. The choice is actually the entire line–a duration of action. Maybe this will help: imagine choice A to be the action of walking across a room and choice B to be the action of standing still at the original point in the room. “Choice A, Time 2” is the point at which I reach the other side of the room, which is of course an arbitrary cut off point. So while we can conceive of this whole action of walking across the room as one choice, we can break it down indefinitely to a number of smaller choices. At any point I could stop taking steps, I could even stop my foot from moving in mid-air. So even given that the course of A is selected at Time 1 (which thus excludes B from ever being chosen), there are still an indefinite number of choice-divergent possibilities that could prevent the course from realizing “Choice A, Time 2.”
What I am opposing this to, is an idea that there is a period of choosing and then a period that comes to be where choice has ceased to function–like I decide to walk across the room and then the period that I actually walk across the room is a period where I’m not making any choices. I don’t deny that deliberation can precede action, but deliberation is itself action. If we accept that, then it follows that action does not require deliberation. Since deliberation itself would require deliberation, then no action could ever occur.
You quote Kant, but who is to say that he is right? I think most scientists would disagree that space is an internal element. If space did not exist but in our minds, then how would there be any relationships between objects? And how come the space we all perceive is almost universal if not objective? For example, none of us sees the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower right next ot each other. Am I misunderstanding you?
Kant can be tricky, and I’m not sure how much I like his overall framework (or fully understand it for that matter!). I don’t think Kant says that space is “internal.” And I don’t know if it makes much sense to speak of space existing at all–be it in our minds or elsewhere. When we say that something exists, we mean it resides within space. Space then is already taken as a given or is a priori. Kant allows for the possibility that there could be other beings that intuit the relationship between objects in a different way than through the form of space. But given that humans intuit these relations in the form of space, Kant would probably say that humans would intuit these relations identically–i.e. the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower wouldn’t be next to each other for anyone.
Anyway, that might be a bit a of an unnecessary detour. I think you can understand my position without knowledge of Kant.
You mean reason is a difference in space? While scientifically I’d agree that reason results in a different chemical/activation state of your brain, I do not agree that reason is in itself the difference in the positions of objects in the outside world, which is what you seem to claim.
Maybe it would be better to say that reason is what accounts for the difference.
Perhaps then the conclusion is that a content man is impossible/contradictory?
No, I think I’ve been content before.
I highly disagree here. Nowhere does he state that. Furthermore,
It is clearly within the marginalist framework that no goods are preferred “in general” but at the margin. This critique is simply foolish.
He says " This act of choice may be called economizing the means to serve the most desired ends." - Saying “most desired” implies choosing over alternatives.
One selects an end–an end being merely the preference of one thing over another–and then determines a means of achieving it (more on this in the next section). Thus, if time is a means, it must be determined after the end is selected. I must, for example, decide that I prefer sleeping over eating. Now that sleeping has become my end, I then decide what time I’m going to devout to sleeping. This is why I say time is not a means. The selection process always includes time, it’s always selecting against alternative uses of a given time. I decide that I would prefer to lie down to sleep at a specific time at given night. Now I have to acquire the means to do that, such as making reservations for a hotel room.
Again, not at all. We already concluded that “what makes a means scarce for Rothbard is the fact that it can satisfy more than one end.” The nine eggs you have could alternatively be used to hit yourself in the face. Although not your top choice, the eggs are clearly able to satisfy more than one end (eat or hit face with). Either way, this is an issue of semantics (your definition merely appears to disagree with his).
But Rothbard doesn’t even hold to that definition: “all means are scarce, i.e., limited with respect to the ends that they could possibly serve. If the means are in unlimited abundance, then they need not serve as the object of attention of any human action. For example, air in most situations is in unlimited abundance. It is therefore not a means and is not employed as a means to the fulfillment of ends.”
Clearly, air can satisfy more than one end. In addition to breathing it, we also need it to start fires. So according to that definition, air should be considered scarce.
However, at least for this example, I think that Rothbard’s definition can accomodate your example - the corn can either be used to feed group of people X or group of people Y. With alternative ends, it is hence scarce. Because there are alternative uses that are not allowed to occur, the resource cannot satisfy all wants.
But what if group Y doesn’t want to eat the food? Since they still could eat it, Rothbard would seem to say that the food is scarce.
Actually, I think I might have changed my mind on scarcity. The definition I see as best would be “a state where not enough of a resource exists to satisfy all desired ends.” We see that Rothbard’s definition is a special case of this definition - when you have two competing, both-wanted ends, then the limited resource that would be used to satisfy these is inherently scarce - because it can’t satisfy all ends (if, again, there is not enough of it).
I say “both-wanted” ends because it is not at all certain that when accomplishing the end ranked 1 on your preferences you will then want to accomplish the #2 spot. For example, if my preferences are 1) kiss girl 2) break up with girl, I certainly don’t want to do both - only one of them. If I cannot have 1, then I will want to do 2. Yet if I have 1, then I do not want 2 in that case. Hence the “both-wanted.”
As you see, Rothbard’s observation about a particular case of scarcity flows from my definition, which also satisfies your scenarios and my proposed question.
Yes! I think you have it right. But I still think Rothbard (and Mises) have it wrong…as we shall see from how they apply this idea.
…will does not refer to either one of these. Its relationship to behavior is not mediated by time. What reason does is select a certain behavior against another possible behavior during a singular moment of time.
Those two quotes tell me you think will and reason are the same thing. Which is a big mistake.
Furthermore, in a third place, you write:
…will is a function of reason…
This shows you think they are two different things [which is correct]. So we have us a contradiction.
You write:
Mises refers to means and ends, but will does not refer to either one of these.
Not sure what the word “refer” means [the second time you use it], but in any case, you are making a big mistake. Mises was saying something very simple that has nothing to do with Kant, and it is an insult to Kant to think he would disagree with something so obvious. I’ll spell it all out in simple language:
A person gets up in the morning. He feels groggy, and doesn’t like the feeling. He then has a will to not feel groggy. That is his end, what he wants, not to feel groggy. He then thinks about the best way to feel better. He uses what Kant calls his practical reason to find a way to feel better. He decides that drinking some coffeee will help him. But he has to make the coffee so that he can drink it. Making the coffee and drinking it are “means” to getting his “end”, an end he wanted [=“willed”]. I consider all this indisputable, and further, that nobody, when it comes to real life, thinks otherwise.
You write, as part of your argument to disprove Mises:
Its relationship to behavior is not mediated by time.
The “its” in that sentence is “will”. You seem to think that what you write is somehow supported by Kant. Of course the only way to do this is to introduce a nice vague word, “mediated”.
But Kant was not talking about a person getting up in the morning, wanting some coffee, and figuring out how to get some. That sequence of events, which is what Mises was talking about, certainly does happen in time. The fellow gets up at 7 AM. At 7:03 he diecides he wants coffee. His thoughts are events that take place in his brain, and they take time to happen. He knows very well it will take a few minutes to prepare it. At 7:04 he acts based on his desire at 7:03 for a cup of coffee, and, in a semi- zombie like state, fumbles around preparing it. This is especially true if he is hung over.
When Kant wrote that reason is independent of time, he was not talking about any of this.
You write:
What reason does is select a certain behavior against another possible behavior during a singular moment of time.
So what? Do you think anyone disagrees with that? Do you think it is relevant in any way to disproving Mises? [Hint: it’s not].
In any case, the subject for now is that you do not understand Kant. Your writing that line after that long quote from Kant indicates that you think Kant is saying the same thing you did. He wasn’t. He was not saying that reason is nailed down to a singular moment in time. He was saying something completely different.
You write:
Time is something beyond our control.
Again, so what? Do you think anyone disagrees with that? Do you think it is relevant in any way to disproving Mises? [Hint: it’s not].
I take this to be something you conclude from your reading of that paragraph from Kant. But Kant was not talking about that at all, and it is not relevant to the point he was making. Even if we had some magical control of time, say a time machine, or a dial which could slow down or speed up time, or make it stop altogether, or manipulate it in any way we want, everything he wrote in that paragraph would still hold.
You also misunderstand Mises. For instance, you say he contradicts himself [when he writes in one place that doing nothing is an action, and in another place that it is not an action. Why didn’t you just cut to the chase, leave out all the irrelevant Kant stuff, and say he contradicts himself? BTW, there is a simple resolution to the seeming contradiction.
I could point out more total misunderstandings of Mises in your article. But this post is too long already.
@FoTH: I took a quick glance (will read in more depth later) and I do see some valid points that will be a good starting point for discussion. But what I don’t is where you’re going with it and I’m assuming you’ll be making connections in your subsequent posts.
I think you completely missed his point here and, further, I think your theory of choice is actually as incorrect as the one you’re refuting (which isn’t even Mises’s). We can no more compare happiness of counter-factual courses of action at the same moment than we can actual states of affairs at different moments and this is not what choice (a rough synonym for action) is about. Action is choosing the best course of action, all things considered, from among the available courses of action all of which are still counter-factual at the moment of choice.
The point Mises was trying to make in the paragraph you quoted is that man is nto completely or absolutely happy upon attaining his end. We say “he is happy” precisely because we can’t compare his prior and present happiness, though he may actually feel he is more or less happy than he was before (this is a crucial point that I think you’ve missed) and Mises is pointing out that what we mean by saying someone has attained his end is not that he has attained an absolute or unqualified happiness, merely that he is “more happy than he was before” loosely stated. In other words, this is a rather parenthetical passage, he’s just trying to point out that the goal of action is to bring about relatively better states of affairs than those that obtained before. The definition of action as “purposeful behavior” is unaltered by this parenthetical note… he’s not trying to slip anything in.
Those two quotes tell me you think will and reason are the same thing. Which is a big mistake.
Cool to have someone that can help me with Kant. Would Kant define will as the casuality of reason (in the phenomenal world)? Wouldn’t then saying that reason selects (or causes) a behavior be the same thing as willing?
Not sure what the word “refer” means [the second time you use it], but in any case, you are making a big mistake. Mises was saying something very simple that has nothing to do with Kant, and it is an insult to Kant to think he would disagree with something so obvious.
What was I suggesting that Kant disagrees with?
A person gets up in the morning. He feels groggy, and doesn’t like the feeling. He then has a will to not feel groggy. That is his end, what he wants, not to feel groggy. He then thinks about the best way to feel better. He uses what Kant calls his practical reason to find a way to feel better. He decides that drinking some coffeee will help him. But he has to make the coffee so that he can drink it. Making the coffee and drinking it are “means” to getting his “end”, an end he wanted [=“willed”]. I consider all this indisputable, and further, that nobody, when it comes to real life, thinks otherwise.
When he thinks about how to feel better, is he willing that thought or not? (I do agree with you about what is functioning as means and ends–but as I will argue in the next section, these functions are not permanently fixed to their actions.)
The “its” in that sentence is “will”. You seem to think that what you write is somehow supported by Kant. Of course the only way to do this is to introduce a nice vague word, “mediated”.
Kant says: “Pure reason, as a purely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, nor consequently to the conditions of succession in time. The causality of reason in its intelligible character does not, in producing an effect, arise or begin to be at a certain time.” If will and behavior are not “successions” in time, then wouldn’t “mediated” be an appropriate term? Or is my substitution of will for reason a mistake?
But Kant was not talking about a person getting up in the morning, wanting some coffee, and figuring out how to get some. That sequence of events, which is what Mises was talking about, certainly does happen in time. The fellow gets up at 7 AM. At 7:03 he diecides he wants coffee. His thoughts are events that take place in his brain, and they take time to happen. He knows very well it will take a few minutes to prepare it. At 7:04 he acts based on his desire at 7:03 for a cup of coffee, and, in a semi- zombie like state, fumbles around preparing it. This is especially true if he is hung over.
When Kant wrote that reason is independent of time, he was not talking about any of this.
I did not mean to suggest that Kant was talking about this. This part wasn’t meant as a direct contradiction of Mises–in fact, I acknowledge that Mises has it right at first. I am clarify things here to help explain Mises’s later errors.
So what? Do you think anyone disagrees with that? Do you think it is relevant in any way to disproving Mises? [Hint: it’s not].
I think it will be, yes.
In any case, the subject for now is that you do not understand Kant. Your writing that line after that long quote from Kant indicates that you think Kant is saying the same thing you did. He wasn’t. He was not saying that reason is nailed down to a singular moment in time. He was saying something completely different.
I do not mean to suggest that reason is nailed down to a particular moment in time. I was thinking of it as a selection, not a succession. What do you think Kant is saying?
Again, so what? Do you think anyone disagrees with that? Do you think it is relevant in any way to disproving Mises? [Hint: it’s not].
Well, Rothbard says that time is a means. Aren’t means by definition something that are under our control?
I take this to be something you conclude from your reading of that paragraph from Kant. But Kant was not talking about that at all, and it is not relevant to the point he was making. Even if we had some magical control of time, say a time machine, or a dial which could slow down or speed up time, or make it stop altogether, or manipulate it in any way we want, everything he wrote in that paragraph would still hold.
I don’t think a time machine would be controlling time in the Kant’s conception. Even if I went back in time, I would still be experiencing a succession of phenomena. So I agree that Kant isn’t talking about that. Control of time–as a “means”–is simply inconceivable.
You also misunderstand Mises. For instance, you say he contradicts himself [when he writes in one place that doing nothing is an action, and in another place that it is not an action. Why didn’t you just cut to the chase, leave out all the irrelevant Kant stuff, and say he contradicts himself? BTW, there is a simple resolution to the seeming contradiction.
I was using Kant to clarify where Mises got things right. Maybe I’ll cut it out when I revise the article. What is the resolution?
Clayton: We can no more compare happiness of counter-factual courses of action at the same moment than we can actual states of affairs at different moments and this is not what choice (a rough synonym for action) is about. Action is choosing the best course of action, all things considered, from among the available courses of action all of which are still counter-factual at the moment of choice.
I’m not sure I understand. We can’t compare the expected happiness of counter-factual courses of action but we can choose the best counter-factual course of action? Isn’t that saying the same thing? (I was talking about comparing the choices before they were chosen, in case that wasn’t clear.)
The point Mises was trying to make in the paragraph you quoted is that man is nto completely or absolutely happy upon attaining his end.
That is one par of what he was saying, and I agree with it.
We say “he is happy” precisely because we can’t compare his prior and present happiness, though he may actually feel he is more or less happy than he was before (this is a crucial point that I think you’ve missed) and Mises is pointing out that what we mean by saying someone has attained his end is not that he has attained an absolute or unqualified happiness, merely that he is “more happy than he was before” loosely stated.
But Mises doesn’t allow for him to be less happy than he was before, as you do here. He says that he is happier.
In other words, this is a rather parenthetical passage, he’s just trying to point out that the goal of action is to bring about relatively better states of affairs than those that obtained before. The definition of action as “purposeful behavior” is unaltered by this parenthetical note… he’s not trying to slip anything in.
See, this is what I don’t think is correct. While many people, and I include myself as one, want to improve their lives over their current state, I don’t see this as necessary (or omnipresent) to human action. Many people are content to do the same thing day after day. In fact, we all have unavoidable habits and can’t seek to improve our life all the time. I like to eat bagels for breakfast. I plan to eat one tomorrow morning. I’ve bought the bagels and cream cheese, so I’ve taken care of the means. So when I go to eat them them tomorrow morning, do I expect to be in a better state of affairs than I am right now? I don’t think so.
What are you talking about? Mises explicitly allows this. He does not say that man is necessarily ‘happier’, he says that in acting, man aims at ends that he thinks, at that particular moment, will make him better off. Mises states many, many times that man necessarily acts under conditions of uncertainty and that he might fail to achieve his ends or find that those ends aren’t beneficial after all. Have you actually read Human Action? I have no idea how you could have read it and still have missed this point. Also, I don’t suggest attempting to post a critique of praxeology until you have at the every least understood its most basic elements.
It’s not. And this is one of the difficulties that people who are used to using the metholodogies of mainstream economics have in grasping Austrian economics - action is not synonymous with happiness maximization. The way to see this is that action generally occurs without any explicit thought to one’s happiness. You don’t think through the vast majority of your choices, you simply choose.
Happiness maximization, on the other hand, entails some kind of pondering of the counter-factual happiness of various courses of action. “If I choose course A, I will be happier than if I choose course B.” The contemplation of counter-factuals A and B is a form of action in itself (planning) and is distinct from the action that will actually result in course A or course B being brought about. Mises discusses this in the early chapters of HA where he points out that planning is distinct from action itself. Even though planning may be indirectly connected to an eventual course of action, the planning itself is not the action. Only the actual, purposive application of means in order to attain an end counts as action.
It’s not. And this is one of the difficulties that people who are used to using the metholodogies of mainstream economics have in grasping Austrian economics - action is not synonymous with happiness maximization. The way to see this is that action generally occurs without any explicit thought to one’s happiness. You don’t think through the vast majority of your choices, you simply choose.
Happiness maximization, on the other hand, entails some kind of pondering of the counter-factual happiness of various courses of action.
I didn’t mean to imply that we necessarily compare happiness, but that we can. Mises nevertheless says that a man who achieves his ends is “happier than he was before.”
The contemplation of counter-factuals A and B is a form of action in itself … Only the actual, purposive application of means in order to attain an end counts as action.
I agree with the first part, but doesn’t the second part contradict the first? Or do you simply mean that it is a different action?
An important distinction in Mises’s praxeology is the one between means and ends. Mises explains:
The result sought by an action is called its end, goal, or aim. One uses these terms in ordinary speech also to signify intermediate ends, goals, or aims; these are points which acting man wants to attain only because he believes that he will reach his ultimate end, goal or aim in passing beyond them. Strictly speaking the end, goal, or aim of any action is always the relief from a felt uneasiness.
So not only are there means and ends, but there are also “ultimate ends.” Mises seems to conceive of man in a constant state of uneasiness. How he derives this concept of uneasiness from the category of human action is a bit of a puzzle. He seems to conceive of “uneasiness” as something that has extension through time. But the category of human action refers to the preference between possible events of the same time. This “uneasiness” is only removed on obtaining the “end.” How can we possibly give universal validity to this concept? If I realize I need to have food home for dinner tonight, and I go shopping in the morning, is my uneasiness removed only after I eat the dinner—even though I wasn’t hungry at the time I went shopping?
Mises doesn’t explain how this works. And he can’t—for any notion of pure ultimate ends is a fallacious one. The truth is that all ends are means and all means are ends. They only appear different from certain perspectives. John Dewey provides a much richer, more dynamic description of the difference between means and ends:
Means are means; they are intermediates, middle terms. To grasp this fact is to have done with the ordinary dualism of means and ends. The “end” is merely a series of acts viewed at a remote stage; and a means is merely the series viewed at an earlier one. The distinction of means and end arises in surveying the course of a proposed line of action, a connected series in time. The “end” is the last act thought of; the means are the acts to be performed prior to it in time. To reach an end we must take our mind off from it and attend to the act which is next to be performed. We must make that the end.
[…]
Means and ends are two names for the same reality. The terms denote not a division in reality but a distinction in judgment. Without understanding this fact we cannot understand the nature of habits nor can we pass beyond the usual separation of the moral and non-moral in conduct. “End” is a name for a series of acts taken collectively like the term army. “Means” is a name for the same series taken distributively like this soldier, that officer. To think of the end signifies to extend and enlarge our view of the act to be performed. It means to look at the next act in perspective, not permitting it to occupy the entire field of vision. To bear the end in mind signifies that we should not stop thinking about our next act until we form some reasonably clear idea of the course of action to which it commits us. To attain a remote end means on the other hand to treat the end as a series of means. To say that an end is remote or distant, to say in fact that it is an end at all, is equivalent to saying that obstacles intervene between us and it. If, however, it remains a distant end, it becomes a mere end, that is a dream. As soon as we have projected it, we must begin to work backward in thought. We must change what is to be done into a how, the means whereby. The end thus re-appears as a series of “what nexts,” and the what next of chief importance is the one nearest the present state of the one acting. Only as the end is converted into means is it definitely conceived, or intellectually defined, to say nothing of being executable. Just as end, it is vague, cloudy, impressionistic. We do not know what we are really after until a course of action is mentally worked out. (Human Nature and Conduct, 34, 36-37)
As Dewey explains, means and ends constantly morph into each other. An end is merely an “end-in-view.” What was once an end, becomes a means. My end might be to get into college. So I employ means for doing this, but once I get into college, my admission serves as a means for other ends. It serves as a means for enrolling in classes. The classes serve as a means to getting grades and credit hours. The grades and credit hours serve as a means of getting a degree. The degree serves as a means to getting a job. Getting a job serves as a means for getting a car. A car serves as a means of getting a better job. A better job serves as a means of getting a house. A house serves as a means of raising a family. We could go on and on, but we will never arrive at something we could call an “ultimate end.”
This might at first seem like a minor point. But it is very problematic to Mises’s entire project. This distinction between means and ends serves to define the distinction between consumers’ goods and producers’ goods:
Economic goods which in themselves are fitted to satisfy human wants directly and whose serviceableness does not depend on the cooperation of other economic goods, are called consumers’ goods or goods of the first order. Means which can satisfy wants only indirectly when complemented by cooperation of other goods are called producers’ goods or factors of production or goods of a remoter or higher order.
Such a definition is untenable in reality. To see clearly why Mises’s distinction between consumers’ goods and producers’ goods does not fit with the way these words are actually used, consider the purchase of a car. If a taxi cab company purchases a car for its business, this constitutes a producers’ good. But if a “consumer” purchases a car in order to get to his job, this constitutes a consumers’ good. Obviously something else is in play here (hint: it has something to do with social relationships).
Now there is another way of conceiving means and ends. And that is to differentiate the reason from the effect. We’re then back at Kant. In this case, there is no such thing as a means being closer to an end, because the relation between means and ends is not a relation of time. We don’t select something to get to another point in time but to actualize one state of time vs. another parallel to it. Thus, we don’t value a means in relation to what it achieves but in relation to the parallel state that it supplants. When we consider something in relation to an end, it only reflects that we are extending these parallel states further in time.
In his chapter on syndicalism, Mises says the following: “The market is a consumers’ democracy. The syndicalists want to transform it into a producers’ democracy. This idea is fallacious, for the sole end and purpose of production is consumption.” In Hegelian terminology, Mises is saying that a productive act only exists for another. But he is wrong, for a productive act must also exist for itself. This is because the particular act of production is chosen vis-à-vis other acts of production that are capable of producing the same end. It can only be because of a productive act’s intrinsic agreeableness over the other alternative acts that allow it to be chosen. So a productive act functions as a means (i.e. for another) insofar as it is production, but it functions as an end (i.e. for itself) insofar as it is chosen. Similarly, the act of consumption functions as an end insofar as it is chosen against other acts of consumption, but it functions as a means insofar as it has consequences and entails the actualization of other things.
But in Mises’s world, even consumer goods don’t really exist for themselves but are merely closer to the ultimate goal—the removal of “uneasiness.” But where does Mises’s get this concept of “uneasiness”? How can we conclude from the mere fact that people strive for something that they strive to remove something? Might not we strive to add something? Or might the appearance of removing or adding just be from the fact that our particular striving at one point is different than the one that follows it?
Human action is not the result of “uneasiness.” Human action is due to the fact that we perceive different possibilities and unavoidably actualize one of them through our will. As long as we possess this ability, it does not matter how content we are or how much “uneasiness” we have removed, we must still act. In the words of Jean-Paul Sartre: “Man is condemned to be free.”
