@Fool on the Hill
I wanted to reply to some of your initial criticisms with some thoughts that might be useful. I have an approach and this first set of thinking, I hope demonstrates that approach. I’ll finish with why I think this is the rights system, and that it has gaps, but not errors that need to be closed. That those gaps are the ones that cause Marxism to be so appealing even though it’s economics are demonstrably wrong when applied to the real world. And finally I’d beg that you continue to bring your mind and all of your prodigious analytic capabilities into this camp, in my hope that doing so will help to attack the problems in the world which I’m sure you also see, namely the injustice that modern political and economic systems create and the damage it does to your fellow man.
Time in Action
First, I’d like to discuss time relative to a human being in reality, and the stimulus/response phenomena without bringing a concept of teleology to the table. Then I’ll add teleology back and analyze how the time component illuminates the category of action.
Time is on one level a human category. We use it in comprehending the constant, chaotic and yet regular change that we perceive in reality. We assume the concepts of past, present and future. We only know the past through the evidence in a the now. Either as memories, or as “current” observations of the present which we interpret as evidence of past events. The future is for us a land of unknowns into which we project our imaginations about what might be.
So, I’d like to break down the stimulus/response cycle in man into a logical construct informed by empirical science. Stimulus is the inputs into the brain in this case. Light hits the eyes, sound hits the ears, and air moves over the skin. Each phenomena from the real world produces electrical activity in the nerves within those organs. The signals propogate to the brain through our nerves, where the brain interprets the information received as conceptual knowledge (or understanding) about the world that is happening “now”. Please note however that at a minimum, the world you are observing conceptually is not the present, but is actually a reality that has past you by. Meaning at a minimum the data is 50-400 ms old. As we refer to it in computer programming it’s stale data. It may or may not be accurately reflect the present.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to set aside as magical, HOW I arrive at a decision that results in a response. Instead, I’d like to focus on the time portion of that response resulting in empirically observable phenomena in reality. In other words, at some point I respond in some way to the stimulus that reached my brain. That response (for it to be objectively observed) must involve an electrical transmission from the brain through nerve cells to one or more muscles in the body. That is the response portion of the event takes time.
Teleology and Praxeology
For the purposes of social interaction, regardless of it’s form, we assume purpose and intentionality in at least SOME of the stimulus/response phenomena that we observe in others empirically. We do so as an intuition based on our own internal perception (right or wrong) of our own interaction with reality. The categories of Praxeology apply when a human generated phenomena is teleological, as opposed to a reaction or instinct or some other unintended behavior.
As an aside here, about our implicit teleological interpretation of reality, I’d like to relate a story. When we were kids, my sister would ask my mom to make me stop chewing loudly. “He’s doing it on purpose to make me mad,” she would say. Think about all of the categories she brought to the table. She had no knowledge of the science of Praxeology, and yet she assumed that because my behavior made her mad, I was doing it to make her mad. From her point of view, my behavior and all of its side effects were intended. I was simply chewing to eat. I did have a goal, but she attributed all side effects to my intentions. So, the informative point of this example, is that as children, we intuit intentionality, and then we have to actually learn that other events in reality aren’t necessarily caused by intention. At some point we assume intention in the events we experience. And reasonably so, after all we perceive our own actions as intended, why aren’t all changes we see intended. Now I don’t know if the categories of Praxeology are absolutely a part of any high level of intelligence, or if they are a specific feature of human intelligence, but it doesn’t matter because they are present in human intelligence, and we don’t know of a way to engage reality (specifically the behavior of other humans) without assuming the categories of Praxeology.
Psychology, biology, neuroscience and other physical sciences may ignore the teleological interpretation of the behavior of the brain in this process, but social sciences assume a human intelligence as a means to explain the behavior of the people. In fact, the biggest failings of social science are when they discard this view of human beings in the pursuit of empirically derived theories. We will never be able to discuss social phenomena by referring to causal relations. The relations, can only properly be interpreted as teleological.
Ok, so back to the stimulus/response cycle. If you accept that this empirically informed model informs you about the time elements present in the internal experience of being human, then one can see that there is inherent risk in every action. All behavior in response to stimulus, regardless of intentionality or not is predicated on stale data, and the effects generated by any behavior can only be observed as new stimulus, as stale data, when it becomes present once again as knowledge in the brain.
Time as Scarce
Now, when praxeologists refer to time as scarce, for it to inform our understanding of reality the statement must in some way conform to our experience of our changing reality. At a minimum might realize that there are things which cannot be done at the same time, responses that cannot both happen simultaneously. Meaning that I cannot now both walk and sit. I may imagine doing either, I may imagine doing either at different points in some hypothetical future, but I cannot imagine making my muscles cause both behaviors NOW. (or in a future I will at some point experience as stale data).
When Mises referred to Cockaigne, as he often did, he always referred to it as some hypothetical existence with certain properties of our reality altered. When you hear him refer to this world of Cockaigne in his writing, the feature he alters in reality is important to pay attention to. The thing that’s been removed, will be one that’s relevant to the present discussion at that time and place in the writing. In one example referenced in one of your posts, you pointed out what you thought of as a logical inconsistency. But I believe you simply missed the point Mises was making. He retained the time limitation on action, but he imagined a theoretical Utopia in which man would live forever (a different aspect of time that constrains a man) and wherein he was not subject to any physical deterioration of the body (disease or misuse, the entropic effects of time). He additionally added a Utopian feature by which a man could in fact satisfy any of his desires, thus imagining that in some unknown and unexplained way, he offered that any goal a man might imagine for himself to attain he could do so, and the only constraint was when to do them, not if he would do them.
Later Adam referred to the seen and unseen components of action in the abstract. If you look closely at the time relationship in the stimulus/response model above, the inherent time gap in the feedback loop results in the potential for missing data, or an unseen. Now, let’s retain this model and discuss the concept of happiness or uneasiness.
Time and Happiness/Uneasiness
If one is to fix the category of happiness/uneasiness to some point in time during the stimulus/response cycle then it must sit in the black box junction at a point in time between the comprehension of reality (stale data about the past) and the origination of the action(nerves firing to create an action into reality). Meaning that any imagined improvement in the world, is NOT something seen, but something unseen but hoped for. Therefore any motivation to act, cannot be based on knowing that one will be happier, but instead must be based on a belief that I will be happier. That belief may be right or not, but it’s irrelevant in the abstract praxeological concept of happiness. The happiness sought is about what one expects to occur in the future.
Now let’s take this one slight step further, the happiness one expects to gain, IS NOT relative to the happiness one is taking out of the “present” (actually 400ms past). Because we can’t change the present, we can only trigger cause/effect relationships into an unseen and unknown future. So the aim is not to improve the present, but to substitute one future expected reality with another future aimed at reality.
If one looks at it in this way, we see that in fact, the bear example fits praxeological abstract concept of action perfectly. I don’t curl up in a ball, and think that the attack by the bear makes me happier than I was before the bear attacked me. I curl up in a ball, because I expect to prefer the experience of a bear attack while I’m in a ball, to my experience of a bear attack when I’m not in a ball. Both realities that impel any action, the one which a man’s action seeks to avoid and the one man’s action seeks to attain, are the sources of uneasiness/happiness that impels action. Meaning man’s actions are always into an unrealized future.
Understanding Praxeology
So, I too have spent lots of time thinking about these concepts from many different angles. I often have wondered about how they relate to the reality we empirically understand. The logical truths of praxeology, must continue to withstand inspection, as we learn more about the real world as embodied in our empirical science. My hope is that that my description above helps you to see the kind of additional thinking and cross-disciplinary analysis one can do, to help confirm to yourself, or better understand the categories as Mises meant them, and in fact to put in additional little nuances that might explain pieces or slight inconsistencies as they appear in his work. But it seems, you want to disagree with them, for some unknown agenda (actually we know, you like Marx better), while you would probably argue that I’ve tried to prove them for my own agenda.
Bias?
Now, often we see arguments that a Christian or a Muslim, or an Evolutionist, etc will always pay attention to the data that fits his understanding, and will ignore or reinterpret data that doesn’t fit his understanding. I don’t know how to prove to you, that this is not what I’m doing. The best response to this I’ve seen is in Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. In particular, the discussion of Euclidian Geometry and non-Euclidian Geometry and the assault on rational logic that arose as a result.
I will admit, I’ve long assumed for some reason I don’t know, that liberty and freedom were “the right way”. Perhaps it was my historical experience prior to thinking deeply on these topics, that more often than not a handout, was generally counterproductive and a helping hand up was generally productive when viewed in the long run. I gravitated toward libertarian thought. But Praxeology pulled me in on it’s own regardless of the political bias of most of it’s users.
Logic is a Valid Tool; Nay the Only Tool
This all goes back to how one chooses to use the logical constructions in the mind in applying them to reality. I will doubt my senses, but not the tool of logic. It’s possible that logic may not be “perfect”, but it’s my most trusted tool. Not because it’s infallible, but because I can’t not use it. (yes that means I must use it). When you have a hammer, every problem is a nail. So then the question is how do we apply the tool to reality? You don’t have a tool for knowledge creation other than logic. We have sensory data that we interpret, but the categories you form have logic built into them from their conception. Every word we use implies two logically opposite categories. A set of things the word means (or applies to) and the set of things that it doesn’t. A and 'A. Now when we apply these words to reality, we find them woefully lacking, in that we will struggle with any definition to determine whether some ‘things’ that we hope to categorize as A or 'A will have features that might fit both categories, and cause us to be confused. In fact it is these very phenomena that form the basis of all humor.
There are two goals for any logical system of knowledge, one is to be in fact logical and consistent, the other is to be applicable. I will assume, but cannot know for sure, that since man began to use language as a tool, he has always in every time and in every place, used knowledge to perform this basic function of differentiating and carving up the world in order to use the categories (symbols) produced (called knowledge) to predict the future so that he can effectively create realities he wants, and avoid realities he does not. To the extent that he constructed valid and applicable models, he was successful in his attempts to bend the world to fit his desires. That is the useful nature of knowledge. It is the only reason we have it. Mises clearly points out that man cannot comprehend a world without regular and predictable change that would also have knowledge.
So, in asking these questions as you have about Mises you may disconnect from his ideas if you so choose. But do so because they actually ARE wrong when applied to reality. Historically, the attacks on Praxeology have not been on the internal logic of the system. Or on the applicability of the system to reality. The only way it’s been attacked has been to attack logic itself as flawed and biased.
But I believe this misunderstands the role that logic plays. Logic is a tool that helps a man understand his world and reason about his world. The value of reason for man, as evidenced by its use in reality is that we have no better tool for predicting the future. Reason is the only tool we have which can overcome the pre-logical brain’s mechanisms for survival. Namely the “lizard brain” from which sensory inputs were directly wired to both hormone release (emotional states) and the muscles themselves.
Logic is the tool that raises man above instinct and reaction, and enables reflection, reasoning, and productive action. Even in this forum you use logic in order to attempt to dislodge this system of thought called praxeology.
Discard Praxeology? Explain Action!
But offer another theory of action. Or explain why a theory of action isn’t in and of itself, a valid tool for understanding the behavior of men. This is the point Mises makes in Theory and History. Without theory, history is simply noise and data. It is through theory that we make the raw data into information that we can use to make decisions. It is through theory that we “understand” what happened. The landing on the moon, is not understood by describing the raw physical phenomena. In fact, even if one tries to describe the landing on the moon in terms of matter and physics without thinking of spaceships and human beings and “moons”, one still must use other theories like matter and energy and gravity and thrust and laws of momentum. Theory ALWAYS is used to explain phenomena we refer to as history, or to predict phenomena in some imagined future.
Any discussion about anything is interpretation of phenomena. Mises simply points out that this logical concept of action is at the root of all human behavior and knowledge. That one cannot talk about the behavior of man with another theoretical framework and make sense of language, or logic, or the actions of man in reality, be it hunting or gathering, or producing and consuming. The behavior of weaving a basket makes no sense if we talk in terms of instinct. In fact as a reaction to stimulus they only make sense (to a human intelligence) if we add knowledge and teleology into our model of the phenomena of basket weaving. In looking for a causal interpretation, one ends up at this black box of the brain which one can only understand if one assumes knowledge, purpose, and decision making. Not because there might not be a causal chain, but because a causal chain would open up any new avenue for action to the person who was interpreting the behavior. One must look at logic, language and knowledge formation (epistemology), and one must use a theory of action, of means and ends, of purpose, of usefulness to a purpose. The basket isn’t the result of some instinctive behaviors, it’s the result of the application of the faculties of the human mind to some end.
So our discussion isn’t about whether or not Praxeology explains all of the behaviors of man, IF an action of man involves the use of knowledge, concepts, logic, and results in behaviors that can be observed. Then the categories of action ARE necessarily there.
If Marxism is Wrong; Wherefore Marxism?
The last comment I’ll make is about Marxism itself. There are two reasons this theoretical system such as Marxism survives and thrives in the face of a superior social science such as Praxeology. First, it has a theory of conflict, regardless of whether or not it’s an accurate theory, it has one, and that in and of itself gives it life because so much of the social experience of man is of inequalities in station, economic wealth and opportunity and political power or powerlessness.
The second reason it thrives and survives is because it not only discusses theoretically what conflict is in a social sense, it points at specific places and experiences of man, and says “Here is the source and cause of the inequities of man.” And it presents theorems as validation of these conclusions. This is empowering to those who feel disenfranchised or who have in fact been exploited.
Praxeology what about Conflict and Exploitation?
Austrian Economists(Praxeologists), Libertarians, and many, many other groups, have tried to point out that liberty, freedom, and individual property rights are the drivers and source of the ability of man to satisfy his wants and desires, such that from the lowest levels of society to the highest, each man in the society experiences a more comfortable and idyllic existence when compared with the equivalent social conditions in foregone ages.
I’ll firmly go on record, that Praxeology has failed miserably to provide an explanation of conflict. It’s a social phenomena and Praxeology is the social science, then there must be an explanation of conflict. There must be an explanation of the experience of exploitation. For such a theory to be consistent and accurate it must proceed in just the same manner as the economic branch (theory of cooperation) has proceeded, by starting with methodological individualism and building a theory of conflict as man engages in social interaction. Mises in multiple places and works, pointed out that he was sure that there was a praxeology of conflict, he just didn’t figure it out, and left it to future praxeologists to work out how this was so.
Praxeological theorems about conflict and the entire field of politics, would sound the deathknell for Marxism, finally. It deserves to be laid to rest. We’ve been so busy attacking the economics of Marxism, and in the process have completely ignored WHY it’s preferred. As long as we can’t offer a sound praxeological explanation of the phenomena of conflict, exploitation, class struggle (which may or not be a real phenomena) we can’t answer the socialist propagandist.
Class Conflict? That’s Ancient News
In the history of man, all political systems have created some measure of division between those with power and those without. Recent history demonstrates just as empirically that even in a socialist regime the result is still a stratification between the party rulers and those who have to obey their edicts.
But this isn’t the first time such a battle has been waged ideologically between those in power and those who were oppressed. The history of Western Europe is just such a battle. The serf against the lord and the king and the aristocracy. The beginnings of classical liberalism (a political system, not an economic one mind you) arose out of these very struggles. In that time and place it was the merchants and the intellectuals (rich but non-ruling sons of lords or merchants) who engaged in ideological combat with the church and the aristocracy to free themselves and their fellow man from the exploitation of those that held power.
In the US before the rise of socialism the abolitionists fought against the ideologies that allowed bright and religious men to convince themselves that their exploitation of the black race in the US South was an acceptable practice.
As rich merchants and politicians and businessmen drove the industrial revolution and modern mercantilist economies, factories and industrialization arose as a new working condition and again those who held power and wealth were able to once again exploit in many cases those who held less power and wealth.
Praxeology is Social Science
Marxism rose in a response to the mercantilist economic and political practices. But it wasn’t the only response, Subjective Value Theory lead to the resolution of the problems inherent in classical economics and the rise (in Mises) of an a priori science of human action, which proved to be capable of explaining all of the phenomena of economic life from the Micro all the way up to the macro.
Praxeology is the mechanism for understanding the social life and existence of man, in all it’s varied forms. Conflict, power, political action, law, property, all of these exist in the realm of the social man, the man who must interact with and account for the behavior of other men in pursuit of his own goals.
Please stick around and help fill this gap. What we have isn’t broken, it’s just incomplete. Everyone is welcome to help.