a priori/a posteriori distinction...?

Economics Political Theory
1

Okay, so I almost dare not enquire about this but what would people say/do if the foundations of praxeology were unwound, for example the distinction between a priori and a posteriori were dissolved (e.g. shown logically untenable or something such). Hypothetically lets say.

Would people be of the persuasion that this could not be shown, etc? (I assume this response) Or would one be more likely to look for other foundations for austrian economic theory (I understand how integrally interwoven/dependant austrian economic theory is with praxeology, philosophically speaking). Buts lets just imagine that one became convinced that such distinctions were arbitrary, how would one be able to philosophically support Austrian theory, without destabilising the intellectual movement with counter productive challenges to it’s core premises?

Okay so confession time. I am of the opinion that philosophically the whole thing is a castle built on sand. But. Given the circumstances, and my own philosophical persuation (think late-Wittgenstinian) I just throw all my intellectual ‘powers’ (for serious want of a better word) being praxeology/Ausrtianism because I realise that theres nothing else out there that can do the ideological work needed for these ideas of liberty (which I truely honestly wholeheartedly believe).

Would people consider this sacrificial or inauthentic? I consider myself after years of studying philosophy (how I came to libertarian as a scholarly practice) to be a somewhat sophisticated thinker (I really dont want to come across how I know I must) but at the same time I only have love for Austrianism.

This is quite a dilemma for me and something I still have not come to any concrete conclusion on. I should note that I am not looking to read a forum post and adjust accordingly, I am mainly posting this to 1.) judge the response to these ideas (just for my own interest) but also to maybe glean something useful from a perspective that is not my own.

Are there any philosophy buffs out there that want to weigh in on this given that I am honestly not trying to attack the tradition (only from my perspective stregnthen it against future attack).

Please treat me kindly on this, im just another thinker trying to sort this out for himself so that he may in better conscience help/defend the philosophy of liberty (at least to those around me).

Thanks (…for not flaming me out of here).

2

I agree with Terry Pratchett. You can’t build castles in the air unless your feet are firmly planted on the ground.

I did not become an an-cap by reading Murray Rothbard. I have for years dealt with industry, government, governmental industry, and industrial government. It was easy to see the parallax, to discover the unsubtle distinctions between Power and Market. From there, it was not a big intellectual leap.

True, I had a little help from Ayn Rand … but she didn’t start with “praxeology” either. As I recall, I think she started with the Aristotelian principle of “The Railroad”.

I discovered mises.org in 2002. It didn’t convert me, but it did convince me that I wasn’t insane, compared to the rest of the world. It gave me more weapons of mass libertarianism than I could ever come up with on my own, and helped refine my views, but I never needed to start with “a priori”.

If some egghead in some ivory tower somewhere suddenly proved that up is down, black is white, and that zebra crossings only happen in the clouds – I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t be alone. Butler Shaffer gave a wonderful lecture some years back about this, that you can look up in the archives. He wouldn’t care either. If you start with liberty as a guiding political principle, you end with liberty as a political principle. It’s not that I don’t understand “a priori” as a philosophical concept, but I think that there is a natural tendency to overcomplicate things that really, aren’t that complicated.

3

Oh, you mean if outmoded words for distinguishing between certain types of truths go completely out the way? Nothing changes. The distinction between necessary truths and contingent/testable ones remains. Austrianism relies on no more than that, and methodological pluralism (i.e. the claim that the hypothetico-deductive methodology is not one size fits all.) Its theorems involve deduction from inductively formed concepts and its main axiom. Philosophically, it is one of the most well-grounded economic systems out there. There’s no “castle built on sand” to speak of. I’d recommend reading Geoffrey Plauche’s paper on Aristotelianism and praxeology for revisions of Mises’s own terminology and elements in his epistemological defence of praxeology. Barry Smith and Roderick Long (who interestingly enough integrates Wittgenstein with Aristotle and Rand) are also excellent reads on it. Largely, praxeology seems untenable because most people haven’t the foggiest idea what exactly is going on, unless one is grounded in the Kantian paradigm, and thus it is unfairly brushed off. Economists rarely make good philosophers, and this is so in the case of Mises’s opponents.

-Jon

4

I don’t know bro. I’ve read a little of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and that shit’s as air-tight as you can find. However, just in case it doesn’t hold up to some future super dupper argument, didn’t Rothbard build Austrianism from a more empiricist/Aritotelian foundation?

5

Why have you been so many years in this forum and have only posted 13 times?

6

The biggest problem with the idea of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy is that it cannot be substantiated in the function of the human organism. What I mean by that is consider how each step of knowledge often requires a referent to be known, whether directly or indirectly. Even mathematics in all it seemingly disconnected qualities had to start with a very simple assumption based on very real relationships in Existence. Similarly, logic even its complexity and abstractness had to be gathered from observation first and ‘deduced’ later. To suppose otherwise is in some ways to suppose Nature is purely incidental.

7

That’s easy. I’ve never posted in the forum before today. I’m unlikely to do so again, given that I’m stuck at home with the flu, with nothing to do. Normally, I’m too busy to indulge in this kind of fun.

There’s a lot more here at mises.org besides the forums, you might have noticed…

8

It’s an interesting statement, ladyattis. And here is why I find it interesting.

You see, I’m a pretty smart person with a well-above average IQ with a college degree in a complicated subject that earns me a pretty good living. I studied all kinds of esoteric mathematics and while I probably can’t write proofs like I could years back, I must say I was actually pretty good at it. I’m fairly well read, quite possibly not as well as you are, but my idea of an intellectual challenge lies quite a bit beyond, say, Harry Potter. I’m a strict libertarian, a believer in natural law and natural rights, and I can even croak out something that might be understood as a Murray Rothbard impersonation.

So, those are my credentials. Nonetheless, I’m afraid I must confess that I have no clue what you’re talking about. None. Not the faintest farthing of a notion. Are you arguing for or against? For or against what? Are you agreeing with someone or disagreeing with someone? If so, who? And above all, why???

No offense, ladyattis, but you’re spewing some of the same flavor of lingo that made me run away screaming from Objectivists many years ago. I barely trudged my way through that painful 63-page rant in Atlas Shrugged, but the absolute goo written by her “epistomological” priests was nigh upon impossible! It’s too tricky! You go through too many meta-layers of abstraction, and you manage to abstract the problem away, until it looks like a completely different problem than what you started at. If you take that nuttiness too seriously, you end up convincing yourself that you’re in precisely the position that alansmithee has proposed; that logically, liberty isn’t such a great idea after all. Witness where Leonard Peikoff has led them these days, into war mongering, race hate, and apologies for abuses of state power, less than a generation after Ayn Rand would have been horrified to hear these things coming out of the mouths of her followers. It’s a direct result of them trying their “collective” hands at meta-meta-meta-meta-thinking.

Keep it simple. Start with liberty? End with liberty. If you want to make it more complicated, start with God, end with God, and hit liberty somewhere in the middle.

Further deponent sayeth not. Forums have been fun, folks. Talk to you next time I have the flu.

9

If you’re going to discuss epistemology the analytic/synthetic dichotomy will come up sooner or later… speaking of Randians, they have offered arguments against the lunacy that it is as well, particularly good ones. But it isn’t of their making. It’s much older, stemming back to Kant and the early moderns. All it is is a division into knowledge in purely contingent, “empirical” knowledge on the one hand (a synthetic proposition because the predicate concept is not contained in the subject concept, thus involving a synthesis) and purely formal, necessary (but vacuous) knowledge (analytic because an analysis of the subject concept of a proposition will yield its predicate concept) on the other. Ladyattis is referring to the difficulties faced when trying to fit logic, mathematics &c. into this epistemological straitjacket.

-Jon

10

You see, this is why you should never look back after you say your goodbyes. Now, I feel obligated to respond one more time.

I think I understand the argument now, thanks Jon. Nonetheless, it still seems quite silly to me.

By the age of three, most babies are able to talk, count, and understand causal relationships. Simple! A child can do it, but you call it an “epistemological straitjacket”? See my earlier comments on “overcomplication” and “epistemological goo”.

The divisional model doesn’t work? Then the model is just plain broke. There’s two easy possible explanations.

First, that no such division actually exists. You don’t have to take off your analysis hat in order to synthesize, nor vice versa. From what I can recall of my own experiences and memories before I could talk (I have a looong memory), I don’t think this is quite the case.

(Let’s term it “synthalysis” instead of “analysis/synthesis” to avoid further abusing our slash keys.)

Secondly, if you are absolutely positive that you must have some pre-existing “analysis” before “synthesis”, or maybe the other way around, I dunno… Well, I have a rule of thumb. If you’re faced with a puzzle with two pieces, and the pieces don’t fit, yet you know they must belong to the completed puzzle, then you’re missing at least one piece.

This missing piece is the thing that inserts the, synthalysis thingy, into a baby’s head. This is the first thought, the driving concept … hey, we could call it the “Prime Mover of Man”! Or the “Fountainhead of the Human Spirit”!

According to Ayn Rand, these concepts had to do with correct, pro-life philosophical principles held firmly aforethought. That’s an interesting perspective, but you can see just how well that idea served her in her own life, outside her novels. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden each wrote fascinating exposes.

I think there’s a simpler explanation. “As simple as possible,” says Einstein, “but no simpler.” I believe that original synthalysis is a divine seed planted by the Creator – either directly in the soul, or else somewhere encoded in the DNA. Just like a tomato seed is planted, and self-contains all the “tomato synthalysis” it will need to grow and develop, tapping roots to water and leaves toward sun, so does a baby contain all the intellectual ingredients for vector calculus, finite element analysis, and even libertarian theory, which hopefully gets us somewhere back to the vicinity of Alan’s original question.

Why is this question such a dilemma? It’s just something that is. Barbie might think math is hard, but we can learn it. This wacky exercise in abstrusity has nothing to do with the validity of liberty, which was, after all, the original question. Am I waving away the question in supernatural terms? Why yes, thanks for keeping up… If there’s something that can’t be solved by centuries of attempts by natural philosophy, where then should you look? This is very different from the rank superstition of primitive societies. What we’re talking about is the unobserved, and unobservable, inner workings of how learning is achieved. Nonetheless, no one argues that the learning takes place. Should we then argue that liberty is not then the highest aim of political motion?

If you deny what I’m saying, you’re back to your epistemological straitjacket (such a fascinating term, from a libertarian!) … and sooner or later, eventually, you’ll find yourself screaming anti-liberty at the Objectivist Institute or equivalent. Accept, and, well, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In more ways than one!

I’m done for real this time. Closing the browser. Leavin’. If anyone wants to chat, I’m always available by my name at gmail.

11

ok so this is the middle ground between where praxeology is coming from and where im coming from. to summarise my veiws i’d say the following (and please dont start analysing this and saying this and that because it is a simplification for the sake of sanity/brevity): analytic/synthetic, deduction/induction, blah/blah, all come from language, traditions that we learn. language is something that is before logic, before rationality. so praxeology starts after this point, it starts once we have already had thoussands of years worth of irrational (strictly anachronistic) discussion about many things. what im trying to paint is the idea that logic cannot logically justify itself. the is no empirical content to empiricism. you cannot prove 2+2=4, you can only show it.

Ok so this is where the skeptical position comes in: if logic, rationality and basically all systematised thought is essentially arbitrary then that kind of destroys it’s rigorousness does it not? then you get nihilism, skepticism and a whole pandoras box worth of nay saying. This was where I used to be. Then I realised (please do not take that as an insult) that rationality, logical and infact any article of language does not have to have a strict definnition deduced from first premises or whatever to be meaninigful. human discourse is meaningful because of the use we put it to in our everyday lives. so freedom means freedom because thats how we have come to use the word. for example, anarchism may have once meant ‘no ruler’ or something such, but now it just means chaos. people use the word to mean chaos. obviously we can talk it up to mean ‘no violence/rule’ or whatever we want but that is a social process we will have to undertake, its not just something that we can decide using logic and then faust on everyone else.

Think of what im saying as a decentralisation of meaning. To me, one group of people saying “this mean THIS” is just as arbitrary, centralised and uncivilised as the government saying “this constitution mean THIS”. Now please understand that I do not mean to attack any of you and that the only reason I share my veiws is because the responses I got above seemed so unjudgmental of my approach to meaning (which trust me, most academics want to spew all over, I realise this).

It turns out that the below was pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear (in some roundabout sense, so thanks for that).

“If you start with liberty as a guiding political principle, you end with liberty as a political principle.”

The funny thing about where im stood philosophically is that it on the surface makes everything infinately complicated as everything is subsumed under the idea of various language games, and as Wittgenstein notes, while there is no single definition for the word ‘game’, there is no single, necessary and sufficient definition of anything. But the crux of what im saying is that to mean something is not to be necessary and sufficeint, lol. It’s to use language (or anything) in a(n) (un)certain way.

A fuzzy photograph is still a photograph and all that…

PS: I couldnt leave this one so forgive me, a comment that to be honest I get ‘often’:

Seen as though you are gone my Gold Conference friend i’ll just say that which is more abtract, the recognition that meaning is plain for everyone to see or the artificial distinctions set up by the a priori/a posteriori distinctions (and other examples of language going on holiday)?

PSS: is just want to add this again because it is indeed thekind of thing that gets me out of this problem:

“If you start with liberty as a guiding political principle, you end with liberty as a political principle.”

to a logician or whathavyou this must seem circular but it’s exactly where im coming from. liberty to me comes waaaaaaaaay before reason and reason is just a tool i employ to defend it (not constitute it).

12

  • Praxeology is not contingent on the dissolvement of the a priori/ a posteriori distinction.

  • Praxeology is not proven by logic in the ultimate sense. Praxeology rests on the fact that humans act, which cannot be proven logically. However, once proven, the rest follows (to a certain extent anyway).

  • Language wouldn’t exist without human action. (See below).

  • The later Wittgenstein didn’t revolt against logic qua logic, but the idea that meaning of words or sentences is a matter of absolute truths or falsehoods; e.g. “there is no tiger in that room” has meaning, but logic doesn’t tell us anything about this meaning because ‘no tiger’ is nonsense outside specific language games.

I wonder what you would say to this:

Without reason no human would be able to understand causality. Without the notion of causality you wouldn’t be able to act and thus to express intent. Without intent meaning is void. Without causality, action, intent, meaning you wouldn’t have language. Without language you wouldn’t know what liberty is.

Reason is not a tool anyone can choose to employ. Choice doesn’t even have meaning without reason. Slaves have no liberty nor choices, but can reason anyway.

13

Before reading my old working paper, which I need to get around to finishing and revising some day, people should read Roderick’s “Anti-Psychologism in Economics: Wittgenstein and Mises.” Also, there is Roderick’s book draft Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action.

14

Well, seeing that Austrian theory has been proven by empirical experience, I don’t have many doubts that Austrian theory would hold if synthetic a priori would be dismantled (which would be impossible anyways).

15

I do not know where to start…

No. They are ways of categorizing how one can acquire knowledge. They can either falsely or correctly identify these.

No. Language concerns convenying information. Information conveyed in a contradictory fashion is not information at all. Logic is inherent in the very structure of things.

Why should it need to be “justified”? Forfeit the law of noncontradiction, then apply the results of that to your entire post. What would result is nonsense. There is nothing “arbitrary” about logic.

But they’re not, so no. If any of this is coming from Wittgenstein, you need to realize he was rebelling against grandiose theories of language and meaning, including his own former positions and those of the likes of Frege, who were troubled by the ambiguities in natural language. It was not a crusade against logic. You should read Long on this.

Okay? Praxeology is a science. It has the privilege of using words in any way it wishes. It’s not rhetoric.

I do not know what you think logic is. It’s a tool for cognition, i.e. the art of noncontradictory identification. That is all.

-Jon

16

I’m not sure we’re even talking about the same thing.

-Jon

17

I would say the below:

ok, the only part of that I actually agree with is the “Without language you wouldn’t know what liberty is” bit. Everything else I pretty much disagree with, especially the part in bold, which is pretty much the crux of everything Wittgenstein was trying to get away from. Intent in my humble opinion has nother atall to do with meaning…but anyway, this isnt why im posting (I’m not so much looking for a philosophical debate on this). I’m mainly posting I suppose to test the water, to see if there are any philosophy types on this board who dont accept the whole analytical tradition of philosophy, rather than debating the issue with those who do (as counter productive as that would be - this is the internet, im not gunna convince you and you’re not going to convince me).

just so we aren’t completely at loggerheads my forum-friend, I did like these comments:

The first confuses me a little, I would have thought it based on this distinction, being a system of rigorous deduction (one for me to ponder uppon). The second point, with my little adjustment would be perfectly reasonable in my view and the third (inclusive of my pedantic addition) is as true as words can be for me so yeah, please dont be angry at me [:)] Just trying to make my way round this world as it comes to me [;)] [;)]

In conclusion I think we’d both be more productive if we didnt talk about philosophy together, no hard feelings though! It’s all better than talking to most of my peers (bunch o’ commy bastards [;)])

Peace.

18

Okay Jon, rather than get into some big argument with you that wont solve anything for either of us let me just characature my position for you in just a couple of words (and please try not to hold this against me too much [:)]

“All language is rhetoric”.

Now I realise how offensive that must sound to many people and its safe to say that I disagree with pretty much all your points profusely. Thats why I wasnt sure whether to post my questions at all (but here we are so lets try make the best of it, lol) because I get used to these responses and I understand I really do.

But now im out the closet I should just like to keep this philosophically superficial because lets just say im very sure, lol. Anyway, I wish you well and lets just agree to disagree on this (if we take it any further you’ll just end up hating me unnecessarily, although it might be too late for that, lol).

PS: just a friendly book recommendation (and not one intended to disuade you or insult you, it sounds like you’d maybe really like it), its called Philosophy of Logics and its by Susan Haack:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521293294/ref=sib_fs_top?ie=UTF8&p=S00I&checkSum=Iv8%2F7WMomP3Ri9ZNXFXNjjXW%2FMcuBuMIC5eDr2QEbRU%3D#reader-link

19

I’ve read the book as part of a course I did on formal logic and it is a nice presentation on the various attempts and problems with modern logical systems. Yet, it does nothing to dispute all that I have said. Since you’re not in the mood to discuss the philosophy behind this, I recommend you read Long’s, Smith’s and Plauche’s articles, to get an idea of non-Kantian ways of grounding praxeology. Or maybe even further, Brand Blanshard’s, Laurence Bonjour’s and Martin Hollis’s books on rationalism. And to clarify another thing I neither hate nor like you. I’m not sure how either fits in.

-Jon

20

These are bizarre comments, simultaneously evasive and insulting. Essentially what you’re saying is that you’ve come to assert your view, avoid any counterargument, assign homework but not do any yourself, and hand out gratuitous insults. Have you taken lessons in eristic argumentation from Chomsky?