Mercantilists, empiricists, positivists, pragmatists, etc., claim that their theories are true because “they work.” In the first quote, Mises points out that this is a fallacy. Yet, in the second quote, he uses the same argument to justify his own claim that our categories of knowledge are items of truth. This being the case, what makes praxeology any better (i.e., more true) than the positive sciences? Ultimately, they both rest on the same fallacy.
I always thought that Mises is just showing that on their own terms, positivism would conclude that humans act so he’s just showing that positivist anti-praxeology is contradictory -positivism implies action…no?
Mises doesn’t think that positivism allows for conclusions of any sort, since truth cannot be abstracted from (scientific or historical) experience.
Instead, he opts for a rationalistic basis for economics, i.e., praxeology. The problem with this is that it, too, rests on the assumption that “what works is true.” Just because action informed by the category of causality is successful, does not mean that the universe is characterized by causality. It may (to give a Nietzscheian answer) just be an error which has enabled us to survive.
I believe Mises there is trying to say: the fact that, with mercantilism, the nation does not starve out in not to say that the system ‘works’. How do you know how it would have worked without mercantilism? Better or worse?
So, he’s not intent on attacking pragmatism (he is a pragmatist), but simply of pointing out that pragmatism in some circumstances, i.e. when experiments cannot isolate individual factors, is in it simplest form untenable. But pragmatism based on logic “If P than Q, therefore S. Do you like S? Than P ‘works’” is indeed what Mises is advocating throughout the book.
grunch
Human Action, Scholar’s Edition, p. 39
The logical structure of our minds—the structure that allows us to correctly discern causes and effects in the world—is a structure which has developed through human evolution (and will continue to do so). And humans evolve in direct response to their physical environments. Thus, the logical structures of our mind have evolved to correctly understand our physical environment. In this sense, our knowledge of cause and effect necessarily depends on our empirical knowledge of the external world (i.e. the external world of our evolutionary past).
Clearly, our knowledge of cause and effect works for us in the real world. But is this REALLY the same as saying: Because cause and effect works for us in the real world, we therefore believe our knowledge of cause and effect to be true.
No. Instead, it is correct to say: Because our brains work correctly for us, we have knowledge of cause and effect. Yes, this is verified by experience, but only because our brains have coevolved with our environment: our experience CAN’T BE ANY DIFFERENT from what it is.
imo.
edit: I get these ideas about evolution from Mises. Prior to this quoted passage, he discusses the development and evolution of human reason. The evolutionary context is the correct one to interpret Mises’s above words. Mises’s argument is similar to arguing that our knowledge of cause and effect are encoded in our genes, which mutated and were subsequently changed in step with their physical/chemical environment. “Cause” and “effect” are therefore as necessary to our minds as the principles of cause and effect which govern the process of gene mutation and chemical reaction. Indeed, they are the very same principles.(!)
I wouldn’t say that he is calling that a fallacy.
As you said, he uses the same reasoning for his science.
See this post.
By the way, it might be important to point out that Ludwig von Mises thought that positivism was correct as far as it only tried to describe the method of the natural sciences.
Well, it is.
What are P and Q in this situation?
This is all true. We can’t help but think in terms of cause and effect. The question that I have is whether this is really all that meaningful; what makes truth conditional on what we can or cannot understand? In other places, Mises mocked the notion that evolution equips our minds with truth:
No, he mocked the idea of studying the movement of people just in terms of their movement. He admitted in many places that biological evolution led to us developing reason, which includes our idea of truth.
If a given scientific hypothesis is true (p), then observable phenomenon (q) will occur. q occurs; therefore p is true. This, obviously, is a fallacy. However, it is no different in form than when Mises argues:
If the category of causality is true (p), then action based on it will succeed (q). Action based on it does succeed (q); therefore the category of causality is true (p).
Then in those places he is arguing inconsistently.
Truth is a category of action. If we don’t see something as an action, we can’t see it anything about it as true or false. But this doesn’t mean that we couldn’t say that biological evolution equipped us with the category of action. Why would that be inconsistent?
By the way, why did you choose to quote him a few pages later? By your logic, he contradicted himself in the very next paragraph:
He doesn’t think that he can prove that other people act like he does. But he rests contented when he states that it works to assume that they do!
In this post, I gave a rough outline of a relevant part of Misesian methodology, that is, how he justified seeing other people as actors. You gave a different example, but his pragmatic mindset in this respect is perfectly analogous. If Ludwig von Mises committed the fallacy which you are talking about, either (a) I didn’t correctly re-state Misesian methodology in that post, or (b) I committed the same fallacy. Can you prove that one of those are true?
I don’t have the time to read through that all right now. I’ll try to get to it later this week. However, I don’t think that “seeing other people as actors” is my central concern; I’m more concerned with the justification of praxeology. Do you deal with this question in that thread?
As far as I have taken it, we need to establish two things to justify praxeology.
First: How do we come up with the category of action? Where it is from? Where can we find it?
And second: How do we justify seeing other people as actors? What is our justification saying that other people “act” like we do? We can’t see into their private world, so how could we say that they “act”?
The first is the problem of pure praxeology.
And the second is the problem of applied praxeology.
I answer the first in this post, in this post, and in this thread. We observe our own private world and come up with an idea of our own will or volition. This is the province of thymology. In the Austrian school, the idea of our will, of desire, of belief, and so on aren’t scientific: they are just common-sense understandings of those terms. And that explains why people with a “psychological mindset”, that is, people who tend to think of desire, will, belief, and so on in terms of neurons and other brain things, tend to totally misunderstand Austrian economics and its methodology.
And I answer the second in this post. We don’t need to deal with any metaphysical questions like whether people are “really” conscious. We just MODEL them as actors. And this works to predict their movements. The question of whether somebody is “really” conscious is metaphysical. The only thing which Austrian economics needs to establish is that it works to ACT AS IF they are actors. Nothing more.
All of this are very rough.
But where does your response, and your argument that he is being inconsistent come into all of this? Well, you said that he was being inconsistent in criticizing the panphysicalists, positivists, and so on as resting their science on nothing but a fallacy: pragmatism. But I am saying that he wasn’t criticizing them at all; and I go further to say that he used the same justification for his system on purpose!
We should note something very important here. The paragraph which you brought up, where he admits to “moving in a circle” in his justification of causality is essentially just the problem of induction. He was just admitting that his statements about causality were subject to the problem of induction. But, in the other example of his “pragmatic mindset”, which I gave, that is, of him justifying seeing other people as actors simply based on the fact that it “works”, he said that the problem of other consciousnesses is no less intricate than the problem of induction! He understood the connection between his pragmatism with regard to causality and his pragmatism with regard to seeing other people as actors!
In short, I don’t think that he was being inconsistent. He didn’t criticize the panphysicalists and positivists for their pragmatic mindset, but just their application of it. The pragmatic mindset should lead to seeing other people as actors, not as mere movements in space.
Good q. I think the answer is that he did not mean in the first paragraph that it is a fallacy to rely on what works. On the contrary, he is saying that the best results we have, the pride of Western Civilization, are ultimately based on “it works”.
So that assuming people have free will and so forth should not be scorned merely because the only thing it has going for it is “it works”. Which is what he’s saying in the second paragraph.
Good, concise answer.