TY I Ryan
Meaningful with respect to what, if not the maintenance and enjoyment of human life? Our knowledge of cause and effect—our knowledge of the truth of these laws—allows us to effectively interact with our environments, and therefore survive and thrive. Why is a higher standard of “meaningful” necessary? I think at this point you enter the realm of metaphysics and spirituality.
In the passage you quote, Mises is describing the point of view of “materialists”, who apparently believe that free will does not exist because they believe that all thought and action are directed by external physical stimuli. If he is mocking something, it is this materialist view of reality.
But this is the view that you are endorsing when you say that evolution (a material process) has given rise to knowledge. If the functions of our minds are akin to the functions of our bladders, the distinction between truth and falsehood collapses. Our bladders function in a way which has enabled us to survive; and our brains function in a way which has enabled us to survive. That’s all there is to be said of the matter — “truth” and “falsity” are meaningless epithets.
Maybe this isn’t such a problem. Maybe truth just means “the brain function which enables survival.” This doesn’t sound very promising, but I’m not concerned with it at this point. My question is, if this is all true, how is praxeology any better than the methods of positive economics? They both proceed by the same method — according to “what works.”
Mises is definitely commited to the “it works” approach. He is also fully aware of its problems. In Theory and History, he writes:
My question is this: if the “it works” approach works for Mises, why doesn’t it work for the positivists?
Because positivist economics doesn’t work, while induction in the mechanical realm does for us. We wouldn’t acquiesce to the rules of logic if they did not serve our purposes in the teleological and geometric realms, but they do, so we do.
I don’t see how induction works better for us. So far, I suppose, it has worked out better. But this says nothing about the future.
Change the catch phrase to “it works so far”
have you an instance of positivist economics “working” in some area it has chosen to deal with?
But it does to us. At least it does to me. I acquiesce to the principle of induction with regard to mechanical phenomena every day. It’s just the way my mind works. Don’t you?
Sure. Positivist economists aren’t wrong about everything. They tend to understand concepts like scarcity, tradeoffs, supply and demand, marginal analysis etc. pretty well. Their justification for these principles is, or course, different than the one that an Austrian would give. (Or is it?)
Yes, it seems to work. I’m not going to stop using it on account of this realization. But is there is no final arbiter in the appraisal of economic theories? I had higher hopes for economics than this.
God was busy
Other people have already said this, but: It does work for the positivists! Mises even said somewhere that positivism, mechanicalism, and whatever are “correct” as far as they describe the physical sciences - in other words they work - but that they are totally wrong as far as they pretend to describe the sciences of human action - in other words they don’t work. The “it works” approach works for everybody. He is just pointing out the obvious: Seeing other people as actors “works”, seeing them as just bodies in space doesn’t.
Yea maybe, but DO the bladder and the mind function in exactly the same way? No.
Sure, both behave by the laws of cause/effect governing biological processes. But there’s a massive difference here, all the same: the bladder IS materially determined (I’ll speak for my bladder: it’s decidely NOT a Marxist)—it reacts perfectly mechanically and without self-reference. The mind, on the other hand, IS NOT materially determined. Yes, in a manner of speaking, the mind DOES react mechanically to external stimuli—invariably chopping it up and rearranging it into cause/effect categories for us. But, we humans take the results, and apply them self-referentially. There is a self involved here. This self, being self-ish, cares very much about truth vs. falsity.
Unless you can prove to me that self-caring and self-witnessing are materially determined behaviors, I think your case fails to be made.
two points:
(1) These are NOT the same method…but the same standard of success. Big difference, because praxeology gets you tremendously closer to social cause and effect. Unless, of course, you’re arguing that since everything is materially determined, method makes no difference to us since our fate is already sealed.
(2) But, all of that is NOT true. Therefore truth matters. Therefore method matters.
EDIT: I take (1) & (2) back. I lost sight of your original post. I see what you mean about “being the same method”. But, I would answer the same regarding how much closer to social cause/effect praxeology will deliver you vs. positivism. I think this is a sufficient condition for recommending praxeology.
However, regarding (2). Yea, you gotta make an educated leap of faith at some point, don’t you?
I don’t see how an evolutionary account of the mind can lead to anything other than the conclusion that it is materially determined. This is what an evolutionary account of the mind does: it shows how certain material forces (like natural selection) have constructed the human mind over time. Now, this doesn’t mean that we can discover what the laws of human action are, nor does it mean that the methods of the positive sciences are appropriate for analyzing these laws. However, it does mean that we have good reason to doubt our mental facilities insofar as the discovery of truth is concerned. Our minds were never intended to grasp truths; they were indented (to use the term anthropomorphically) to help us survive.
If you think that our minds are determined by something other than material forces, please, tell me what it is.
By “method” I meant “logical method.” (and by “logical method” I mean “If p then q, q, therefore p”) I don’t think that there is much disagreement over what the standards of success are: it is the achievement of the ends sought after. The bigger question is what the standards of truth are; since ‘success’ is hardly sufficient. The fact that action based on a given category (e.g., causality) is successful says very little about the category’s truth-value. Mises was certainly aware of this, but I don’t think that he saw the full skeptical implications of it. If our categories of knowledge are not ‘true’ but merely ‘successful’, then we are no better off than those positivist economists who say (similarly) that their hypotheses are not true, but predictively successful. The only difference between rationalist economics and positive economics, it seems to me, is that the positive economists can make new hypotheses whenever their old ones are “falsified.” Mises could never make a new “catagory of causality” for his economics; it isn’t an idea that is falsifiable in the first place. If you are going to be a rationalist in economics, you are more or less stuck with Mises’s categories; rejecting them doesn’t make sense. However, given an evolutionary account of the mind, there is no reason to expect truth to make sense.
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I was using “materially determined” differently.
I was referring to the question of whether the EXERCISE of our mind is determined materially. (i.e. I was speaking metaphysically, referring to a state of being in which our thoughts and feelings are caused directly by specific material substances coming from the outside, into our brains. I add “without reference to our will”.)
This latter sense (i.e. that the EXERCISE of our minds is determined materially) is the one Mises refers to in his anti-materialism passage that you quote above, in my view.
A significant part of praxeology isn’t set up like that—it goes from inside out, not from outside in.
(1) Here’s praxeology:
If preferences, then choice.
Preferences. Therefore choice.
(2) here’s empiricism:
If preferences, then choice.
Choice. Therefore, preferences.
I say this because praxeology (an important part of it, at least) roots itself in the synthetic a priori. Its truth value emanates from the inside out, like in argument (1).
(2) of course, is a fallacy in formal logic. But (1) is perfectly valid.
Your argument is 100% correct in that there’s something empirical in the nature of praxeology. As per IRyan here, we know that Mises couldn’t find a logically necessary bridge between, on the one hand, his internal understanding of himself as a (human) actor; and on the other hand, his ability to apply that understanding to interpreting the behavior of other people. Mises crosses the empirical threshold at this point, and he justifies his empirical leap with “well, it works.”
My guess is there’s a distinct portion of praxeological propositions which can be established with logical necessity—namely, those which can be deduced from interpreting the action axiom in the first person: “My behavior is purposeful”. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was exactly one half of them.
Worse case scenario: You are analyzing social behavior. You’re forced by the powers that be to make a choice: (1) praxeology; or (2) empiricism. Do you see any difference now?
Jesse,
The way to resolve your question is to throw out naturalistic evolution. That way a criterion for the correspondence of human minds and reality can be established.
Given a non-naturalistic basis praxeology is not only more “successful” than positivist economics it is actually true since it has a proper metaphysical basis. It is interesting that most naturalists are in fact pragmatist since they ignore or play down the importance of metaphysics.
I disagree. Here’s Mises:
Given naturalism, only atoms (or the basic unit of the universe) exist therefore in principle everything is reducible to the atoms. As such taking judgements of value as given is purely pragmati. One could take the emergentist or non-reductive physicalist- when atoms are grouped together and reach a certain complexity they exhibit qualitatitvely different properties and as such this new object can influence the atoms which actually make it up- however this rests on the possibility that quantatative change can lead to qualitative change which is impossible: if only atoms exist, then no matter how many atoms there are no or less than (n) atoms.
I see. Thanks. In short, why is naturalism and pragamatism incorrect, in your view—what’s being missed by its (lack of) conserations of metaphysics?