OK, here is one thing that has puzzled me. From an epistemological standpoint, isn’t the Austrian School empirical?
I mean, aren’t logical axioms self evident, and something that is self evident based on our experience, making it an empirical observation? AFAIK, the empirical school of thought is not against deducing things from known empirical facts, it is against the belief that knowledge can come without any previous experience at all.
It largely depends on the epistemological views you hold. A priori means that something does not need to be repeatedly tested for it to be known that it is true, and that is all. In that sense, the starting points of Austrian theory are not “empirical”. However, a major defect of the Kantian standpoint - which is what most Austrians use to defend Austrian methodology - is that it offers no explanation as to how concepts are formed. On the Aristotelian view, concepts are formed typically by way of induction. Being necessary truths about the world, they are empirical in that sense. Moreover, one can fail to form a concept properly, and botch up in this sense as well - and not just in the deductive phase of the argument. I’d suggest reading Geoffrey Plauche’s paper on Aristotelianism, which can be found in the Praxeology reading list. It’ll help clear up much confusion, and it distinguishes retroduction (which Austrians reject in the domain of the human sciences) from induction.
-Jon
No, self-evidence is not based on experience. You will never empirically experience that men act - you will experience that men breathe, move their arms and hands, give and take round metal disks, rectangles of paper, chairs, and so on, but not that they act. That they are acting is a judgment which is not forced on you by experience.
What you’re saying is stretching it a bit, IMO. Saying that you can’t experience the axiom that “humans act” is just over the top - you know that humans act from experience precisely because you see that humans breathe, walk, talk, trade, etc. All of those are human actions, so you experience the axiom “humans act.”
In any case, there is nothing really a priori about an axiom, since an axiom is, by definition, “self evident.” Something cannot be self evident unless you can experience it somehow.
Am I right or does my epistemology suck? Or both?
Thanks, I’ll find Plauche’s paper and read it.
I think JAlanKatz referred to our inability to experience (vis-à-vis ‘sense’ perceptions) human purpose, which the action axiom implies. We may observe movements or existence as such, but we make an empirically-unsubstantiated judgment when we impute purpose (means, ends, etc.) to a series of movements that the Cartesian eye cannot see.
So, no, it doesn’t seem that we experience “human action.” Some of your examples we can experience–breathing, walking–but others we cannot (talking and trading, which, by implying purpose, we call “actions”).
I think I wrote it misleadingly. The distinction I’m making is between human behavior and human action. Breathing, walking (are you sure you see walking, and not just feet moving in such a way that the person happens to move along) and so on are all human behavior. Human action involves doing human behavior in order to serve a purpose or goal. So my claim is that there is nothing in the behavior that tips you off as to whether or not it is actually action. To decide if it is action or not is a function of your rational brain fitting it into a means-ends structure. I don’t know what you mean by saying that things that are self-evident cannot be a priori. In Kantian terminology, the two terms mean the same thing.
Contra Decartes and post-Cartesian philosophers like Kant and Hoppe, Aristotelians disagree with this. Check out pages 16-17, in particular, of the working draft of my paper Jon cited earlier.