Adam Knott, go for it.
As you may have guessed, I am a thoroughgoing naturalist.
My bowel movements are measurable, but that doesn’t mean I measure all my bowel movements.
My bowel movements are measurable, but that doesn’t mean I measure all my bowel movements.
That is a horrible comparison. The amount of money in your wallet is also measurable. The debate is whether or not utility is objectively measurable. By what metric do we measure utility? Price of the good (although, the price of the good rarely reflects on its marginal utility… or, do you pay millions for water?)?
How many utils more is an orange worth than an apple?
Well, claiming that a believer of cardinal utility must consciously measure the utility of each decision was a bit horrible, too.
I do believe it is possible to “cardinalize” a given ordinal uility scale.
Well, claiming that a believer of cardinal utility must consciously measure the utility of each decision was a bit horrible, too.
I never said that. I said measure the utility of any action, not each action.
I do believe it is possible to “cardinalize” a given ordinal uility scale.
What do you mean?
The same way it’s a fact every natural number has a successor. Every actor has ends by definition, and by definition everything that has ends is an actor. Praxeology is a definitional framework used as a basis for interpreting social events.
Of course it is. All definitions are created ex nihilo (if I understand your usage correctly) – there’s nothing that objectively stipulates one definition to be adopted over another in a given discourse.
That begs the question, what definition of “preference” is being used?
But maybe I’ve misunderstood you, because at this point, it almost sounds like you’re saying that sometimes the things we choose don’t end up satisfying our preferences (as much as we thought, expected, or would like). Is that what you’re saying? If so, I believe Mises has addressed this already in Human Action. He states that the possibility of making mistakes in no way interferes with his concept of “rational action”. Indeed, if I remember correctly, he treats the phrase “rational action” as a pleonasm, for he considers all action to be rational.
It seems that you’ve conflated two things from a praxeological point of view, namely action and behavior. Although action is rational, and action is behavior, not all behavior is action; therefore not all behavior is rational. The behavior of a somnambulist, for example, would likely be considered as praxeologically irrational.
As seems to be the case with so much else, I think this is really a semantic issue more than anything else. The thing to always keep in mind is that no particular definition of a word is the objectively “correct” one. No definition can be (logically) proven or disproven – they can only be accepted or rejected as givens.
If you’d like, I can look for and post the relevant quotes by Mises.
This would be awesome if you could ‘step twice in the same river’ and if you could ‘monitor without affecting what you monitor’
How can “the size of the risk he is willing to take to get it” be measured? Really, how can any risk be objectively measured?
StrangeLoop,
It is normally contrasted with an ordinal utility scale, in which the amount by which the utility of one outcome exceeds the utility of another outcome is held to be meaningless.
Err, this is incorrect. Unquantifiable is not meaningless. I’m still wondering on how exactly one measures utility in utils, or whatever other metric you use. Have you guys invented the hedometer yet?
You believe there are elements of our universe that are permanently unquantifiable?
Actually, Colin Camerer discusses Edgeworth’s proposed “hedonimeter” and modern technologies that resemble that dream here: http://economics.uchicago.edu/pdf/Camerer_051606.pdf.
I think StrangeLoop has a really interesting point here.
Either Austrians microeconomics is just one big set of empty tautologies or its implicitly using some sort of psychology terminology. To elaborate a bit, either Austrians are just saying things like “actors always choose their highest preference” where preference is defined somewhere along the lines of “that which the actor chooses”. Or, they’re saying something like actors choose that good which yields highest utility, where utility is potentially quantifiable, or at least, some proxy of which can be found.
I find it mind numbing that a simple concept like this escapes our greatest non-Austrian minds.
You believe there are elements of our universe that are permanently unquantifiable?
Have you been reading any of my posts so far? We are talking about measuring utility; I said we cannot quantify, or measure, utility by any concrete metric.
Economistintraining,
Or you are grossly misinterpreting the Austrian position.
To elaborate a bit, either Austrians are just saying things like “actors always choose their highest preference” where preference is defined somewhere along the lines of “that which the actor chooses”.
No, preference is defined as whatever the actor believes will satisfy his desires better; he prefers things over others, because they have higher utility.
Or, they’re saying something like actors choose that good which yields highest utility, where utility is potentially quantifiable, or at least, some proxy of which can be found.
Do you understand the concept of ordinal versus cardinal utility?
Either meaningfully engage the debate or be quiet.
The concept of “utility” does not baffle me, but when both Mises and Rothbard discuss it in terms of “satisfaction,” “well-being,” and “happiness,” I find them to be reliant upon natural science (e.g., psychology), despite their claims to the opposite. Furthermore, rather than casually bandying about those terms, a more open economist would be willing to question and investigate the foundations of those terms (e.g., What, specifically, is it for a sentient being to be satisfied? What, specifically, is it for a sentient being to prefer? etc.).
The only thing that “escapes” me is how Austrians can be content with only superficial, unquestioned versions of these ideas.
I would not claim that all economics should be neuroeconomics, but I definitely believe that particular line of research is further eroding the superiority complex of Austrianism.
Did you happen to read my posts in this thread? Or do you think I’m not a follower of Austrian Economics?
When you discuss “believes,” “desires,” and “prefers,” you are smuggling in psychological terms. These terms are subject to the purview of that science and its more fundamental counterpart, neuroscience. These natural sciences can and do measure brain activity that correlates to emotion and thought. These terms (e.g., desire) cannot simply be understood in some sort of superficial, commonsense manner; they demand rigorous explanation.
For instance, read Terence Chorvat and Kevin McCabe’s Neuroeconomics and Rationality where they discuss the fMRI findings gained from posing moral dilemmas to subjects (e.g., most people would push a button to throw a train onto a track that kills 1 person but would save 5 others, while most people also would not push a person in front of a train to save 5 people; they found different neural mechanisms at work for each choice to explain the apparent irrationality).