Thymological terms.
To be as concise as possible, it is dependent on thymology, which isn’t a natural science.
(Sorry for the barrage of responses. I got into this thread late.)
Preference and choice are preexisting terms with specific meaning. When praxeologists deny that people not always do or choose what they actually prefer, as StrangeLoop says, it is just sophistry.
It would certainly help if people who challenge Austrian ideas were familiar with Mises’ work.
That’s what I said!
And again!
How is it sophistry when they clearly present their different definitions? Where is the deception?
Once again, all definitions are inherently arbitrary.
The quote from Mises only further confirmed my belief. He stated, “The scope of praxeology is the explication of the category of human action. All that is needed for the deduction of all praxeological theorems is knowledge of the essence of human action. It is a knowledge that is our own because we are men; no being of human descent that pathological conditions have not reduced to a merely vegetative existence lacks it. No special experience is needed in order to comprehend these theorems, and no experience, however rich, could disclose them to a being who did not know a priori what human action is. The only way to a cognition of these theorems is logical analysis of our inherent knowledge of the category of action. We must bethink ourselves and reflect upon the structure of human action. Like logic and mathematics, praxeological knowledge is in us; it does not come from without.”
What is needed to deduce the truths of Austrian economics? “All that is needed for the deduction of all praxeological theorems is knowledge of the essence of human action.”
Is any special experience needed? “No special experience is needed in order to comprehend these theorems, and no experience, however rich, could disclose them to a being who did not know a priori what human action is.”
Does the knowledge require any external sources? “[I]t does not come from without.”
Once again, given these claims, he could lock himself in a room and use introspection to deduce Austrian economics from the category of human action.
He could lock himself in a room and use introspection to develop all of praxeology from the category of human action, but not all of economics. It is his fault that so many people misinterpret him in this respect, because he is often ambiguous when he talks about praxeology. In one sense, praxeology is everything in the science of human action, just is the science of human action; but, in the other sense, it is just the foundation of it, the “logic” or the “mathematics” of action.
He said in “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science” that the characteristic mark of the a priori is that we can’t conceive the opposite. It is impossible to think of a world without regularity, because we couldn’t act in such a world; it is impossible to think of not having a will, because you need your will to even try to think about not having a will; and so on. In one sense, praxeology is just those “a priori” facts stemming from our will; but, in the other sense, it is not only just those “a priori” facts, but also our application of them.
We should distinguish between pure praxeology and applied praxeology.
Pure praxeology is just what flows out from our idea of our will. We can’t think of not having a will, because we need our will to even try to think about not having it; so the matter of fact existence of our will is a reasonable starting point, and pure praxeology builds up everything which is contained in that idea. We couldn’t act without causality; so pure praxeology establishes that there is causality; we couldn’t act with an idea of what that causality is; so pure praxeology establishes that we have ideas of causal connections. And so on.
(Don’t quibble too much about my examples; they are rough.)
But applied praxeology is pure praxeology applied to history. Applied praxeology is where you apply the model which pure praxeology came up with to the actual conditions present in the world, such as the fact that different people have different abilities, there is cooperation, and so on.
To give your some perspective on this, MES departs from pure praxeology into applied praxeology after about seventy pages, which is about 5% of its volume, and Human Action departs from pure praxeology into applied praxeology roughly after chapter 4.
There isn’t much in either of those books which we could call “pure praxeology”; but that is what he was referring to when he implied that he could come up with it while locked in a room.
Nice distinctions!
I thought that was called thymology?
I think Ryan is saying that applied praxeology is when you bring together praxeology,thymology and other historical data in order to understand the past, and make qualified predictions
“Does the knowledge require any external sources? “[I]t does not come from without.””
“Once again, given these claims, he could lock himself in a room and use introspection to deduce Austrian economics from the category of human action.”
The critique from the point of view of naturalism depends on defining the premise of the discussion in terms of position or location.
Question: Doesn’t this type of knowledge require external sources? (sources “outside” the room?)
Question: Is this type of knowledge really only obtained by introspection? (by looking “inside” one’s head?)
Once we are discussing the relative position of things, we are discussing natural science.
But praxeology is not about the relative position of things. It is about the thing that a person has relative to his want for that which he does not have.
Here is a great example where Mises translates or re-defines the concept of “external” in terms of the praxeological concepts success and failure (which are essentially the same as satisfaction/dissatisfaction, ease/unease, happiness/unhappiness):
“We may define the external world as the totality of all those things and events that determine the feasibility or unfeasibility, the success or failure, of human action.” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science)
Notice how Mises will conceive or define things not in terms of position: This thing X over here, versus that thing Y over there.
Instead he uses a different kind of binary pair: success/failure, feasibility/unfeasibility. (satisfaction/dissatisfaction, ease/unease, happiness/unhappiness, etc., etc.,)
The critique from the point of view of naturalism essentially states that praxeology is not a good method for understanding or predicting the position of things (e.g., when this thing X happens over here, then that thing Y will happen over there)
But praxeology is not about the position of things. It is about whether or not the actor concerned will be satisfied with the result of his intended act.
Praxeology is not about the relative position of two similar entities. A more appropriate conception would be the distinction between presence and absence, between a unit and the null set, between something and nothing, etc…
In praxeology, we use various sets of expressions such as presence and desire, supply and value, means and ends, attainment and striving, satisfaction and want, supply and demand, etc…
In each of these pairs, it will eventually be realized that one category refers to that which the actor is confronted with, while the other category refers to the “attitude,” “opinion,” “purpose,” or “intention” of the actor relative to the situation or object he his confronted with.
In the former category may reside all that is perceptual, tangible, physical, and anything else of which the actor is consciously aware (i.e., the content of his action). But the second category is of a fundamentally different nature. It is immaterial, non-contentual, indeterminate, and unperceptual in nature.
If the second praxeological category—desire, value, ends, striving, want, demand, etc.—is conceived as categorically similar to the first category (is also conceived as a perceptible object or situation), this automatically sets up and brings into play the relationship between perceptible entities, and we are then doing natural science (this entity over here, versus that entity over there).
Thus, regarding the praxeological category pairs: success/failure, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, ease/unease, happiness/unhappiness, one of the two categories in each pair must be conceived as fundamentally unperceptible or fundamentally indeterminate (however this may be phrased).
That’s fine, but does Mises claim such data is needed for Austrian economics qua economics? I don’t believe so. Thus, I stick to my point: according to Austrianism, a lone theorist could deduce the laws of economics in a locked room using solely introspection.
Well, they are purely formal truths, which means you may be able to consider whether they are true or false, when you are armed with their semantic content even if you have never met them empirically( assuming we ignore Godelian holes!.)
I suppose its an interesting question whether becoming armed with the ‘semantic content’ about which to do your apriori theorising overrides describing your reasoning as apriori. i.e. whether that ‘knowledge’ is to be counted as empirical pollution which prejudices the whole project. I suppose if you can clearly distinguish Syntax from Semantics it doesn’t but if you can’t it does? (am I way off>?)
Is what you are presenting something other than a wider criticism on a wider field of knowledge that is rooted in the apriori end of the spectrum, In other words are you presenting something that is a criticism of mathematics/logic?
I am not attempting a criticism at all, actually. I thought I was simply laying bare a feature of Austrian economics: deductive reasoning can be accomplished solely based upon innate features of the mind (our “category of action”).
My criticism is not necessarily that, but rather that hypotheses (such as the revealed-preference theory) are now emerging as neurologically testable (and falsifiable), and many scientists openly disbelieve that want is identical to like (thus, due to competing neural systems, one’s choice behavior can diverge from what one actually likes). Once again, I am not necessarily asserting the truth of this competing hypothesis, but I do believe only empirical research will resolve the issue (rather than introspection).
In Chapter 8 of Human Action, Ludwig von Mises adds, to his theory, the empirical datum, that the productive abilities among people are uneven; and the rest of the work relies on that. Simply because he doesn’t even move into economics until he establishes at least that empirical datum, it wouldn’t be at all fair to characterize his epistemology as relying on nothing but introspection.
Excellent question.
I don’t have the time to address it right now; but, tonight, I will do so.
Only if you change the definitions!
One could say the proposition “humans act” is also empirical. I’m one who would argue that Mises was more empirical than most people think.
Can you elucidate what you mean by “one’s choice behavior can diverge from what one actually likes”? Because it sounds to me like you’re just talking about the potential for people to make mistakes in their choices. That is, one can choose something which he turns out not to like.
If that’s what you mean, then I have to say that Austrian Economics completely allows for it. Again, this deals with the fact that “rationality” is defined in AE as “conscious human thought”. Obviously people can 1) like/prefer Y, 2) believe (for whatever reason(s)) that doing X will give them Y, and 3) therefore choose to do X. However, if doing X actually doesn’t give them Y, AE says that their behavior was still rational – mistaken, sure, but rational.
Furthermore, I’ll assert that in order for the AE concept of rationality to be constructed, the facts of human action (or, if you prefer, human behavior) had to be taken into account. If that isn’t empiricism, I don’t know what is. 
Please read the paper Neuroscience and Paternalism.
Essentially, what one “likes” could be a given person’s perference-ordering; however, the human body might generate acts according to other neural systems when it chooses; thus, one’s choice is not always one’s highest preference (as Austrians and most economists assume).
I would appreciate knowing how Austrians explicitly state that humans learn. Is this formalized in any philosophic fashion?
But claiming that one’s choice is one’s highest preference is not simply a definition; it is intended as a fact and source of information. I could claim, for instance, that a choice is based on a “good enough” preference, for instance (cf. Herbert Simon’s satisficing). To fully answer to what extent choice is aligned to one’s preference-ordering, empirical research is needed.