In “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science” Mises states that
“The logical structure of the human mind creates the reality of action. Reason and action are congeneric”
and also
“How things “really” are or may appear when looked upon from the vista of a superhuman intelligence, essentially different from the human mind as it works in the present aeon of cosmic history, is for us inscrutable”
It sounds like Mises is advocating a kind of polylogism, but rather than racial polylogism, it’s species-based polylogism. I guess it’s forgiveable since he’s talking orders of magnitude of difference (like a human vs. an amoeba) and not simply someone with a different skin color.
Anyway, my main question is if logic and action both originate in the structure of the human mind, cannot ethics also arise from the same source?
Suppose people evolved to understand that 1+1 = 2 is truth (note that some animals understand this, too - see “Where Mathematics Comes From”), because people who think 1+1 = 3 have generally died out due to their brain structure conflicting with the universe.
Could not the ethical belief “it is better to live than to die” which is commonly seen nowadays be a similar case? Because people with a brain structure generating a conflicting belief have generally died out.
Doesn’t this show that “1+1=2” is “true” in the same way as “it is better to live than to die” is “true”?
Doesn’t this show that “1+1=2” is “true” in the same way as “it is better to live than to die” is “true”?
Note that my intent was to give credence to the ethical idea “it is better to live than to die”, rather than to try to cast doubt on “1+1=2”. I’m hoping there is a kind of ethical calculus that has inherent truth, crossing the “is-ought” boundary.
Although I suppose you could take opposite tack and try to discredit “1+1=2”. The book “Where Mathematics Comes From” basically does this, attacking Platonism and the idea of mathematics as being universal; it argues that “1+1=2” is instead simply a product of the structure of the human brain.
I was rather suprised to see both “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science” and “Where Mathematics Comes From” - completely different books - both arguing that “truth” comes from the structure of the human mind.
No, it’s not species-polylogism, it’s logical agnosticism for extrahuman beings
But Mises goes beyond agnosticisim, basically saying that there’s an inherent limit of human beings to grasp truths that others could:
“Perhaps there are somewhere in the infinite universe beings whose minds outrank our minds to the same extent as our minds surpass those of the insects. Perhaps there will once somewhere live beings who will look upon us with the same condescension as we look upon amoebae. But scientific thinking cannot indulge in such imagery. It is bound to limit itself to what is accessible to the human mind as it is.”
IMHO he’s a little too pessimistic here. Surely we can at least imagine and theorize about what such beings would think? We might even meet and talk to them, some day.
He’s not necessarily referring to constraints upon the amount of knowledge we (as humans) can possess. I take his meaning to be that logic itself as we know it may not be the final evolution in the process of thought. He’s explaining that the possible future existence of a super-logical (in the sense of “post-logic” or “above-logic”) being does not alter the fact that we currently only have logic to rely upon in our understanding and explanation of the world and reality.
Indeed, they are the same as ‘truthfulness’ goes: both relativistic and driven, as you point out, by the fact that we who believe such things are alive to tell the story. Nothing more.
It is impossible to truly believe that one plus one does not equal two. But it is possible to believe that it is better to die than to live. (But people who think that become irrelevant pretty quickly.)
Just because you are not able to articulate a concept does not imply that you do not have it. (With that said, I am not sure that I understand what you are saying.)
I do not mean incapacity to articulate: they just did not conceive of anything more than three. Everything over that was “many” (we still have something left over form those happy days: most people cannot count at a glace more that four things of anything). That 4 was different form 9 was not yet arrived at back than, just as the very simple concept of zero was not arrived at from millennia after the first civilization sprang up.
And I highly doubt that the concept of an irrational number would have been mathematicaly viable without indian numerals. Mathematical logic is not that bulletproof on a closer look.
I doubt that any person is not able to see four objects and understand that. But with higher numbers, most people are not able to conceive them in any other way besides through our language. From David Hume,
An exquisite quote indeed. I can only add that the “imperfection…is never felt in out reasoning” is far form self-evident. Try thinking in any system but the decimal (example, binary) and you quickly loose the mathematical certainty with which we operate. Nothing on earth is set in stone, not even ‘logic’.
“And I highly doubt that the concept of an irrational number would have been mathematicaly viable without indian numerals.”
I don’t agree. It easy to show that the square root of 2 is irrational, because proposing that it’s equal to a rational number in reduced form p/q such that 2=pp/(qq) quickly leads to a contradiction when you consider the possibilities of p and q being even and odd. I believe Pythagorus knew this without depending on indian numerals. It’s only a little more difficult to show that e = 1 + 1/(1) + 1/(1x2) + 1/(1x2x3) + … is irrational. This knowledge doesn’t depend on indian numerals. They are extraordinarily convenient, but not crucial.
Mathematical logic is not that bulletproof on a closer look.
Especially since mathematicians can’t agree on which axioms to choose. The “Axiom of Choice” is one that is sometimes questioned. For any axiom that one person may choose, it is possible to choose the negation of it as an axiom instead, resulting in a different mathematical system. And there are an infinite number of such choices to make. The result of your choices may be silly and useless, or like non-Euclidean geometry, may in fact be useful in some situations.
I guess if mathematics lacks results with universal and apodictic certainty, then ethics cannot be much better off
“First then I observe, that when we mention any great number, such as a thousand, the mind has generally no adequate idea of it, but only a power of producing such an idea, by its adequate idea of the decimals, under which the number is comprehended. This imperfection, however in our ideas, is never felt in our reasoning”
My only quibble here is that 1000 is not necessarily a great enough number to cause confusion or problems. One can perform calculations with numbers near 1000 just using piles of thousands of pebbles. One can visualize with too much difficulty 1000 objects as a set of objects located at the vertices of a 3D 10x10x10 lattice, or say 8 5x5x5 lattices (each lattice near the vertex of a large imaginary cube). There is more to human ingenuity than just manipulating decimal numerals. And there is nothing sacrosanct about base 10.
The problem I have with Mises on the issue of intelligence being a matter of kind than degree is that he can’t really back it up. Hell, no one can. Sure intelligence in general can be split up into different specialties, but at the end of the day something that generalizes from a specialty is what you get when you see a human being or similar creature on Earth. That means intelligence on the whole is a general field and not a universe of fields. This difference means that there can be no mind so great that its ability to make sense of the Universe on a larger scale is inherently different from ours in the function of reasoning itself. Smarter doesn’t mean a mind alien from other minds, smarter means a mind quicker than others.
