Right, I think I’m basically saying the same thing as Mises. The individual is primary and thus should be the basic unit of analysis.
This was my response:
[edit: IF YOU CLICK ON THE TEXT IT LOOKS NORMAL]
II. The individual is the basic unit of society and of analysis.
The second principle, that individuals are the basic unit of human society is disputable. Why choose individuals? Why not genes? Why not ideas? Why not families? Nations? Cultures? Professions?
We are talking about social science, not natural science. Yes, you could hypothetically choose genes, but that would be going in the opposite direction to collectivism and individuals would still be the basic unit of society even if individual choices were merely an expression of gene pools whose basic unit was the gene. Epistemologically we cannot do that right now (replace all social science with natural science) as our scientific knowledge of how these more basic units (genes, cells, atoms, quarks, etc.) work and in turn affect human decision-making is comparatively extremely limited.
Sociobiology and neuroeconomics are steps in this direction, but it’s got a long way to go. On the other hand, we do have a large amount of information regarding individuals not least because we are individuals and have direct access to the workings of our own individual intellects via induction and deductive logic.
“Ideas” qua ideas don’t do anything. That’s just what we call conscious products of our individual mind. We obviously talk about them (eg. memetics, ideology, economics, etc.) and they’re central to everything we talk about, but they’re not the basic unit of analysis in themselves as they’re simply a way we talk about what comes from individuals. You can’t talk about ideas existing sans individuals, but you can talk about individuals existing sans the ideas they have.
Cultures, nations, etc. are collectives that we either recognize as primarily emergent from individuals (culture, language, etc) or are our own conceptual aggregation of individuals (nation-state, society, etc).
To the extent that we are shaped and defined by our culture, are we truly separable from it?
No, you’re missing the point. It’s not to separate ourselves from culture, but to recognize which is primary. Culture is not made irrelevant, however the individual is primary. Methodological individualism is not methodological atomism. You cannot describe culture without referring to its revelation of culture via individual action/interaction. Try to do so.
Can you describe individual choices without some explicit or implicit to genetic predispositions?
Yes, we described individual choices thousands of years before we knew genes existed.
To cultural influences?
Yes, see the child growing up alone in a garden dome, or a deaf-blind person who never has any communication with other human beings, or a hermit, etc. We can describe their choice to eat rather than starve, their choices revealing personal preference without cultural influence, and interaction upon introduction of other individuals and so on. We also have completely distinct cultures across different populations of individuals. Look at that previous sentence again.
I think your second principle makes a decent definition—but it’s not axiomatic.
You have not yet been able to coherently dispute it, so for the time being it stands as self-evident and axiomatic. Individuals are the basic unit of human society.
III. The axiom of conscious decision-making and purposive action
Plenty of conscious actions have no purpose. Chewing on pens, for example, is quite common, is entirely conscious, and doesn’t advance any subjective end.
Yes, it does. If a person consciously decides (as opposed to without consciously deciding to do so) to chew on a pen, it is for the fulfillment of some subjective end (which could be anything, likely the sensation of chewing the pen itself) which is therefore ordinally preferred by that individual momentarily over inaction and all other potential actions not chosen.
Alternatively, if you say, “He chose to chew on a pen in order to chew on a pen,” you’ve stated a tautology.
No, if he consciously decides to put a pen in his mouth and repeatedly bite it, he is doing so for the fulfillment of a subjective end, whether it be the satisfaction he gets from the physical sensation of chewing on the pen or from seeing his teeth marks on it or whatever. He is not chewing the pen to be chewing on the pen, but for the subjective end of eg. the physical sensation. If he is chewing on the pen “just because he consciously wants to be chewing on a pen regardless of sensations or anything else” then that is not tautology but simply his means being immediately fulfilled as his subjective ends.
And he would still have to consciously set the pen in his mouth and move his jaw, which according to your articulation was not his end. So his conscious action of closing his jaw on the pen repeatedly was the means to his subjective ends of “I just wanna be chewing on a pen right now.” (an odd case)
Again, you have not actually disputed the axiom and it stands.
IV. Value is subjective
It’s entirely plausible that somebody else with a broad enough perspective and enough information might be able to predict your actions under certain circumstances better than you could.
This is not about “predicting actions,” but what is revealed by action itself. Say a person may not be able to predict their future actions while you could (not really, due to the dynamism of life and you’re ignoring the free will questions) but even so you would not know what they value better than they know what they value as that is momentarily revealed by action, ie. by that person’s decision-making. When it is revealed by action it is revealed only marginallyand ordinally, as in over inaction and all other immediately potential actions at that moment, which is obviously dynamic. You may be able to make a good guess as to their values, but not to the point where you can logically knowbetter than them as they reveal by their voluntary choice in real-time.
but is certainly plausible.
Not really.
advertisers make their livings doing that sort of thing. They may get it wrong in individual cases—but across broad demographics, they can be uncannily good.
Advertisers use tools (eg. focus groups) to find people’s different people’srevealed values in very specific contexts and then they try to cater to those revealed values in those contexts. They are not predicting action in the way you’re talking about, nor can they logically know what you value better than you know what you value. They statistically cater to revealed values or what they believe are revealed values. That’s it.
VI
Is society created by individuals or does that society create the individuals?
Individuals created society as the individual can exist without society whereas society is impossible without individuals. Easy peasy. Society certainly affects and shapes individuals, it’s a feedback mechanism, but again the point is that the individual is primary.
Or does something outside shape both?
Like what?
But you also seem to be insisting that this is indisputable. It’s not.
You have not yet disputed it. So far, it stands.