GoldenRetriever:
Can I add a question?
AJ - you say that according to Mises even a wish or desire for a change to take place counts as an attempt, i.e. as a fully-fledged action. I’m confused by this, because I understood action to be a manifestation of one’s will, and I thought Mises contrasted it to a wish?
Mises was a bit confusing on this point. Adam Knott clarifies this well here :
Here is what Mises writes on page 12 of Human Action :
A) “He who only wishes and hopes does not actively interfere with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny. But acting man chooses, determines, and tries to reach an end.”
B) “To express wishes and hopes and to announce planned action may be forms of action in so far as they aim in themselves at the realization of a certain purpose.”
Here is what Mises writes on page 20:
C) “When applied to the means chosen for the attainment of ends, the terms rational and irrational imply a judgment about the expediency and adequacy of the procedure employed. The critic approves or disapproves of the method from the point of view of whether or not it is best suited to attain the end in question. It is a fact that human reason is not infallible and that man very often errs in selecting and applying means. An action unsuited to the end sought falls short of expectation. It is contrary to purpose, but it is rational, i.e., the outcome of a reasonable–although faulty–deliberation and an attempt–although an ineffectual attempt–to attain a definite goal.”
In A, Mises implies that wishing and hoping are not actions. In B, he implies that they are or may be actions to some extent.
In C, he writes that a critic (CR) can approve or disapprove of the method chosen for the attainment of ends by the actor (AC), and he writes that the actor (AC) often errs in selecting and applying means.
From the totality of what Mises writes, I conclude that in writing A, Mises has inadvertently and mistakenly taken the position of a critic, and expressed his personal judgment that AC’s wishing or hoping for a certain state of affairs is an ineffectual method or means to bring about that state of affairs.
Regardless of whether Mises was confused or just speaking at different levels of detail in different passages, I contend that once the distracting aspects are cleared away it will be noncontroversial that the essential characteristic of action is wishing.