Do all men have the same end (telos)?

Miscellaneous General
21

That’s the point of the paralyzed arm example, where you don’t have psychokinetic control.

For any instance of an actor engaging in wishing, there are only two possibilities: The actor either (1) believes that his wishing could set in motion a process that will remove some of his felt uneasiness, or (2) he doesn’t. It is key that we avoid taking the position of the critic (third-party observer), lest we forget that what matters in praxeology is not whether the wishing “really could” result in a betterment of his conditions, but whether the actor himself believes it could.

If what I wrote in the previous paragraph makes sense, then if the actor is wishing to leap a 10-story building psychokinetically, aren’t we then proposing that it counts as action if and only if he believes he really could do it? (And, is it really possible to wish for something to happen while simultaneously believing it is completely impossible? - as opposed to a moment later when you come to your senses)

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As for the example of using a lever to move a boulder, it seems to be more complicated but the same in principle. That is, pick a stage in the setting up and using the lever - then we’ll be able to show that wishing=action at that stage. If, for example, there’s already a lever set up, your hand is already on it, and you know how a lever works, all you have to do is push (by wishing your hand down).

If we rewind, it seems we will simply find a succession of mini-applications of that same wish-motion, except for the thought components - but in the purely mental realm (psychological actions; cognition) it is surely even harder to find any difference between wishing and action (can you wish to make a choice without making that choice? Can you wish to imagine what that wooden 2x4 will do when placed in the position of a lever for the boulder and pushed, without imagining it? (Can you wish to imagine a pink elephant without imagining it??)).

22

@AJ: I think you’re neglecting the role of time and uncertainty. The goal of action (an expressed preference) is only reached upon completion of the application of the chosen means. That is, the passage of time is an ineradicable aspect of action. Second, the choice of means may or may not be correct (uncertainty). Perhaps you chose too short of a lever or placed the fulcrum too far from the weight to be lifted. All of these impedances create a very real distinction between preference (wish) and choice (applied means).

This is why ignorance (in concert with ineradicable scarcity) can be properly said to be the essential cause of all suffering. If you actually knew the correct choice to attain your own happiness, you would necessarily choose it. (Only a few minutes of omniscience would be required to become filthy rich… imagine being granted omniscience for an hour by a genie and then going down to the PowerBall machine to buy tickets).

Praying, in Mises’s view, is not action. Any man can pray that the rain will cease. What is missing here is causality. If you push a rock with a stick, the rock will roll. You understand causality from direct experience. If you send an email to a friend, they will receive it even though you don’t understand the first thing about electromagnetism, digital logic or coding theory. Nevertheless, you understand cause and effect in the gross sense required for action… “click Send… email received by friend.” The acting man does not merely wish or pray for things to come about, he applies his understanding of cause-and-effect within the bounds of uncertainty, of course, to bring about a desired end.

Clayton -

23

I just wanted to chime in here. Praying is an action. In terms of causality, you are correct that praying will not cause anything (with the one exception of praying for your own psychic benefit). But that doesn’t stop anyone from believing that praying will cause something. Raindances are actions. They may be mistaken or misguided actions, but they are actions nonetheless.

I think what you are talking about is the daydreamer (and no, I’m not quibbling over words, I’m just using a synonym to make sure we are on the same page), but daydreaming is still an action. It’s just not an action that will achieve whatever you are daydreaming about. If you simply wish that it was the case that rain would fall, then you are not acting to cause the rain to fall. But you are still acting: you are choosing to daydream about how nice it would be if the rain fell.

24

But the goal of action is not itself the action.

Let’s keep it verb-y; nouns tend to obscure what’s going on in action. If we do so, prefer=wish=choose=apply means (apply means the actor deems at least potentially effective)=strive=act.

I’m not sure what Mises said, but prayer to a theist who believes that prayers are answered (has had the direct experience he interprets as “having my prayers answered”) is exactly the same as sending email: he doesn’t know how God or email works, but he knows* how to get them to do what he wants.

*From his point of view, not the critic’s. Praxeology only deals with action within the context of what the actor himself believes and perceives. (Methodological individualism)

25

@AJ: But the theist’s beliefs are beside the point because praxeology is a science. In other words, we (the praxeologists) are the ones defining preference (wish) and action (application of means to attain an end), and so on. Hence, while genuine religious conviction definitely exists, praxeology is not a psychological theory nor does it admit theological claims which are patently unscientific. All that is left, then, is real cause-and-effect and people’s real (though often mistaken) beliefs about cause-and-effect.

The praying man does not act because he is not utilizing causal reality to bring about a state of affairs. He is making an appeal to a deity which even the believer admits will not necessarily be granted. The probabilistic effects of such behavior have been studied inconclusively. In other words, prayer remains in the realm of theology. Nevertheless, it clarifies the distinction between merely wishing and acting.

Clayton -

26

You should be more clear about this, as it’s quite obvious that a praying man is praying, which is a verb, which is an action. If I prefer to daydream about how I could be a rich man with a mansion, a yacht, a porche, and so on, I am still acting. I am just not acting to achieve those particular goals. I am just satisfying my urge to dream about living a certain lifestyle.

27

@gotlucky: Of course, that’s what I mean - the man who prays the rain will stop is not actually acting to stop the rain. Or fill in the blank. I’m not trying to marginalize prayer or any religious activity… but its true purpose may be nonobvious.

Clayton -

28

Praxeology admits as relevant to the actor whatever beliefs the actor himself has. This is the very essence of methodological individualism; everything is based on the perceptions of the actor. I wasn’t even aware this was controversial.

29

Everything isn’t based on the perceptions of the actor, else we fall into the abyss of pure logical relativism. Valuation (preference) and purpose (ends) are relative to the actor’s perceptions, that is, they are subjective. However, time, uncertainty, causality… these are not relative, they are facts about the real world that are independent of the perceptions of the acting individual.

Clayton -

30

There’s a difference between praying and “wishing” in that, in a prayer, an actor utilizes means to reach an end - from that point of view, it’s the same as the Mises’ example with raindancing. To the actor, what he is doing (raindancing / praying) is meaningful in the context of their end, a means to reach it. To somebody else, the act of praying may be rooted in an application of false logic, of false connections between things, as he (the outsider) may not share a convinction that there is a causal type of relationship between the prayer itself and bringing about whatever the prayer aims to accomplish, but to the actor it is meaningful.

On the other hand, I don’t think simple daydreaming can always be classified as an action, because the state of daydreaming isn’t always something willfully induced to reach a certain end - most of the time it’s more like a side-effect (of being bored, tired, etc.) than a premeditated activity specifically employed to reach an end. (At least for me.) I think it can be specifically employed for some end (e.g. deciding to zone out during a boring lecture by purposely pursuing other thoughts than focusing them on the lecture?), but isn’t necessarily so (e.g. I may wish to focus on the lecture, but I’m still bored out of my mind so I zone out not because of my wish to do so and specifically arranging my thoughts to pursue that goal, but in spite of my wish to remain focused on it?).

Is it correct to consider every more or less willful changing and directing of one’s mental states (to the extent to which it is possible) as an action, as long as the causality means->ends for the actor is respected?
Also, now it comes to mind that there is some research showing that for sportsmen training mentally “counts”, i.e. that it has actual physical effects even though they’re only imagining their training in their mind? In that sense, something that’s happening within one’s mental reality alone would possibly be an action, with actual observable results.

I don’t know what to make of the situation with paralysis - I think of sleep paralysis, and if I attempt to move in that state, I have no idea whether it would be consistent to consider that an action, but then again I do “act” a movement, it’s just that the body doesn’t respond.
But if I just “wish” to make a physical movement, without actually trying, it’s not an action. For example if I wake up in the middle of the night and figure out I’m paralyzed, then think “God, I wish I could move my hand now”, but without actually attempting to (although I already know the attempt is futile), that’s not an action in my mind, just like it’s not an action when nothing impedes my movement, yet I laze around “wishing” I would move, but without actually moving. Would that be a difference between “wishing” and “acting” even though an action may pass unobservable because it’s not successful?

31

Well the devil is in the details. I still don’t see any explicit connection of these factors to the result that wishing is different than action, or why wishing differs from a bona-fide “attempt.” If I understand your previous examples, you already seem to allow that, say, trying to lift a boulder by leveraging a strand of uncooked spaghetti will be an action, even though it is pretty much bound to fail. I don’t get the criteria you’re using to judge whether an action qualifies as a serious attempt or just a wish or a prayer. If it were something like, “As long as legitimately scientific causality is considered somehow, it counts as action,” that would seem pretty arbitrary, especially since what is legitimately scientific is open for debate.

And who’s really to say there’s no Q-like character around listening to my wishes and waiting for me to wish for something that interests him? Is that different than randomly swiping in the air - psychokinetically - hoping to find a hidden wormhole? I just don’t see where the lines are that you want to draw that would separate wishing from action.

32

I suspect that when you just “laze around wishing” without actually “attempting,” you’re actually making extremely brief attempts and then immediately giving up, whereas in that paralysis situation you simply wouldn’t start calling it an attempt until you actually put some elbow-grease into it…so to speak. Perhaps first you’ll make some big, serious attempts, then later resign yourself to periodic micro-attempts that just flash up when you’re wishing you could move again, when the unease wells up because you stop being distracted by something else. If anything happens quickly enough, we tend to just ignore it, so those micro-attempts just seem like passive wishes.

Again, if it is really possible to just wish to move without actually attempting to make that very same move, it should be possible to do this with your non-paralyzed finger right now.

33

@AJ: I think we’re getting unnecessarily lost in metaphysical details - Mises very clearly explains the line delineating psychology from praxeology here. In particular, he says this about the difference between wishing and acting:

Now, you may disagree with this definition being universally applicable to all disciplines - i.e. psychology. What I think that Mises is saying is, “this is the definition we’re using for the sake of engaging in praxeology.” The praxeologist is only concerned with what is going inside a person’s skull to the extent that it makes any difference in their behavior and the effects of that behavior.

So, the man who pushes a boulder with a wet spaghetti noodle is making a mistake but he is acting, whereas the man resting in a hammock wishing the boulder would move itself - or that God would miraculously move it on his behalf - is not even acting mistakenly, he’s simply not acting at all. This is not to say that rest or (physical) inactivity is identical with non-action… Mises explicitly denies this elsewhere. Even not doing something is acting since it involves renunciation of all the other things besides acting he may have done instead.

But prayer/wishing is not merely not doing something - it’s holding an end in mind while not engaging in action (the “taking and renunciation”) to bring about this end. Hence, it is not acting. Can we tell from the third-person perspective whether someone is merely wishing or simply choosing an incorrect means to attain their end? I think in the general case, no. But so what? Praxeology is a prioristic so empirical obstacles are irrelevant.

Clayton -

34

Then trying to move one’s paralyzed hand must again not be classed as an action. I just don’t think praxeology can be built on such a foundation. As soon as we start to judge the efficacy of another actor’s ends, we have left praxeology and apodictic certainty and are doing something else.

Similarly, Hayek writes that one actor may see a coin as money while another may see it as merely a round metal disk. Adam Knott gives a more striking example of a person you see in a park, whom you might wave at to get their attention, but in a moment you realize it was just a statue and waving would be fruitless. Did that waving qualify as an action, in terms of the end of getting someone’s attention? As you’re pondering this, perhaps about to conclude that the answer must be no, you notice the statue move slightly and you realize it had been a street performer all along.

There is no “objective” way we can distinguish intention from action itself. There is no “it really was a human so it really did count as action.” The only thing praxeology works with is the objects of the actor’s perception. What action the actor is taking can only be stated in terms of what action he thinks he’s taking.

35

@ Mikachusetts,

How are you distinguishing between between pleasure and happiness?

I myself treat them pretty interchangebly. I don’t see how eating a mars bar cannot be part of happiness for a given individual in a given action. I’m not saying it can be universalised like justice can but it would be a perfectly permissible on an individual level.

@ AJ,

Not in a real sense. My main problem is with the idea that somehow the perfect state must some how be an eternal static state of being. If true we act so that in the end we don’t have to act which seems at least counterintuitive and implies almost an Eastern outlook. I see man’s happiness in continuing action not stasis. As an aside I think the static view has negatively influenced theologians but that’s a whole other discussion.

Guido Hulsmann has an interesting analogous critique of the evenly rotating economy in his Realist Approach to Equilibrium analysis . If I remember rightly in the ERE there would be no demand for money since there is perfect certainty so it would be more efficient to return to direct exchange. So if we are approaching the ERE we must use indirect exchange to reach there and then abandon in it, which is almost as strange as Wittgenstein climbing the ladder and kicking it away from under him.

@ Clayton,

I think when discussing action we need the preferred description as Hoppe calls it ( http://mises.org/daily/2003)

Essentially we must describe a man’s action by his own intentions. So for example a man is walking south towards the south pole would be an accurate description however a preferred description is that he is walking to a bar for a Scotch on the rocks. So when it comes to playing the Moonlight Sonata I think the preferred description is that he plays for his own enjoyment in playing the piece and listening to it however it would be strange to say that playing notes was instrumental to playing the piece as playing the piece is the end. As such it is preferable to call playing the notes constituitive.

As an aside- ( especially to AJ and Clayton) if we could derive a nature for man a priori which for argument sake implied that happiness is achieved by reading Human Action. Would you still say that reading Human Action was instrumental rather than constituitve to the end?

Finally, when I get time I’ll re-read the debate AJ linked to constituitve means and if required will comment upon it.

36

Want to be happy? Start reading Human Action. Want to stay happy? Continue reading Human Action. No need for blurry “constitutive means.”

37

I think this more recent, brief thread elucidates more efficiently the confusion from which the notion of constitutive means arises, and also helps substantiate my stance Re: Clayton’s points. This longer thread also went similarly to this one and fleshes out the main thrust of my points above regarding the approach of praxeology.