That you act in one way instead of in another way shows that you believe the former to be of greater utility than the latter at that particular time. In terms of your scale of value, you have ranked the course of action you took above all other possible actions at that time. If you disagree with this, you should take your challenge further back in the chain of logic to the basis of economics - what is referred to as the ‘action axiom’.
That I act? I’d love to try to refute the action axiom, but I’m too lazy 
Seriously though, you think that I act one way instead of another necessarily entails that I’ve ranked my choices according to utility? Sure, we could really get down to the bottom of an example where acting unreasonably was the reasonable thing to do, but at that point we’re not really saying something that can tell us anything, just that our definition of utility is tautologically true. The principal may as well be that the first principal of Austrian economics is the first principal of Austrian economics.
Yes it’s tautological, so what? Mathematical theorems are also tautological.
Agency, or the language we use to express it for that matter, is not derived from mathematics. You’re just playing with language at this point. Yes, it’s logically consistent. But that doesn’t mean it actually describes anything that happens ‘out there.’ It’s simply a language that exists only within its own confines at this point.
I didn’t say it was derived from mathematics, because it obviously isn’t. I was pointing out that the action axiom and mathematical theorems all belong to the same epistemological category.
Yes, they’re both tautologies. True story. What does that mean as far as its application to anything outside itself? Not much. Since words can’t be mapped into perfect 1:1 definitions that correlate to actual concrete objects a philosophy that is completely a priori doesn’t say much other than that one can define things very broadly.
BP, don’t look down on tautologies. They are mere confirmations of logical soundness. ANY logically consistent construct derived from an axiom (premise) is a tautology to the same axiom from which it was derived. If it wasn’t, it would be logically inconsistent.
Mathematical tautologies (sound logical constructs built from mathematical axioms) are used to build cars and bridges. Action axiom tautologies are used to build (Austrian) economics laws.
So you don’t see the value in approaching the question of action this way? A tautology can be trivial or nontrivial. You don’t learn much by saying A=A. Saying that A=B+C, however, opens a whole host of possibilities.
Perhaps I’m making a distinction that’s not there, but I see a difference between A=B+C and A=A because A=A.
This all started with me saying that I’m not sure that I make every choice I do because it is the most marginally useful. By the definitions provided, however, whatever I chose is the most marginally useful. So I do the most useful thing because what I do is the most useful thing to do. That makes perfect sense, but it doesn’t tell me much about what “marginal utility” actually means.
Just like the droplets of water example. That 2 droplets plus 2 droplets might equal one droplet doesn’t affect the mathematical theorem in place, but the mathematical theorem doesn’t tell me much about why the droplets behave the way they do.
That mathematical theorems are tautological as well doesn’t really tell us much about anything we can grasp beyond a superficial level either. That the concept is unchanged no matter what numeral we assign it or object we use to represent it doesn’t really tell us anything about the numerals or the objects, the things we can actually see. While these principals hold true against themselves they lack an interaction with things we have access to.
A=A is straightforwardly tautological. A=B+C is not. That doesn’t mean it’s not tautological at all, however. A tautology is simply a proposition, or set of related propositions, that always evaluates to a given value (typically “True” or 1 in Boolean logic) in the logical system under consideration.
One of the fundamental issues in philosophy is that of the analytic-synthetic distinction. To me the question is whether “A=B+C” is treated as a premise or as a conclusion. If it’s treated as a premise, then it’s an analytic proposition - it’s assumed to be true. Otherwise, if it’s treated as a conclusion (i.e. not assumed to be true), then it’s a synthetic proposition.
I disagree with this notion of marginal utility, because it fails to take subjectivity into account. The next thing you do is what you believe will be the next most useful thing for you to do. That doesn’t mean you won’t change your mind afterward. Utility is entirely subjective.
One could say that modeling water droplets as mathematical integers is inaccurate.
This is another philosophical issue - noumena vs. phenomena.
Arithmetic has its origin in dealing with “countable” things. However, not all things that we perceive are so “countable”.
BP: I’m not sure if your concern is that in making economic concepts and laws consistent we also render them vacuous, or the more fundamental problem that language fails to assert itself and we are unable to really “know” if the words and grammars themselves properly express the actual phenomena “out there.”
Regarding the former, I feel like even if Austrians prematurely or incorrectly exclude certain cases as non-economic, this objection, on its own, doesn’t discredit anything said about things that we do call economic. Also, I think there’s a tendency (at least I thought this way once) to say “Ok, we have action, then we have marginal utility, then we have exchange, and so on, and all of this together equals economic laws that must be true because the starting point is apodictally true.” This makes it seem as if these explanations precede the end phenomena we observe in the world instead of the other way around. I dunno, I still struggle really grasping praxeology as a formal study, and I think most people do as well, because they can still be libertarians and even good economists without understanding the epistemological footing of their method.
If its the latter (or something else), I’ll wait for confirmation to respond. I don’t want to go on about the rule-following paradox if that’s not at all what we’re talking about.
My concern is a mixture of both. The laws are both vaccuous, and even if they exist it seems as though we have no tools that can adequately grasp them. Tautologies do not, in effect, tell us anything.
Further, the proposition that what I do is (at least what I think is) the most useful thing for me to do is to limit possible actions to available actions, and take for granted a slew of things that need not exist. The available options will no doubt depend on a number of social, political, and economic contexual realities to a much more limiting extent than possible options would. How this challenges power structures (such as the state) is beyond me.
I think the solution to both the charges of vacuity and the lack of language tools will work itself out in the course of “doing” Austrian philosophy. Writing, reviewing, debating, applying, re-applying, criticizing–these things tend to push out the “bad” ideas and replace them with “good.” Plus, the whole process of doing helps to propel language forward and give it meaning through usage, the kind of rich meaning necessary for handling the concepts.
“Further, the proposition that what I do is (at least what I think is) the most useful thing for me to do is to limit possible actions to available actions, and take for granted a slew of things that need not exist. The available options will no doubt depend on a number of social, political, and economic contexual realities to a much more limiting extent than possible options would.”
The underlined text is exactly why Austrians exclude possible-but-not-available actions. We are concerned with determining economic laws in the actual world we live in and not in some other one. This isn’t to say that social, political and economic contexts aren’t subject to change, but if they do, the Austrian framework would still hold because the body of available actions would shift accordingly. We are only looking at one aspect of action (though Mises makes it sound as if this is all there is) because everything else is inconsequential to the kind of laws we are looking to formulate.
“How this challenges power structures (such as the state) is beyond me.”
Well, it doesn’t.
Well, if the “99%” thread is any indication of ‘doing’ Austrian Economics it seems like it’s pretty irrelevant to most of the country.
That’s the exact opposite of the kind of “doing” I’m thinking about. It’s repeating “I’m right, your wrong” with eyes closed and fingers in ears.
My point is that as a doctrine, Austrian Economics does not really present a challenge to any current system as it takes all preexisting social factors as a given. It has no imagination.
My second point is that Austrianism fails to really answer the questions most people are looking for. It can offer some insights into why some people chose A and not B or some other very superficial things, but can it adequately explain existing power dynamics or provide a critical standpoint of existing institutions beyond a violation of NAP (a principal in which the term aggression is not applied nuetrally)? Beyond superficial, and pretty elementary criticisms can it provide doorways to anything deeper like psychology, sociology, or even literary theory? My argument would be that it cannot.
Please don’t tell me you expect(ed) Austrian Economics to be anything different. On the other hand, I fail to see how any school of economic thought must “present a challenge to any current system”.
Do tell, what are (according to you) those questions? Again, I’m baffled that you think a valid criticism of Austrian Economics is that it isn’t something that it never claimed or tried to be.
“Please don’t tell me you expect(ed) Austrian Economics to be anything different. On the other hand, I fail to see how any school of economic thought must “present a challenge to any current system”.”
Well, in taking all social factors as a given, and that logic relies on given premises, and that those premises are directly linked to the existing social factors, that would be where this whole “economics is a social construct” thing comes from. I don’t think any school of economics must present a challenge to existing systems. I think economics is exactly the study of how people operate within existing systems. This criticism is one in context. That while you might be a self-styled anti-authoritarian and believe in Austrian Economics, it’s not because you believe in Austrian Economics that you’re anti-authoritarian.
“Do tell, what are (according to you) those questions? Again, I’m baffled that you think a valid criticism of Austrian Economics is that it isn’t something that it never claimed or tried to be.”
There’s a plethora of concerns I’m refferring to such as questions of disparity related to race, gender, class, social status, etc., that Austrianism and (at least Anglo-American influenced) Libertarianism as a whole do not take into account. My criticism is that Austrian Econ is tied into those disparities as if they are a given, and that those things are not necessarily so. A strict adherence to Austrian Econ as the beginning thread in explaining all human action does not take into account the possibility of social factors being completely altered, nor does it present a pretext to which those factors can or should be overturned.
The hidden premise in your statement, as I see it, is that “social factors” are infinitely malleable. Can you support this implicit contention?
I fail to see where you’ve put forth any valid criticism here. Austrian Economics is value-free and has never tried to be otherwise. To talk about Austrian Economics being authoritarian or anti-authoritarian is like talking about whether water is happy or sad.
Please support this contention.
Thanks for being at least more explicit here about your claim that “social factors” are infinitely malleable. Otherwise, see above.
Yes and no. It depends on whether you look at the more narrow and value-free economic side of things, or include the liberal tradition that’s very much part and parcel of Austrianism. But depending on the kind of “challenge” you are looking for to the status quo, you might not find it at all here. Part of the blame can probably be placed on insisting on calling these ideas “anarchist.”
Again, it comes down to what aspects of Austrianism are included here and to what extent you are expecting a critical standpoint versus a sympathetic one. There are certainly one-dimensional explanations of power dynamics (and the NAP sticks out like a sore thumb here), but there are also more intricate explanations which attempt to incorporate the impact of emergent order and the parodoxical insight of la Boetie: that a coercive state ultimately requires the consent of its subjects. On the other hand, the Austrian treatment of firms and corporations might trivialize power disparities between worker and manager, but it shows instead how such institutions tend to make everyone better off as consumers.
There is at least one book I know of which applies market ideals to literary criticism, the psychology of Nathaniel Branden cannot be seperated from the influence the Austrians had on Objectivism, and what else is the entire body of Austrian work if not sociological?
I know this doesn’t provide all the answers you are looking for, because it doesn’t provide all the answers I’m looking for either. But its a mistake to cast off the genuinely great insights of the school because it sucks at literary crit and psychology, or because most of its adherents cling to a conservative social outlook, or because it has so far failed in properly incorporating the serious philosophical trends of the 20th (and a lot of the 19th) centuries.