Sage:
The issue is whether in speaking about a priori, we are speaking about the content or the form of actions.
Mises’s economics is a priori to the extent it only refers to the form of economic propositions, and not their material content:
“Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences.” (HA, 3rd rev. p.32)(emphasis added)
So Misesian praxeology is a priori because it refers only to categories of action without reference to the content of the particular action.
The objective, a priori ethics you are referring to, as I understand it, is one that refers to the content of the individual case. (i.e., eating poisonous mushrooms is “objectively” immoral) Mises would deny that an a priori ethics that tries to make universally valid propositions using “contentual” as opposed to “formal” reasoning, is possible.
He would not deny that an a priori science that studies “ethical actions” (actions of an ethical nature) is impossible. Because it is possible to study such actions formally, without reference to any particular ethical action.
As Mises stated:
“It would be preposterous to assert apodictically that science will never succeed in developing a praxeological aprioristic doctrine of political organization…” (UF, p.98)
The difference between what Mises had in mind, and what objective ethics has in mind, is a purely formal approach, versus an approach that tries to reach conclusions that refer to partcular content but are still universally valid (i.e, eating poisonous mushrooms is “objectively” immoral).
It is important to realize that this conception of things didn’t originate with Mises. This view is essential to Menger’s conception of theoretical exact science, which is Menger’s term for praxeology:
“Strict (exact) laws of phenomena can never be the result of the realistic school of thought in theoretical research even if this were the most perfect conceivable and its fundamental observation the most comprehensive and most critical.”
Menger’s point is the same as Mises’s. To make universally valid, a priori propositions, the concepts must be stripped of material content:
“…with the assumption of strictly typical elements, of their exact measure, and of their complete isolation form all other causative factors, it (praxeology) does to be sure, and indeed on the basis of the rules of cognition characterized by us above, arrive at laws of phenomena which are not only absolute, but according to our laws of thinking simply cannot be thought of in any other way but as absolute. That is, it arrives at exact laws, the so-called “laws of nature” of phenomena.” (Menger, Investigations, Book 1, Chapter 4)(emphasis added)
So the issue is whether in discussing the idea of an a priori ethics, we are talking about the attempt to arrive at an a priori “justification” for a set of concrete ethical norms, or, whether we are talking about a set of a priori propositions concerning actions of an ethical nature (actions directed toward another person) that are universally valid based on the beginning presuppositions and because the propositions do not refer to specific content. Objective ethics is concerned with the former, praxeology with the latter.
Those that come through the Rothard school typically mis-conceive the nature of Mises’s a priori system. Hoppe makes the same mistake:
“Mises, however, although his idea of praxeology and his construction of an entire body of praxeological thought places him among the greats of the modern Western tradition of rationalism in the search for certain foundations, does not think that another claim of this tradition can be made good: the claim for certain foundations also in ethical matters. According to Mises there exists no ultimate justification for ethical propositions in the same sense as there exists one for economic propositions.” (“On the Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property”)
Mises’s system is based on a formal construct that derives from the phenomenon of action; aiming at ends. The foundations of his system are certain because they are anchored in this phenomenon and deduced from it without reference to the concrete objects of action:
“Praxeology envisages the successful attainment of these goals though the scrutiny of human affairs from a specific point of view that recognizes the teleological and rational nature of human action. This point of view makes possible the construction of chains of reasoning that are purely formal, in the sense that they refer to goods, services or factors of production only abstractly; they depend for their validity not on the specific objects with which human action may be concretely concerned, but only on postulated attitudes of men towards them.” (Kirzner, The Economic Point of View, p.179)(emphasis added)
What Rothbard, Hoppe, Long, and others failed to consider, is whether there are actions of an ethical nature in contradistinction to actions aimed toward the market economy. Rothbard supported the concept of human action and the logic of action to the extent it reached conclusions he was in agreement with concerning market phenomena. But he abandoned and rejected the entire idea of human action in the realms of human action outside the market economy. But this was a mistake, since there are obviously human actions (goal-directed actions) that traditional economics does not treat:
“The subject matter of economics came to be connected with the material things that are the objects of traffic in the market; it came to be linked peculiarly with the use of money in market transactions or with the special social relationships that characterize the market system. Where writers came closest to the recognition that these criteria were only accidental characteristics of the affairs upon which economic analysis could be brought to bear, where they were able to glimpse the congenerousness of the specifically economic type of analysis with the underlying actions of men, they were unable to follow this clue to the conclusion to which it pointed.”
“In finding the economic aspect of activities in general to consist in concern with the ends-means relationship, this conception too includes within its scope kinds of actions with which economics has had traditionally little to do.” (Kirzner, The Economic Point of View, p.183)(emphasis added)
So what has happened is that following Rothbard, most Austrian social theorists have conceived ethics as a contentual-oriented discipline, and economics via praxeology as a formal, logical, and deductive discipline. They have concluded that praxeology as a discipline can shed no light on the subject realm of ethics.
“This procedure is perfectly proper for the formal science of praxeology, or economic theory, but not necessarily elsewhere.” (EOL, p.12)
Then they ask, since economics is a priori, why can’t ethics be a priori ? And they simply don’t realize or refuse to recognize, it is because one is based on formal reasoning while the other departs from formal reasoning and tries to arrive at a system of universally valid concrete norms of behavior (eating poisonous mushrooms is objectively immoral).
In other words, on the one hand they assert that praxeology doesn’t apply to ethical phenomena, then, on the other hand they ask: why can’t ethics be a priori?