Hi Jon
Here’s what I believe is the essential issue:
In social science we will not be able to escape or overcome the general phenomenon of causation, regardless of how each individual social thinker chooses to conceive of causation. (exact laws, a priori propositions, constitutive means, etc…)
Social science ultimately returns to the relationship between some act A, and some consequence B, whether the consequence is conceived as following A or co-present with A. Then the question becomes the precise nature of the relationship between act A and consequence B.
Both Menger and Mises are primarily if not exclusively focused on necessary relationships between A and B such that if A occurs, B must necessarily also occur. To achieve a demonstration of such a necessary relationship, they are forced, by the laws of logic and the laws of thinking, toward a mode of reasoning that is more and more formal, and less and less referring to particular content. This is necessary if one wants to arrive at the kind of praxeological knowledge both thinkers were primarily concerned with.
The law of marginal utility which asserts a necessary relationship between an actor’s supply and his valuing with respect to that supply, does not refer to any particular good. It is formal in nature, without respect to material content.
One need not be concerned with this kind of knowledge. One can focus on empirical knowledge and empirical regularities. But once one explicitly agrees to relinquish a claim to “apodictic certainty” in one’s propositions, this entails a fundamental change in the nature of the propositions one can make. This means that the relationship between A and B, strictly speaking, is characterized by the word “might.”
A might lead to B. B might be co-present with A. Etc…
I’m not familiar with Jasay’s demonstration, but I am familiar with Hoppe’s. Generally he provides two sets of consequences that follow or are co-present with arguing against a nonlibertarian ethic. One consequence is performative contradiction, the other is the more drastic consequence of “not being able to do anything,” etc… Hoppe argues that if you do act X (arguing against a nonlibertarian ethic), then consequence Y will befall you (performative contradiction or not being able to do anything). In his theory, he keeps this implicit, I assume, because, following Rothbard, he wants to avoid utilitarianism.
Then the question becomes whether those two things must befall the individual who argues against libertarianism, or whether those things only might befall that person.
The general problem of all nonformal approaches to social phenomena is that on the one hand they seek to make statements about the relationship between two concrete events, and on the other hand, they seek to avoid using the conjunctive “might” to characterize the relationship between them.
For example, in the context of the current debate and discussion, Rothbard begins with a standard cause and effect conception of natural law:
“It also follows that when these various things meet and interact, a specifically delimitable and definable result will occur. In short, specific, delimitable causes will have specific, delimitable effects.” (EOL p.9)(emphasis added on “will”)
This is intended to apply to the moral and ethical actions of individuals, so that on page 32 he writes:
“If Crusoe, on the other hand, had known of the poison and eaten the mushrooms anyway…then his decision would have been objectively immoral,…”
Rothbard is saying that knowingly eating poisonous mushrooms (act A) leads to or is co-present with the immorality of Crusoe (consequence B).
Eating poisonous mushrooms “will” make one immoral. (not “might”)
But if there are cases where Crusoe can knowingly eat poisonous mushrooms and not be considered immoral, then where “would have been” is written, this is not accurate, and the phrase “might have been”’ is a more accurate characterization of the asserted relationship. To be accurate, we cannot write “will” but instead must write “might.” But then does this convey the information that the social theorist wanted to convey ??
This is just one example of the principle at issue.
It’s not that Hoppe or anyone is precluded from attempting an epistemological proof that if someone acts against liberty in some fashion (act A), that some consequence B is sure to follow. The question is whether when such a relationship between A and B is asserted either implicitly or explicitly, we can say that B must occur, or we are forced in to admitting that B might occur, but it also might not occur.
The fact that almost no social theory uses the word “might” to characterize the relationships between the actions and consequences it treats, tells me that social theorists want to say that doing A must lead to B.
But there are epistemological requirements of making such apodictically certain statements.
This is the point Mises is trying to make. To make apodictically necessary statements one must abandon all attempts to “prove” universal concrete values or ends.
But this is what Hoppe is trying to do:
“The answer, then, to the question of which ends can or cannot be justified is to be derived from the concept of argumentation.” (A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p.131)(emphasis added)