what is the purpose of the challenge?
Human action is purposeful.
Exchange reveals instantaneous preference.
Ceteris parabis, people prefer more expedient means.
To prove that a priori reasoning is purely tautological, thus not generating new knowledge.
That’s like saying, “All bachelors are unmarried.” It’s playing with words, a tautology.
So math is tautological? There is no mathematical knowledge? To be sure it is not empirical but it is still elucidating.
Mathematics, in my opinion, is purely syntactical.
Agreed. But it does provide knowledge.
New knowledge?
No. Simply rule-following, pasted onto the world to emphasize patterns.
why bemoan the absence of ‘new knowledge’ when ‘old knowledge’ works fine?. and haven’t you laid a trap for all knowledge increasing endeavours, that rely on the rational mind?. for at the point when you want to begin to use your deductive faculties, and do logical theorising,from your premises (which include your data and beliefs on the data), you are not going to be generating ‘new knowledge’, just representing what you already knew in a ‘different way’ ?
let me ask you this. suppose that there is an apriori-truth, that you had not considered, i will call it proposition A. you don’t know what is is so it will not play a role in your interpretational schema. if i tell you the content of proposition A, and therefore cause you to consider it, and you recognise the truth in it, and recognise it is apriori true, have you not ‘learned’ something ‘new’ from me?
Its new to the people discovering it. Even if it were not new, it would still be knowledge.
But to move the conversation forward, you can’t make apodictic statements about the future of the market. You can say that we observed X ocurring in the past etc… I don’t know what your criterion for knowledge is.
You’re right that I’m casting a doubt on all rationalistic knowledge as genuine knowledge about an external world. I’m very Quinean, actually.
For your second paragraph, I believe someone might believe that he or she has attained new knowledge by pondering a pearl of a priori reasoning; however, whether or not new knowledge was actually attained is not proven simply because a person believes so.
I don’t believe in apodictic statements, period!
My “criterion for knowledge” is replacement naturalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalized_epistemology.
You’re right that I’m casting a doubt on all rationalistic knowledge as genuine knowledge about an external world. I’m very Quinean, actually.
So it seems you aren’t putting any opposing methodology or body of knowledge regarding economics above the Austrian tradition after all? you are rather calling economics a dismal science, and all science.. dismal science.
it seems that you are a pessimist and rather nihilistic on the question of knowledge altogether…have I misunderstood you?
Yes, you have misunderstood me. I stated I was Quinean, who is chiefly remembered as being one of the fiercest advocates of natural science within the tradition of analytic philosophy.
I am placing neoclassical (empirical) methodology above the Austrian tradition. I am not calling economics a dismal science at all, since I consider it to be one of the most elucidating and eye-opening fields of study one could explore.
I am not nihilistic on the question of knowledge. But let me quote Quine, Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input – certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance – and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. And, let me add, whatever evidence there is for science is sensory evidence.
“The Hayek-Mises explanation of the business cycle is contradicted by the evidence. It is, I believe, false.” – Milton Friedman
Friedman later admitted that the ABCT may be, at least partially, valid.
That’s like saying, “All bachelors are unmarried.” It’s playing with words, a tautology.
Firstly, it’s an axiom. Secondly, it is not inherent in the meaning of the words “human action” that it is purposeful behaviour. It is a conceptual analysis. I know some people think these can’t exist and reveal nothing “informative” (I think they’re full of shit, the action axiom is most informative) but what proof do they have? And conceptual analysis certainly does yield new knowledge, even if it merely makes explicit was before implicit.
I am placing neoclassical (empirical) methodology above the Austrian tradition. I am not calling economics a dismal science at all, since I consider it to be one of the most elucidating and eye-opening fields of study one could explore.
That’s nice. So what?
I am not nihilistic on the question of knowledge. But let me quote Quine, Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input – certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance – and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. And, let me add, whatever evidence there is for science is sensory evidence.
So he basically puts the cart before the horse? This is so fraught with problems I cannot begin to fathom how one can take this seriously.
Jon Irenicus, the word “action” presupposes purposeful behavior.
How can one take Quine seriously? Well, considering he is one of the most respected philosophers of the 20th century, how can one not? He has passed “the market test” far better than Austrian economics!
Quinean epistemology has a simple point: Descartes could never sit back and figure out more about how knowledge actually is produced than neuroscientists can.
Neoclassical, here’s a thread for our debate.
“evidence for science is sensory evidence” - what does Quine mean by “science” here? Of course all we can know for sure about “reality” (a term of convenience, in my opinion) is that we are experiencing sensations, but “science” has all sorts of possible meanings at this level of analysis.
AJ, quoting from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, his use of the term “science” applies quite broadly referring not simply to the ‘hard’ or natural sciences, but also including psychology, economics, sociology, and even history (Quine 1995, 19; also see Quine 1997). But a more substantive reason centers on his view that all knowledge strives to provide a true understanding of the world and is then responsive to observation as the ultimate test of its claims. Once we view this as the shared pursuit of human knowledge, and couple it with Quine’s broad use of ‘science,’ then any attempt to gain such an understanding can be thought of as proceeding in a general scientific spirit. Quine then attaches scientific status to any statement that makes a contribution, no matter how slight, to a theory that can be tested through prediction (1992, 20).