I’m not sure if this is really an economic question but here goes:
I was having this conversation with a friend the other day, he said that because Mises assumed free will throughout his work, one cant be a determinist and accept his economic ideas.
But I wonder is that really the case? It seems to me that even if Mises did believe in free will(can anybody confirm/deny this?), his ideas arent incompatable with determinism, after all couldnt a determinist Misean say that humans act purposefully(rationally) without necessarly acting freely? Or is there something about MIses’s ideas that I’m missing?
I’d be especially interested to hear from determinists on this board.
Strangely, I had a similar discussion tonight at the Monday Mises Group I attend. I argued that we do have free will, but I don’t know enough about the determinist view.
I’m not sure if this is related at all, but how does the fact that we always choose the most rational action factor into the concept of free will?
Here is what you tell your friend. First, however, make sure they are sitting down and don’t have any major medical conditions because this is going to blow their mind!
The way that determinism manifests itself through human action IS THE DEFINITION of free will!
Basically, even if everything in the universe is determined that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is known ahead of time. It is entirely possible that the universe itself doesn’t know how things will turn out. So each decision you make is done in real time, and there’d be no way to prove or disprove that you were in fact going to do what you in fact did.
I guess you can think of determinism a couple of different ways. One way is to interpret it as saying everything is “predetermined”, whatever that means. Another way is that if you were able to re-setup the universe EXACTLY the same way, then everything would proceed to happen the same way it did last time. I find the second insight more interesting because if it is IMPOSSIBLE to re-setup the universe exactly then determinism is essentially meaningless from our point of view. It would still be an important fact of reality because it, among other things, makes science possible but it would be of no consequence to the analysis of human action.
It gets even more interesting if we posit “Groundhog Day” scenarios. Let’s say the universe is reset at the beginning of each day exactly as it was yesterday, EXCEPT one person (you) got to keep your memories. This seemingly insignificant change would in fact have huge ramifications for the outcome of the day. Not only would you make seemingly all new decisions, but you would cause other people to make new decisions due to your interactions. This would ripple outward and very quickly cause everything to happen differently. Granted, theoretically, it could all be “predetermined”, but for all intents and purposes, THAT IS FREE WILL.
Mises discusses determinism and free will in chapter 5 of Theory and History. You really should read it. (Not to give anything away, but if you read this chapter, you’ll see that Mises was a determinist.)
Our choices always reflect our values, beliefs, and preferences. In this sense our choices are always rational. Insofar as our values, beliefs, and preferences are enjoined upon us by factors from the “outside world”, then our choices are causally determined by these factors. However, as Misesians, we know that human action is the “ultimate given” of the social sciences; and therefore it impossible to speculate about the nature of whatever it is that lies behind human action. Whether this ‘something’ has a relationship with our actions in a way that determines them; we may never know.
Mises, however, argues (in a very Kantian way) that assuming causal determinism is a necessary prerequisite for epistemology.
This. Basically the idea is that “free will” and “determinism” can be defined in such ways as to make them compatible with one another. If one defines “determinism” the way Wikipedia does, then “free will” can be defined as something like “the apparent indeterminism/unpredictability of something due to the inability to predict (in terms of calculation) its future state(s)”.
Now why do humans appear unpredictable if everything follows immutable physical laws? Well, humans are made up of a whole lot of the basic pieces of existence – quarks, leptons, etc. These combine to form atoms, which combine to form molecules, which combine to form cells, etc. Given strict determinism, the future state of a human being is inextricably bound to the combination of all the states of the particles which compose him. The amount of information that all these particles’ states represent when put together is far too large for any human mind to compute. Hence, the appearance of free will.
It may not even be possible to predict anything with absolute certainty* given the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This doesn’t mean the universe is indeterminate – it only means that our ability to calculate cannot be perfectly (infinitely!) precise. Actually, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle isn’t even needed to demonstrate that. Whenever a digital calculation using a transcendental number is made, it’s necessarily imprecise to some degree, because transcendental numbers cannot be completely represented by a finite number of digits (at least, not to our knowledge).
So essentially, free will arises out of determinism because the gulf between the laws of the universe and human behavior is so vast.
Note: I consider the phrase “predict… with absolute certainty” to be a pleonasm, as I define "predict’ such that “absolute certainty” is implied.
Gist of his argument: Let’s look at the principle of scientific induction for amoment. It’s full of holes philosophically, claiming that if something happens many times without exception, then it will keep on happening. The only reason it’s used every single day by all scientists is because it works.
Similarly, assuming people have free will, though possibly full of holes philosophically, works in practice. It is as sound a principle as scientific induction for arriving at truths and predictions.
OK, lemme see if I can find the chapter and verse. Yep, Pages 23 and 24. I’ll try to copy it. Translation into English, as well as looking up the big words like panphysicalism, is the job of the reader.
"Mechanicalism proves to be so satisfactory a principle of conduct that people finally believe it capable of solving all the problems of thought and scientific research. Materialism and panphysicalism proclaim mechanicalism as the es- sence of all knowledge and the experimental and mathematical methods of the natural sciences as the sole scientific mode of think- ing. All changes are to be comprehended as motions subject to the laws of mechanics. The champions of mechanicalism do not bother about the still un- solved problems of the logical and epistemological basis of the principles of causality and imperfect induction. In their eyes these principles are sound because they work. The fact that experiments in the laboratory bring about the results predicted by the theories and that machines in the factories run in the way predicted by technology proves, they say, the soundness of the methods and findings of modern
natural science. Granted that science cannot give us truth-and who knows what truth really means?-at any rate it is certain that it works in leading us to success. But it is precisely when we accept this pragmatic point of view that the emptiness of the panphysicalist dogma becomes manifest. Science, as has been poinfed out above, has not succeeded in solving the problems of the mind-body relations. The panphysicalists cer- tainly cannot contend that the procedures they recommend have ever worked in the field of interhuman relations and of the social sciences. But it is beyond doubt that the principle according to which an Ego deals with every human being as if the other were a thinking and act- ing being like himself has evidenced its usefulness both in mundane life and in scientific research. It cannot be denied that it works. lt is beyond doubt that the practice of considering fellow men as beings who think and act as I, the Ego, do has turned out well; on the other hand the prospect seems hopeless of getting a similar prag- matic verification for the postulate requiring them to be treated in the same manner as the objects of the natural sciences. The epistemo- logical problems raised by the comprehension of other people’s be- havior are no less intricate than those of causality and incomplete induction. It may be admitted that it is impossible to provide con- clusive evidence for the propositions that my logic is the logic of all other people and by all means absolutely the only human logic and that the categories of my action are the categories of all other people’s action and by all means absoIutely the categories of all human action. However, the pragmatist must remember that these propositions work both in practice and in science, and the positivist must not overlook the fact that in addressing his fellow men he presupposes -tacitly and implicitly-the intersubjective validity of logic and thereby the reality of the realm of the alter Ego’s thought and action, of his eminent human chara~ter.~