I’ve once heard (or maybe used myself) definitions of action that on further reflection, seem flawed.
One is action as purposeful action. The definition however is cicular since it assumes that which it supposedly defines/explains. So the definition doesn’t really define anything and I don’t know how to use “action” in anything especially praexeology.
What definition can be substituted?
Another definition is that action = the means to satisfying felt unease, it is the choosing and rationing of means and decisions, and it is even the process of thought.
But the first part of the definition seems to be defining action as something that even an animal would do -act to remove felt unease, while the second part of the definition is possible for the highest intellects -the process of thought. So obviously this definition is equivocal, that is, the word action means two distinct and contrary things in one definition?
why is it circular? “It assumes that which it supposedly defines explains.” I don’t get it. Puposeful = having a goal. Behavior= doing something.
What’s unclear here? What’s circular?
A definition is circular if it uses the word it defines in the very definition [explicitly or implicitly]. Please show me how the above is circular. And don’t tell me that doing and action are the same thing. Everyone knows what “doing something” is. It is not a technical term used in a special way, like “Action” is used in prax.
To make this very clear, suppose Mises had invented a new word, “blobbediness”, and defined it as purposeful action. Would you then say that blobbediness =purposeful behavior is a circular definition?
Just because animals and humans can both act [or be blobbedy] doesnt make the definition equivocal. Aniamls and humans both eat. Aniomals eat uncooked icky foods off the ground. A gourmet eats well cooked, high quality foods served in the most refined atmosphere. Does that make any definition of eat equivocal?
“purposeful action”—I don’t have my copy of Human Action or Man, Economy, and State in front of me at the moment, but it seems to me that the distinction is valid because of the fact that at least some human actions are involuntary (non-purposeful), such as tripping on one’s shoelace, or dreaming while asleep, or breathing.
re: action as “the means to satisfying felt unease, it is the choosing and rationing of means and decisions, and it is even the process of thought.”
The fundamental logical relations are not subject to proof or disproof. Every attempt to prove them must presuppose their validity. It is impossible to explain them to a being who would not possess them on his own account. Efforts to define them according to the rules of definition must fail. They are primary propositions antecedent to any nominal or real definition. They are ultimate unanalyzable categories. The human mind is utterly incapable of imagining logical categories at variance with them. No matter how they may appear to superhuman beings, they are for man inescapable and absolutely necessary. They are the indispensable prerequisite of perception, apperception, and experience. - Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action
This is perhaps the least coherent part of Human Action.
Mises appears to be confusing two common but contradictory uses of the word ‘proof’. In any case, it is irrelevant to fakename’s confusion.
“Action” is indeed defined in the very first sentence of the book as purposeful action. And yes, it is a definition.
The part you quote about the fundamental logical relationships [the categories of action] being undefinable is talking about something else.
First of all, my edition of HA, the pdf version, does not contain “[the categories of action]” in the sentence you quote.
Absent that bracketed part, Mises is saying something completely different. He is talking about the fundamental logical relations. Things like the the concept of “and” and “or” and “not”. Or maybe he is talking about things like the law of the excluded middle [a thing cannot be green and not green at the same time]. I’m not sure what level of logic he was talking about. In any case, he wasn’t talking about “action”, which is not a logical relation no matter how you slice it.
Don’t let your associations with the words cloud your view.
There he is putting “the a priori” in apposition to “the fundamental logical relations”. And the category is action is a priori. Therefore, he was talking about the category of action, which means my bracketed addition was appropriate.
Thank you for your advice about how not to cloud my view.
However, you don’t get what he is talking about. You yourself provide the ultimate proof for that, because your understanding leads to Mises contradicting himself about the very cornerstone of his whole life’s work. Is “action” a defined term or an undefinable term? I mean, a little thing like that is pretty important. One would think he’d at least get that straight.
OK, then what DID he mean in the piece you quoted? Exactly what I told you in the previous post. That earlier paragraph about a priori is an intro to the paragraph. Let me explain:
The whole section is discussing the question "Are there things we know without doing experiments, just by sitting there and, [horrors], thinking?
Mises is about to give a resounding yes answer. The things we know without having to examine the outside world he calls “the a priori”. Maybe Rod Serling would call it the Twilight Zone, but Mises called it the a priori. The inhabitants of this Twilight Zone are those mysterious beings “logical relations”. Things like “If all X is Y and A is an X, then A is a Y. no matter what A, X and Y are”
“The category of action is priori”, you say. Before I burden you with discussing that line, is it your own, or one Mises actually wrote?
If he wrote it, and you provide chapter and verse, I will explain it to you if you wish.
Again, he means basically the same thing by “the fundamental logical relations” as he does by “the a priori categories”.
And another important point is that he thought that the category of action was the ultimate a priori category. He believed that everything else a priori emanated from the category of action:
Mises claims ‘the fundamental logical relations are not subject to proof or disproof. Every attempt to prove them must presuppose their validity.’
This is nonsense, literally. Every proof assumes its conclusion is true, otherwise it would not be a proof: the implication is that proofs are impossible. I just think Mises is confusing two distinct meanings of ‘proof’, but he is not alone in this – most people do!
By the way, it wasn’t just supposed to be a barb. I think that his use of the phrases “logical relations” and “logical structure of the human mind” are very idiosyncratic and lead a lot of people to misunderstanding him, because they just interpret him based on their prior associations with those words (particularly “logic”). For example, one time I was using those phrases the way he used them, and the person that I was talking to objected to my argument saying that he meets plenty of people who are illogical, and that we couldn’t say that there is a logical structure of the human mind common to everybody.
I am not saying that you are making that obvious of a misinterpretation. But still, I think that you are following your associations with the word “logic” rather than what he is actually talking about, which is the category of action. (Or “the logic of action”, if you want!)
Either way, sorry if what I said just sounded like an insult. I didn’t mean it that way.
He is saying that you can’t prove the fundamental logical relations, simply because your proof will be circular - it will assume that they are already true before you even start writing!
Saying “every proof assumes its conclusion is true” is pretty misleading. I think that you mean to say that everybody who tries to do a proof is assuming that their proof is going to end up being true. But that doesn’t mean that the proof itself assumes its own conclusion - if it did, we would call it circular.
Here are the two senses of the word “prove” that I think that you are talking about:
(1) Show that one proposition implies another.
(2) Show somebody that something is true.
I think that Mises was using the first sense when he said that the fundamental logical relations aren’t able to be defined. They are, as it were, the ultimate proposition. It isn’t possible to define them, because defining is always in terms of other propositions! But it is of course possible to show somebody that they are true. Just tell them to look in whatever place it is - for the category of action, that place would of course be your private world.
He was probably using the word “definition” in the second sense right in the beginning of Human Action where he called the proposition “human action is purposeful behavior” a definition - he was just trying to tell you where to look to see it. Most people know “where to look” when they hear the word “purposeful behavior”. And I think that he was probably using the word “definition” in the first sense in the other thing that I quoted - he was saying that the fundamental logical relations (that is, the category of action and everything that emanates from it) can’t be proven (defined) because it is the ultimate proposition - you can’t define it in terms of other propositions, because it is the ultimate one.
Imagine trying to define everything in terms of something else. You would get into an infinite regression. You need to cite a matter of fact at some point to break the regression. And, for praxeology, that matter of fact is the category of action. We can’t prove the category of action in the first sense, because it what all of our proofs rest on - but we can prove the category of action in the second sense.
Every single valid proof presupposes its conclusion – there are no exceptions.
This does not mean that an argument’s conclusion is obviously presupposed by its premises. We cannot comprehend at once the infinite number of logical consequences implied by any set of premises, and so there may be interesting and unexpected things to discover (see: mathematics and logic). However, if a conclusion validly follows from its premises, there is always a way to restate the premises in such a way that makes the presupposition obvious.
EDIT: In other words, contra Mises, the fundamental relations of logic are only subject to proof because every proof of them presupposes their validity.
I think that he was using “prove” in the second sense, whereas you are acting as if he was using “prove” in the first sense. He was saying that it is impossible to prove the fundamental logical relations (the category of action) like it is possible prove that a particular planet orbited in a particular way at a particular time and in a particular place. Saying that a particular planet orbited like that doesn’t presuppose its validity - it is conceivable that it really didn’t do that. But saying that I act does presuppose its validity - it isn’t conceivable (at least for me) that I really don’t act, simply because saying that I act is itself an action.
So, yes, to use the distinction from David Hume, every relation of ideas presupposes its validity - there are no exceptions; but, in contrast, most matter of facts don’t presuppose their validity - but there is one exception, the category of action.
On the subject of equivocation, yes humans and animals do some of the same things but I was wondering, are there somethings which humans do which animals don’t do like think? And thought is something which can be considered an action so here we have a word being applied in different senses (IMO) between instinctive behavior and rational behavior which are quite different from each other. Perhaps there is some middle ground here? Any responses?
That aside, if every single (logically) valid proof presupposes its conclusion, that would mean that every single (logically) valid proof is circular reasoning. Hence all valid reasoning is circular reasoning. Is this what you’re saying?