i’m not rationally coming up with anything. i’m just pointing out that you’ve not bothered to prove the infallibility of human reasoning power, thus invalidating any number of deductions you’ve managed to string together. by the same token i reject empiricism, as the instruments of empiricism (our sensory modalities) have not been demonstrated to be infallible.
even if i were presenting this as the result of rational thinking.. why would that be a problem? why is the supposed infallibility of the mind presumed blindly until proven wrong?
well, Dave, i was under the impression that infallibility was the point of axiomatic knowledge. if you concede that rational knowledge is as untrustworthy as empirical sense data.. why do you elevate one above the other?
i’d be inclined to prefer the latter - why settle for some abstract, and very modest, statements regarding ‘human action’ when you can just open your eyes and enjoy the scenery.. what a lovely balet of color, shape and motion…
in order to be able to distinguish axiomatic assertions (Human beings act) from non-axiomatic assertions (Dogs are black) we must apply our reasoning power - an ability that Descartes (and Mises) presupposes, without basis, is infallible.
This is not what Mises claimed. In fact, in Human Action Mises suggests that man makes mistakes all the time. This is a result of the fact that there is always uncertainty. This does not ‘debunk’ the concept that all human action is rational. Mises did not assume there was perfect information.
in order to trust one’s own judgment regarding the veracity of the ‘action axiom’ one must first rationally demonstrate the infallibility of the human mind to distinguish axioms from non-axioms…
To be fair, not all Austrians agreed with Mises that the axiom of human action is known a priori. Rothbard, for example, believed that the axiom of human action is broadly empirical, but from there all deduction is a priori, because you know it to be true independent of experience (if A is true, and A implies B, then B must be true).
… which seems at odds with experience, seeing as how we, for example; are prone to make mistakes when we calculate math problems.
As I suggest above, this is not an issue with rationality. Rational human action is just action that is purposeful, not action which is 100% accurate. Entrepreneurs make mistakes when they invest, but this is not a sign of irrationality.
absolute knowledge is an illusion. austrian economics has no epistemological foundation for its claims.
Austrians don’t claim there is ‘absolute knowledge’. In fact, in Human Action, Mises claims the exact opposite.
well, Dave, i was under the impression that infallibility was the point of axiomatic knowledge. if you concede that rational knowledge is as untrustworthy as empirical sense data.. why do you elevate one above the other?
I’m afraid you don’t understand the differences between economic knowledge based on empirical data and economic knowledge based on a priori reasoning. As an illustration, I point you to this blog post. Without using reason, what can you really say about the data? All economics is based on reason, the difference being the Austrian focus on methodological individualism.
Rational knowledge is not untrustworthy in the sense that it can be arbitrarily wrong. It’s only untrustworthy in the sense that there exists imperfect knowledge. This is the entire concept of uncertainty. That A is true and A implies B, therefore B is true, can be wrong if A does not really imply B, and the theorists made that mistake. Theory isn’t infallible, but it can be refined.
Tyrone, those are good q’s. Now we are getting to the heart of the matter.
Not infallible. As reliable as 2+2=4.
Two flaws here.
First, say you have two students. One gets a 99% on a test, the other gets a 3%. You could ask, “Neither are infallible, why do you elevate one against the other?”
Second, in the world of economics, empirical sense data are just a mass of unrelated facts and statistics. How can you tell what causes what? Did Obama’s actions since his election cause unemployment to rise? Or did his election save things from getting worse? Or are the two things totally unrelated? What empirical sense data can answer this? But sound axiomatic knowledge gives the answer.
Oh absolutely. The world had pretty stuff going on. But watching a nice ballet won’t help figure out why is my wallet emptying, my house losing its worth, my job disappearing?
Wouldn’t you have to draw a difference between the merely axiomatic and the axiomatic and undeniable? For me the undeniable part of “all men act purposefully for their own ends,” is what makes it interesting. I think that mises made this famous phrase is proof enough that self evident knowledge is not beyound our grasp. I don’t agree absolute knowledge is impossible, thats too general.
I see your point. But I’m curious how you would go about calculating, or quantifying, the likelihood/reliability of the different test results. I mean, how would you know that a rational deduction is more reliable than an empirical observation until you can measure, exactly, how trustworthy they are? What is the risk of my eyes deceiving me right now? What is the risk of me living in a Matrix-like virtual reality? What is the risk of my equating 2+2 with 45 because I’m tired?
I still feel like the two philosophies are identically flawed in that they are fallible, only empiricism provides us with more raw data to question/enjoy.
twistedbydsign99: my point is that we unable to verify whether a statement is undeniable until we’ve pondered it, using reason. since reason has not been demonstrated to be infallible (experience suggests we are quite prone to making mistakes) it can’t be trusted with 100% certainty.
I still feel like the two philosophies are identically flawed in that they are fallible, only empiricism provides us with more raw data to question/enjoy.
is there some relative lack of rationally considerable propositions that impoverishes that arena relative to the quantity of ‘empirical raw data’? surely not considering that anything that will be admitted as ‘empirical raw data’ if it is being considered will have earned itself a proposition in your thinking…
twistedbydsign99: my point is that we unable to verify whether a statement is undeniable until we’ve pondered it, using reason. since reason has not
been demonstrated to be infallible (experience suggests we are quite prone to making mistakes) it can’t be trusted with 100% certainty.
can reason be trusted more or less than the alternatives (whatever they might be)? (hint: you have no alternative)
“i’m just pointing out that you’ve not bothered to prove the infallibility of human reasoning power,”
You know…there’s probably a damn good reason for that. It might…and here I presuppose…it might be because reasoning is not an act that in and of itself strives for perfect. Rather, it is a tool in which the available data is taken into consideration so that a conclusion can be reached. Were it possible for such a thing as perfect reasoning to exist, there would be little use for more than one piece of data, and the datum itself would not matter. Knowledge of the color of a dead dog’s eyeball could lead one to a conclusion about how to fix a car engine. Unfortunately, this is not the reality of the human brain. Therefore, the eyeball datum you have supplied for your argument reaches a conclusion, yes, but not one that appeals to any known reason. Reason is reason. It has no perfection. It is no longer reason if it is perfect, because you would be able to take false data and still come to the correct conclusion. Human beings came up with logic precisely because of this problem. We’re amazing creatures, really. Well, some of us. Well, me.
“thus invalidating any number of deductions you’ve managed to string together. by the same token i reject empiricism, as the instruments of empiricism (our sensory modalities) have not been demonstrated to be infallible.”
Did you even sit back for a moment and consider how silly it is to say a wrong deduction can’t be reasoned. You’ve HEARD of religion, yes? You want to have a fun picnic of reason? Try proving whether god does or doesn’t exist. And then God. And then Zeus. Try proving that YOU exist. Stressing the point further, this is precisely the problem with saying that senses should not be relied upon. Senses are what we have. What do you propose? We waste time appealing to some other sense, the existence and function of which cannot be determined by any known means? Harpy the senses all you like, sir, but I doubt you cross busy roads without looking for cars. Why bother though? Your memory is not infallible. You may only be remembering falsely that you may be flattened by some metallic thing that can’t be reasoned to exist, because there is no reason. Here is some reasoning for you. If you truly believe what you are saying, how did you live long enough to learn how to use a computer? I say it is because you don’t practice whatever it is you are preaching. I give you full marks for creative fiction, though. Fullest marks.
“The Late Andrew Ryan: how did einstein come up with his general theory? not to sound arrogant, i just don’t think there’s an answer to that question. occasionally the Gods smile at us from their heavenly dwelling. your guess is as good as mine.”
I’m sure he didn’t resort to reason even once. I mean, you can come to a conclusion about your own movements between two light sources without considering acquired human knowledge at all. You just magically think “light sourcex2 + me moving = general theory”. Yeah. It just happens. It’s like when I solve differentials while stabbing madly at lined paper with a Sharpie. Lovin’ them god-smiles.
I know it’s completely unrelated to what the OP is saying, but Karl Marx used to make the claim that the reasoning of certain classes of people was wrong because he couldn’t make sound arguments against what some of those people were saying. Just felt like bringing that up. Competely at random. Not because I was prompted to by any reasoning of any kind. Just had it…you know…floatin’ around in the back of my mind, probably because a god smiled somewhere.
I just can’t get enough of college kids. They are funny.
if by ‘rationally considerable propositions’ you mean axiomatic knowledge - then yes, i believe they are fairly few and far-between. whether we utilize reason in some way to ‘process’ our empirical sense data does not tilt anything in the favor of rationalism. i’ve already conceded that our empirical impressions are as questionable as our logical deductions - i was just saying one might prefer questionable data to no data at all or abstract vacuum.
this is a bit of tangent though. the main point i was trying to push is that rationalism is just as flawed of an epistemological foundation as empiricism is - and since we are unable to quantify or measure their different degrees of certainty.. neither is more ‘sound’ than the other (although one might still prefer one over the other based on pure superficiality, like the argument i oulined above).
Rationalism does indeed fail, but primarily because there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions; the content of a concept includes the capacity to apply it correctly, as does the ability to deny that something has been applied correctly. This, and the ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ conflict that rationalism engender are all based on unsupportable views on the nature of knowledge, consciousness, experience and inference. The real is the ideal and the ideal is the real, they are entangled properties of a single axiom: existence.
Absolute knowledge is attainable, trivially so. For example, take the law of non-contradiction. The applicability of this ‘law’ is universal and fundamental to all knowledge itself. Anything which was contradictory could not be knowledge, just as any procession of concepts which is not deductively correct is not ‘thinking’ at all, that is to say, would not be an inference. The same applies with ‘causal’ relationships, if things are things they have properties, these properties constitute their existence and therefor their behavior. The interactions of these various objects is determined by their properties, that is by their being what they are.
The same applies for any of our conceptual apparatus, while we are capable of not making inferences this has nothing to do with the epistemic priority of Okham’s Razor: it is irrational to hold things to be true when theory does not demand them, and it is irrational to reject a theory which explains evidence and does not make unfounded claims.
These both apply against ‘scepticism’, as we have evidence of our impressions and can never have any other kind of evidence (nothing else would count as ‘evidence’, i.e. it would not be ‘evident’) and we are in a logical-ontological relationship to reality it is only rational to assume the applicability of the law of ‘causation’ to the objects for which we observe a correlation, i.e. all objects in reality.
“in order to trust one’s own judgment regarding the veracity of the ‘action axiom’ one must first rationally demonstrate the infallibility of the human mind to distinguish axioms from non-axioms… which seems at odds with experience, seeing as how we, for example; are prone to make mistakes when we calculate math problems.”
That we acknowledge the mistake in calculation means we also acknowledge that there is a correct answer.