Hello, Grayson! Thanks for the challenge! I hope both of us learn from each other.
Likewise.
This post will address the content of your post concerning neuroscience.
My first objection is that “methodological dualism” presupposes substance dualism, an archaic leftover from Descartes.
That is incorrect. Yet, it is a common misconception, which has befallen even Austrians here.
From the section of Human Action you quote (emphasis added): “We may fairly assume or believe that they are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. But as long as we do not know how external facts–physical and physiological–produce in a human mind definite thoughts and volitions resulting in concrete acts, we have to face an insurmountable methodological dualism.”
“For the time being, Mises may have been right (although I would even dispute that). However, currently, neuroscience has advanced far enough to explain many features of the “mental” process, debunking many long-held fictions, such as free will. (…) We no longer need to acquiesce to methodological dualism.”
As I’ve written in another post:
“Methodological dualism isn’t resorted to because we don’t know WHETHER actions are determined. Even if it were proven that actions are indeed determined, so long as we do not know WHICH actions will be caused by WHICH factors, we still must resort to methodological dualism. It is not enough to know THAT firing neurons lead to choices. For a scientist studying human behavior to practice methodological monism, he would need to know WHICH circumstances regarding the firing of neurons would lead to deciding to compose a symphony, and WHICH circumstances regarding the firing of neurons would instead lead to deciding to read a book. So long as we can’t accomplish such a mind-boggling feat as that, the only way of studying human behavior that makes sense is by considering humans as acting beings with minds, wills, and intentions.”
Also, here’s something I wrote that’s been sitting in my Google Docs to maybe someday include in a primer to Austrian social science:
There are two ways of thinking about things and the causes of change in the world. One can think of things as material beings which undergo mechanistic change. Or one can think of things as mental beings which undergo purposeful change. In our lives, we think in both ways all the time.
For example, imagine on a windy day, you see a rock roll down a hill into a creek. You might think that happened because the rock was knocked loose by the wind and that gravity pulled it down into the creek. You probably would not think it happened because the rock felt dry and purposefully rolled into the creek.
But imagine you see a man covered in dirt calmly walk down that same hill, and into the creek. You probably would think that happened because the man wanted to wash the dirt off of himself and so he purposefully walked into the creek.
We think of things and the causes of change in those two ways all the time. Now there’s an important difference about the rock and the man. We generally only think of the rock in terms of material being and mechanistic change, and never in terms of mental being and purposive change (unless we are superstitious). However, we can think of the man in both ways. For example, if the man did not walk down the hill, but instead was lying limp on the wind-blown hillside before rolling down the hill with his eyes closed and his arms and legs limp, we would not think he was trying to take a bath. Instead we might think he was dead, unconscious, or otherwise disabled. Even if we thought of him still as a mental being (if we thought he was awake but paralyzed through the ordeal), we don’t think of the change as being a function of his having a mind, or as being an incident of purposeful behavior. We would think of the change as being a function of his having certain bodily features (susceptibility to gravity, etc) and as being an incident of mechanistic change.
Now some people think that in order to inform our own decisions with regard to the behavior of others, it is more useful to think about even purposeful behavior in material/mechanistic terms. For example, some people might say that even in the case of the man walking to the creek, it would be more helpful to think of his behavior as being caused by the mechanics of his brain. Light bounced of the creek and into his eyes, which caused a chain reaction in his brain, which ultimately triggered the muscles in his legs to walk toward the creek.
Thinking of the man’s behavior in this way may have certain limited benefits, depending on one’s goals. For example, if your goal was to make sure the man reached the creek, understanding that the man’s ability to walk depended on him having a functional brain would inform your decision not to strike him in the back of the head in an attempt to speed him along down the hill.
However, there would be certain purposes for which thinking of the man’s behavior in material/mechanistic terms would not be enough. For example, let’s say you wanted to decide whether it would be worth your trouble to try to sell the man some shampoo. Thinking of the man as a mental being and his trip to the creek as purposeful behavior, would obviously help in this decision. The man being caked in dirt, you could reasonably suppose that the man is indeed purposefully working toward taking a bath, and that he would be interested in something that would facilitate his endeavor. Or let’s say the man is not dirty, but instead exhibits the symptoms of severe dehydration. You would probably not pester this man by shoving shampoo in his face, but instead perhaps hand him a bowl to help him drink the creek’s water.
How would thinking of the man’s behavior in material/mechanistic terms help in this decision? Let us say that you know that his decision to buy your shampoo depends on the way his neurons fire. If you can’t see how his neurons are firing, this knowledge is useless to you. Even if you could see how his neurons were firing (say you had a brain-scanning device on his head), if you don’t know which neuron-firing pattern would cause him to desire shampoo and which would not, this knowledge is still useless to you. And even if you knew that, obviously it would have been better to think of the man’s behavior as mental/purposive than to go through all the trouble and expense involved in reading his neurobiology.
Furthermore while it may be possible for neurobiology to predict human behavior to a limited degree, that degree is indeed extremely limited. For example, if you knew that the only two possibilities are 1) the man is going to drink water or 2) the man is going to stand in the creek until the dirt is washed off of him, a brain scan might settle the matter quite readily. A brain scan might generally register much more frenetic activity in a body shutting down due to lack of water than in a body which is not. But in real life, the possibilities are generally not so limited, and the neural activity is not nearly so easy to discern. Neurobiology is nowhere near being able to say anything useful about a man’s decision to pick out of a shelf a volume of Plato or a volume of Aristotle, whether he will compose a a sonata or an etude, or whether he will design a truss bridge or a suspension bridge. Still less can it say anything about a man’s behavior when a great deal more than two eventualities are possible.
The intention of this book is to convince readers as decision-makers to adopt a certain general code of conduct with regard to the rest of humanity as decision makers.
Now what is the best way to think about humans as decision makers, specifically with regard to taking into account their behavior in order to inform our own decisions? There are two ways of thinking about things and the causes of change in the world. One can think of things as material beings which undergo mechanistic change. Or one can think of things as mental beings which undergo purposeful change. In our lives, we think in both ways all the time.
For example, imagine on a windy day, you see a rock roll down a hill into a creek. You might think that happened because the rock was knocked loose by the wind and that gravity pulled it down into the creek. You probably would not think it happened because the rock felt dry and purposefully rolled into the creek.
But imagine you see a man covered in dirt calmly walk down that same hill, and into the creek. You probably would think that happened because the man wanted to wash the dirt off of himself and so he purposefully walked into the creek.
We think of things and the causes of change in those two ways all the time. Now there’s an important difference about the rock and the man. We generally only think of the rock in terms of material being and mechanistic change, and never in terms of mental being and purposive change (unless we are superstitious). However, we can think of the man in both ways. For example, if the man did not walk down the hill, but instead was lying limp on the wind-blown hillside before rolling down the hill with his eyes closed and his arms and legs limp, we would not think he was trying to take a bath. Instead we might think he was dead, unconscious, or otherwise disabled. Even if we thought of him still as a mental being (if we thought he was awake but paralyzed through the ordeal), we don’t think of the change as being a function of his having a mind, or as being an incident of purposeful behavior. We would think of the change as being a function of his having certain bodily features (susceptibility to gravity, etc) and as being an incident of mechanistic change.
Now some people think that in order to inform our own decisions with regard to the behavior of others, it is more useful to think about even purposeful behavior in material/mechanistic terms. For example, some people might say that even in the case of the man walking to the creek, it would be more helpful to think of his behavior as being caused by the mechanics of his brain. Light bounced of the creek and into his eyes, which caused a chain reaction in his brain, which ultimately triggered the muscles in his legs to walk toward the creek.
Thinking of the man’s behavior in this way may have certain limited benefits, depending on one’s goals. For example, if your goal was to make sure the man reached the creek, understanding that the man’s ability to walk depended on him having a functional brain would inform your decision not to strike him in the back of the head in an attempt to speed him along down the hill.
However, there would be certain purposes for which thinking of the man’s behavior in material/mechanistic terms would not be enough. For example, let’s say you wanted to decide whether it would be worth your trouble to try to sell the man some shampoo. Thinking of the man as a mental being and his trip to the creek as purposeful behavior, would obviously help in this decision. The man being caked in dirt, you could reasonably suppose that the man is indeed purposefully working toward taking a bath, and that he would be interested in something that would facilitate his endeavor. Or let’s say the man is not dirty, but instead exhibits the symptoms of severe dehydration. You would probably not pester this man by shoving shampoo in his face, but instead perhaps hand him a bowl to help him drink the creek’s water.
How would thinking of the man’s behavior in material/mechanistic terms help in this decision? Let us say that you know that his decision to buy your shampoo depends on the way his neurons fire. If you can’t see how his neurons are firing, this knowledge is useless to you. Even if you could see how his neurons were firing (say you had a brain-scanning device on his head), if you don’t know which neuron-firing pattern would cause him to desire shampoo and which would not, this knowledge is still useless to you. And even if you knew that, obviously it would have been better to think of the man’s behavior as mental/purposive than to go through all the trouble and expense involved in reading his neurobiology.
Furthermore while it may be possible for neurobiology to predict human behavior to a limited degree, that degree is indeed extremely limited. For example, if you knew that the only two possibilities are 1) the man is going to drink water or 2) the man is going to stand in the creek until the dirt is washed off of him, a brain scan might settle the matter quite readily. A brain scan might generally register much more frenetic activity in a body shutting down due to lack of water than in a body which is not. But in real life, the possibilities are generally not so limited, and the neural activity is not nearly so easy to discern. Neurobiology is nowhere near being able to say anything useful about whether a man will pick out of a shelf a volume of Plato or a volume of Aristotle, whether he will compose a a sonata or an etude, or whether he will design a truss bridge or a suspension bridge. Still less can it say anything about a man’s behavior when a great deal more than two eventualities are possible.