Hi AJ
Great to hear from you. And great question.
Here is Mises touching on this issue:
“Epistemology deals with the mental phenomena of human life, with man as he thinks and acts. The main deficiency of traditional epistemological attempts is to be seen in their neglect of the praxeological aspects. The epistemologists dealt with thinking as if it were a separate field cut off from other manifestations of human endeavor. They dealt with the problems of logic and mathematics, but they failed to see the practical aspects of thinking, They ignored the praxeological a priori.” (Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p.2) (emphasis added)
I think this addresses your question, and your approach, directly. Because you write:
“…it would seem more efficient and direct to simply focus on educating people about logical errors and how to think clearly and examine their basic assumptions.”
Here, you are doing exactly what Mises is describing: considering things not with respect to their praxeological aspect, but instead, with respect to their logical aspect. You are treating thinking not as a form of action, but as a ‘neutral existent’ or ‘neutral process,’ that may possibly examine action, or examine logic, but that itself is not a form of action. You are considering thinking and logical reasoning as some kind of objective process or existent, and not as the goal-directed activity of an acting subject—as action. This is exactly what Mises is referring to.
In praxeology, thinking and reasoning are forms of action, since thinking and reasoning are “trying to”…solve a problem, reach a conclusion, decide between alternatives, etc… In praxeology thinking is a form of action since it is viewed as an attempt to attain an end.
So this is the first point, and this is the path toward the solution to the apparent problem you raise.
“To use the familiar example, imagine someone were to claim, “I can walk north without moving away from the South Pole.” And further imagine that this nonsensical notion had become the basis for a whole ideologies. Then someone like Hume definitively identifies the logical error, pointing out that the notion itself is nonsensical.”
"It hence is regarded as a prohibitionary law of human action that it is impossible to move north along the globe without moving away from the South Pole."
“All right, but then the obvious question is why would people miss such a thing?”
Answer:
They don’t miss such a thing. Rather, they consider it, as you do, a logical phenomenon rather than a praxeological phenomenon. Under the sway and influence of natural science, mathematics, and logic, they consider this circumstance an objective feature of their surrounding “outside” world (objectivism), rather than considering this circumstance as a feature of the goal directed activity of an individual subject (subjectivism).
That is Mises’s point in the opening quote.
“If I prove a praxeological law that says, “raising the minimum wage must [by logic] increase unemployment,”* that proof must entail an unpacking of the fundamental assumptions and a demonstration that such is logically necessary, which of course then implies that raising minimum wage while decreasing unemployment (ceteris paribus) is [logically] impossible. But this seems, again, roundabout. Why not just get people - whether those in academia or those on the street - to look at the basic assumptions and point out the logical error? Is it just a strategic consideration: to try to make inroads into academia by having a [logically] “proven theory” rather than the far more mundane act of simply identifying a logical error or admonishing people to “dissect your assumptions and think clearly”?” (bold added, bracketed content added)
Here you have phrased the problem almost entirely in terms of plain logic, with almost no (explicit) reference made to _praxeo_logical notions. Here is the problem I see with this:
Consider case 1 and case 2.
In case 1, we assume that person A will be dissatisfied if the result of his theoretical activity is a contradiction. We assume that he is interested in avoiding a logical contradiction. So we tell him that if he does X (constructs a theory of a given sort) that Y will be the result (a logical contradiction). The clear meaning of this, and our assertions and admonitions to A, is that by changing his theory he can avoid the logical contradiction in question.
In case 2, we assume that person A will be dissatisfied if the result of his policy is unemployment. We assume that he is interested in avoiding unemplotyment. So we tell him that if he does X (increases the legal minimum wage above the market wage rate), that Y will be the result (unemployment). The clear meaning of this, and our assertions and admonitions to A, is that by changing his policy he can avoid the unemployment in question.
How are our instructions in case 1 in principle any different than in case 2?
Why is it sensible to tell A how he can avoid a logical contradiction he wants to avoid, but nonsensical to tell A how he can avoid the unemployment he wants to avoid?
What have we done here? We have simply stated your example more explicitly in terms of praxeology (the logic of action—the logic of goal directed activity), rather than in terms of simple logic, which does not explicitly refer to the conceptions of praxeology.
Incidentally, this is the same situation that exists with Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. Hoppe considers his theory to be not a theory of action in the Misesian sense, but rather a theory arriving at intersubjective norms and justifiable ends. (see A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p.130, 132)
But the form in which Hoppe presents his theory in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Chapter 10, p.203-208, simply masks or plays down the praxeological aspect of his theory by keeping the praxeological aspects implicit, rather than making them explicit.
He assumes that an actor, A, will want to avoid contradictions in his argument, and will want to avoid having his argument falsified and his claims unjustified, and he assumes that an actor A will want to avoid other drastic consequences of his actions such as “we would all cease to exist,” “neither we, or forefathers, nor or progeny could, do or will survive,” etc. Then Hoppe proceeds to demonstate, at least to his own satisfaction and that of his adherents, that if person A does X (argues against the libertarian ethic as Hoppe conceives it) the results of doing X will be Y: person A will contradict himself; A’s claims and arguments will be unjustified; and A will potentially bring about the drastic social consequences Hoppe mentions on page 206.
In order to avoid these things, actor A is instructed by Hoppe to abstain from arguing against libertarianism.
If A is willing to accept these results or consequences, the argumentation ethics provides no reasons for actor A to abstain from arguing against a libertarian ethic.
Hoppe simply keeps the meaning of his theory implicit, and this is because avoiding what he consideres Mises’s utilitarianism is an imperative of this kind of normative and ends-seeking ethical theory.
However, Hoppe has not succeeded in overcoming a “utilitarian” means/ends analysis. He has simply proposed a means/ends analysis that is controversial.
Here is a quote from Mises that applies to both cases above:
“The starting point of experimental knowledge is the cognition that an A is uniformly followed by a B. The utilization of this knowledge either for the production of B or for the avoidance of the emergence of B is called action. The primary objective of action is either to bring about B or to prevent its happening.” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p.20)
"In light of these issues, I am interested if you know of any law that satisfies the following two requirements:
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You (Adam Knott) believe it is actually a true apodictic law of human action in the Mengerian-Misesean sense (I think you agree that the law of marginal utility as understood by most Austrians presently is not)
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It does something other than simply identify or catalogue a logical error."
OK I’ll argue that the law of marginal utility, properly conceived, is such a law.
Here is my argument:
The law of marginal utility expresses the unavoidable accompaniment an individual actor will experience upon coming into possession of a unit of “supply.”
To see this, we conceive that action is comprised of two fundamental categories. The fundamental categories of action are means and ends. However, in the history of economic thought, these same categories have been referred to by various names such as value and supply, demand and supply, etc… In praxeology, these same categories have been referred to by various names such as satisfaction and dissatisfaction, ease and unease, pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, striving and attainment, etc..
Menger’s law of marginal utility is phrased in terms of value and supply.
The gist of the law is that an individual actor will experience something we may refer to as a “decrease in value” upon coming into possession of a unit of supply.
In this conception, we call the actor’s “supply” that which he has now, and we call that which he does not have now, but which he seeks, that which he “values.” In this conception “value” is essentially synonymous with “seeking,” “trying,” “attempting,” etc… It refers to the categorial counterpart, in action, to that which is already attained in action, the actor’s “supply.”
The law of marginal utility expresses that when an individual comes into a unit of supply, there is an unavoidable experience that accompanies such an event. Since by our original assumptions there are only two categories of action, supply and value, then when we consider or refer to an actor’s supply in isolation, we thereby omit or diminish reference to that which is “value” (seeking) in that individual’s action.
Coming into a unit of supply necessarily diminishes “value” since when/if we consider coming into a unit of supply as an isolated event, we make no reference to seeking—seeking here considered identical to valuing.
I can’t be aware of coming into a supply of something, without concomittantly “un-awaring” myself of striving for that which I do not have (valuing).
(for this reason, and by this law, in “full empirical reality” an increase in supply is necessarily accomanied by a decrease in value)
As you inidicated AJ, this is obviously not the generally accepted conception of the law of marginal utility. But I believe this answers your question.
I’ll close this post with one of the best definitions of praxeology I know of:
“The aim of this orientation, which in the future we will call the exact one, an aim which research pursues in the same way in all realms of the world of phenomena, is the determination of strict laws of phenomena, of regularities in the succession of phenomena which do not present themselves to us as absolute, but which in respect to the approaches to cognition by which we attain to them simply bear within themselves the guarantee of absoluteness. It is the determination of laws of phenomena which commonly are called “laws of nature,” but more correctly should be designated by the expression exact laws.” (Menger, Investigation Into The Method of the Social Sciences, Book 1, chapter 4)