To those of you who’ve studied the first chapters of MES and HA…
In my post Action, Goals, and Goods, I’ve attempted to formulate the fundamentals of praxeology according to how they make sense to me. I’d appreciate any constructive feedback.
Thanks,
Lilburne
Lilburne:
Here are a few things you might find it helpful to consider in your developing theory of ethics and human action. I chose three things that stood out to me. I don’t attempt to answer these questions for you, but I believe these are questions your theory will eventually have to address:
“When the control of a good is desired for the sake of directly achieving an ultimate goal, it is a consumption good. When the control of a good is desired for the sake of directly achieving a mediate goal, it is a production good.”
I go to the store and purchase a bottle of wine to have with dinner tonight. While driving home I decide that rather than drinking the wine tonight, I’ll put this bottle in my collection which I plan to sell at some point in the future. When I arrive home, I decide, what the heck, let’s open this bottle now and see how it tastes.
To me, this outlines a scenario where the bottle of wine has gone from a consumption good, to a production good, and back again to a consumption good, based on the changing uses I envision for this bottle of wine, all the while the bottle of wine stays “objectively” the same. If you are going to construct a theory of action based on a distinction between production goods and consumption goods, you will probably have to reconcile this with the idea that whether something is a production good or consumption good depends on how the individual actor considers that good at any particular moment. Is a particular good capable of changing status from a consumption good to a production good an unlimited number of times? Or are certain goods consumption goods or production goods “objectively speaking.”? Or something different than these two? Your theory will have to anticipate this question.
“I choose to simply refer to goals in order to include action in which no impact upon the feelings is intended. For example, a soldier who throws himself upon a grenade does not expect to alleviate felt uneasiness. The goal of his action (saving his comrades) will occur after his own demise, when he will be unable to feel any satisfaction or alleviation.”
If the thought of the soldier’s comrades being harmed by the grenade does not cause the soldier uneasiness, why would he throw himself upon the grenade? The standard Misesian conception would be that the soldier feels “uneasiness” at the thought his comrades may be harmed by the grenade, and so throws himself on the grenade to alleviate that uneasiness. (It doesn’t matter in the Misesian conception, the degree of efficacy of the soldier’s attempt to alleviate the uneasiness, because his attempt may fail.) But in the Misesian conception there is the uneasiness (the thought that his comrades may be harmed), and the act to alleviate it (throwing himself on the grenade).
“When you first consider taking a walk, then choose to, and then actually begin to, that beginning, impelled by the choosing, is the action. Continuing to walk is only an action if at any point it even crosses your mind whether to stop or continue.”
In your conception of action, are there periods of time when an individual does not act? In your example above, when the person is continuing to walk, and this is not an action, then is the person necessarily performing another action at this instant? Or, is it possible he is continuing to walk, and at this particular time he is performing no action whatsoever?
In other words, if for the sake of simplicity we assume a person is conscious and awake, is that person then necessarily acting at every waking moment? Or are his periods of action interspersed with periods of non-acting? This is an important question your theory will have to address.
Adam, Thank you for your highly constructive response.
Definitely the former, and not the latter. It’s a completely subjective matter, because it depends completely on the agent’s goals. In this, I completely agree with the classical Austrian subjectivism.
But if the soldier fully expects to die before any alleviation is felt, then can he truly be said to be aiming at such alleviation?
I think there many waking moments when we are not truly acting. These are the times when we are just “going through the motions” without deliberation. To me deliberation is the key element of action. When a person engages in routinized behavior without deliberating whether or not to continue the behavior, I think that is an importantly distinct process from conscious choice-based action.
Without this distinction, routinized behaviors would be considered actions. Then we would be able to engage in simultaneous actions (like walking and answering the phone). This would run counter to Mises’ claim that:
“Two actions of an individual are never synchronous; their temporal relation is that of sooner and later. Actions of various individuals can be considered as synchronous only in the light of the physical methods for the measurement of time. Synchronism is a praxeological notion only with regard to the concerted efforts of various acting men. A man’s individual actions succeed one another. They can never be effected at the same instant; they can only follow one another in more or less rapid succession. There are actions which serve several purposes at one blow. It would be misleading to refer to them as a coincidence of various actions.”
More importantly, it is necessary for actions to be nonsynchronous for Austrian value scale theory to make sense. This is the case because of the following: If an actor chooses A over B, B over C, and C over A, all at the exact same time, that would seem irrationally inconsistent. The Misesian contention would be that all action is rational, since nobody ever could make all 3 choices at the same time. These three choices must be made in succession; and between the instants of the first choice and the third choice, the actor’s value scale has, by definition, changed.
Thank you Lilburne.
OK. I think I see part of what you are trying to accomplish.
“I choose to simply refer to goals in order to include action in which no impact upon the feelings is intended.” (my underline)
From this, and from what you have written above, I sense that you are trying to avoid a construct in which actor A acts to ameliorate a feeling of uneasiness or dissatisfaction he himself may have.
So in your theory of action you may be objecting to the idea of “feeling” in the contentual or sensuous sense, and desirous of substituting a formal definition of happiness, as Mises argues for.
For example, Mises would define action as: “Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one.” (HA, 3rd. Rev. p.97)
Here, I believe Mises’s intent is a formal conception of happiness (“satisfaction”) that does not refer to any particular sensual “feeling” a person may experience.
This would correspond to your definition:
“An action always has an ultimate goal. A goal is a possible future situation that is perceived as better than what is anticipated to occur absent said behavior.” (my underline)
Here, I would tend to consider your “better” and Mises’s “more satisfactory” as largely identical.
Maybe you see things differently ?
(I’m assuming that when you write “perceived as better” you are referring to the subjective valuation of the actor A; in our current example, the soldier)
If I substitute your definitions into the soldier example, we would have:
"But if the soldier fully expects to die before [a future situation that is perceived as better than what is anticipated to occur absent said behavior], then can he truly be said to be [acting toward the ultimate goal] that is [a future situation that is perceived as better than what is anticipated to occur absent said behavior] ?
If we use your definitions, how would you answer this question?
Sincerely, Adam