On Anne Martin's 1964 paper.

Economics Economics Questions
1

I think the fireworks begin for Mises right here:

The second type of muddle into which economists commonly
land themselves and others is to start with a plainly synthetic pro-
position, find it inconveniently often falsified, and restate it so as to
make it, in effect, analytic. The laws of Supply and Demand, as
usually stated, provide an example of this, e.g. ’ a rise in price tends,
sooner or later, to decrease demand and to increase supply.'3 In fact,
of course, as in Britain today, we often find that a rise in price of a
particular commodity is followed by an increased demand for it; or,
as in the nineteen-thirries, that a fall in price is followed by a decreased
demand. Rather than say that their account is often false, however,

economists have adopted the procedure either of saying ’ a rise in
price tends, etc.', or of introducing the phrase ceteris paribus. Either
procedure makes the proposition unfalsifiable, since the law can be
exculpated either by saying that opposite tendencies must have been
at work, or that other things didn’t remain the same.

Hmm. Exculpate means, says dictionary.com, “to clear from a charge of guilt or fault; free from blame; vindicate.” In other words, if it’s not falsifiable it is guilty and faulty and in need of vindication.

So here we have to decide whether to expand this into a discussion whether “falsifiable” is the measure of good economics. [I have seen a recent thread challenging this by asking “How can you falsify the following ‘Falsifiability is the measure of good economics’”? Not sure where that will lead.]

Truth is, it is way beyond anything I have studied or given much thought to. Personally I would have thought economics is good to the extent that it increases your understanding of the world, falsifiable or not. Falsifiable is, presumably, only a test of whether it’s good, not a definition of “good”.

My humble opinion is that we should distinguish between theoretical and practical falsifiability.

Let’s say someone in 1950 theorizes that the moon is made of green cheese. That was not practically falsifiable at the time, because we could not get up there and slice off a piece of moon to taste. Does that invalidate it as a starting point for theorizing about the moon? I don’t think so.

For one, such an assumption has many consequences, and those who think it fruitful to pursue those consequences are doing us a service. For instance if we ever achieve space flight, they will tell the astronauts “If you think we are right, take some silverware and napkins with you.”

Also, the consequences might be falsifiable. For example if a long intricate train of logical reasoning leads us to conclude that giant worms will start showing up on the Moon, so huge they are visible from earth, then we’ll falsify it that way.

Also, the theory may simplify and explain many things. If giant worms and bite marks and alien aircarft with McDonalds logos painted on them all start appearing on the moon, as well as many other thing CONSISTENT with its being made of green cheese start happening, but requiring a long list of other explanations [the worms are really giant plastic bags, the bite marks are crater impacts, the aliens are there for the view], that is both indirect evidence for the theory as well as a useful starting point for our provisional understanding of what’s going on up there.

Also, some day it may become falsifiable, with improvements in technology. We may be able to invent rocket ships that reach the moon. Then we will know for sure.

All that applies to the practically UNfalsifiable, but theoretically falsifiable.

The theoretically unfalsifiable is the bad stuff. That is something that essentially says, “No matter what happens in the real world, I am right.” [First, full disclosure. I believe in God]. For example, say a person comes up with a theory that everything that happens is because God did it and He never lies. Then the moon explodes. The next day, the very stars rearrange themselves into a pattern that says “I did not blow up the moon. Signed, God”

Did God blow up the moon? Yes. Did he rearrange those stars? Yes. Was He lying? No, He never lies. So He blew up the moon, and then without lying, declared that He did not blow it up. How do you account for that? We cannot understand the workings of God.

You see the problem. The theory is not only practically, but theoretically, unfalsifiable. No matter what happens, ever, it cannot be shown wrong. The disadvantage of such a thing is that it cannot help us understand, no matter what tools we have at our disposal, why event X happened and not event Y, for any X and Y.

Lest someone care to dispute this distinction between theoretically and practically falsifiable, I would like to point out that those demi-gods, physicists, make practically unfalsfiable hypotheses all the time. They assume the existence of some tiny little subatomic particle to explain things, when the technology doesn’t exist to see it. Oh well, they tell us. Maybe some day technology will advance. Meanwhile it’s a hypothesis worth looking into.

OK, end of first post.

2

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you were referring to a post of mine. I think what you’re saying is right, in that the purpose of theory is to increase understanding and explanation of real world phenomena. My point was that the positivists fail to hold their own methodological theory to the same standard to which they hold praxeology. Did you agree with that or not?

3

Ultimately, theoretical unfalsifiability means abandoning the rules of logic and any pretense of consistency. There’s a word for this: doublethink.

4

She quotes Mises:

Professor Ludwig von Mises
puts this viewpoint more extremely when he writes, ’ knowledge of
Political Economy leads necessarily to liberalism’.4 Whatever we
may think of the implications of this view for economic policy, it can
only have a harmful effect in the method of economic study.

This is supposedly an extreme case of "failure to distinguish between rules which are essentially guides to
the construction of economic theory and rules which are guides for
economic policy; between rules which help us to describe reality, and
those which help us to criticise reality."

In fact, it’s so bad that "It is hard to believe that this
confusion has not at times been wilful."

And what exactly is the problem?

We may agree that economic laws are ’ directives for the investigator
to find his way about in reality’ or heuristic postulates,2 but it does not
follow that they should be taken as imperatives of economic behaviour.

And why? Because you are going to bark up the wrong tree:

Whatever we
may think of the implications of this view for economic policy, it can
only have a harmful effect in the method of economic study.

In other words, say Reed Richards, hero of the comic book Fantastic Four, figures out using the laws of physics that his newly created Zeta bomb will destroy all life in the Universe forever.

He then writes an editorial in the Times, saying “Knowledge of Physics leads me to say the Zeta bomb should never be used”.

Well! The poor fellow is opening himself to attack by Anne Martin.

Professor Reed Richards
puts this viewpoint more extremely when he writes, ’ knowledge of
Physics leads necessarily to banning the Zeta bomb’.4 Whatever we
may think of the implications of this view for govt policy, it can
only have a harmful effect in the method of the study of physics.

Reed, you are making a failure to distinguish between rules which are essentially guides to
the construction of physical theory and rules which are guides for
govt policy; between rules which help us to describe reality, and
those which help us to criticise reality. It is hard to believe that this
confusion has not been wilful.

We may agree that physical laws are ’ directives for the investigator
to find his way about in reality’ or heuristic postulates,2 but it does not
follow that they should be taken as imperatives of govt behaviour.

Whatever we
may think of the implications of this view for govt policy, it can
only have a harmful effect in the method of studying physics.

Huh?

Reed Richards and Ludwig von Mises were not doing scientific research when they both said, “If the govt does X, it will have horrific coonsequences.” They were drawing the obvious policy conclusions from the scientific research they had already done.

Here is the full quote from Mises, from A Critique of Interventionism:

Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism. On the one
hand, it demonstrates that there are only two possibilities for the
property problem of a society based on the division of labor: private
property or public property in the means of production. The so-called
middle of the road of “regulated” property is either illogical, because
it does not lead to the intended goal and accomplishes nothing but

a disruption of the capitalistic production process, or it must lead
to complete socialization of the means of production. On the other
hand, it demonstrates what has been perceived clearly only recently,
that a society based on public property is not viable because it does
not permit monetary calculation and thus rational economic action.
Therefore, economic knowledge is blocking the way to socialistic
and syndicalistic ideologies that prevail all over the world. And this
explains the war that is waged everywhere against economics and
economists.

You see what he is doing. He states his conclusion first, that a study of economics will make one a free market advocate. Then he backs it up with facts that are results of his economic researches. I dunno, what is wrong with that? What was Anne Martin thinking?

Anyone familiar with Mises’ work knows how he emphasized that economics is a value free science. We study not “What is the right thing to do?”, but merely “If we do such and such, what will happen?” Just what Reed Richards did in his lab. When he was fiddling with the test tubes, his one question was “If we do such and such [=drop the Zeta bomb] what will happen?” When he found out, his role as scientist ended. He then began his role as decent human being, warning us not to blow ourselves up. Same with Mises. He first studied “If we end free markets, what will happen?”" When he found out [=mass starvation and poverty until we bring free markets back], his role as scientist ended. He then, as a decent human being, warned us not to shoot ourselves so badly in the foot, explaining why as well.

OK, time for a break.

5

The same applies to the natural sciences. For example, we can say “if we drop this acorn from a tower, it will fall to the ground with such acceleration”. If it gets grabbed by a bird on it’s way down, and therefore doesn’t accelerate as predicted, does this invalidate that law of of physics?

6

Aristippus, I was not saying or implying your point is invalid. I think it is an important one, worth looking into. I personally don’t know enough to pursue it. Maybe there is some way to make it falsifiable, I dunno.

7

Autolykos: exactly.

8

I see I am going to have to limit my discussion only to Mises’ position, not of all the othe people she mentions.

With that in mind:

Anne Martin picks up right where she left off, hitting hard at Mises’ quote, that "knowledge of
Political Economy leads necessarily to liberalism". My comments in bold.

If we
treat economic laws as imperatives in this sense, we lose any possibility
of testing the propositions we derive from them.

Not sure what she even means here. I presume that line arises from a misunderstanding of the quote, explained in the previous post.

As long as a study
results in no propositions which can, at least in principle, be subjected
to empirical test and thereby falsified or strengthened, it can only be
pseudo-science.

Hey ho! That little “in principle” phrase seems to be accepting the distinction between theoretically and practically unfalsifiable. Great. I am sure she will make good and sure to keep this distinction in mind.

Anyway, on with the show:

The task of economics, however,
is to explain the economic behaviour of aggregates of individuals, and
its results and, for this purpose, it is not necessary to explain the psycho-
logical antecedents of that behaviour.

Proof?

I quote Dr Ian Little’ that one’s
" ultimate " data should be statistical can no longer be considered a
shocking idea.

Appeal to authority?

We can, in this respect draw a good analogy with

physics, in which science the behaviour of electrons is now held to be
indeterminate.'1

Proof by analogy? That’s a big no no. Analogy is to expalin stuff, not to prove stuff.

In any case, it’s been argued that the analogy fails because electrons don’t think.

So that we need only maintain that no proposition
can be directly useful in explanation unless it can conceivably be
falsified. This is not to say that the methods of strengthening or
falsifying economic propositions are simple: only that we should not
so frame our propositions as to exclude, from the start, any possibility
of testing them.

The test Mises’ offers is “Upon introspection, do we agree with the initial premises of the argument?”

**She [**and I, hopefully] will have more to say on this later, but for now I’m just pointing out that she has not buried poor Mises just yet.

OK, the deep stuff, with X’s and Y’s all over the place, next post.

9

The good lady explains to us that Mises was maybe confused about something else, too.

So what was happening in Mises’ supposedly confused brain, maybe?

The conclusions of Professors Knight and von Mises may perhaps
depend on a fourth type of confusion; a failure to distinguish between
two types of hypothetical imperative, that is, statements of the type,
’ if you want x, you must do y '.

Uh oh. X’s and Y’s. I’ll summarize what she says:

There’s something she calls a “synthetic hypothetical statement”. Which means, in simple Enlish, an IF-Then statement that can only be shown true by going out there and trying it out.

A statement like ’ free competition
will maximise economic welfare’ is, however, synthetic and can serve
as the basis only for a synthetic-hypothetical imperative. We might
try to test it by discerning whether the spur of competition or the
lure of monopoly profits leads to the higher output.

For one thing, she doesn’t know what monopoly means. But let’s not get off the topic.

Some economists
have been guilty, perhaps unconsciously, of smuggling in all the
propositions they wish to make in Welfare Economics under the
umbrella of useful tautologies of the Pigovian type

In English, Mises was, maybe, assuming something to be logically provable when it was really only provable by getting out there and checking it out. But this maybe is not his fault. Maybe he did it unconsciously. She gives no instance of any of this stuff actually happening.

I dunno. Is this what gets published in respected journals? Maybe there is such a mistake, not that I can find one. But I’ll throw it out there anyway.

If you were intimidated by the X’s and Y’s and big words, wait till we get to the next post, where Kant makes an entrance. Beware: Not for the faint of heart.

10

What I’ll call “statistical economists” think that nice, neat correlations can be made between a small set of statistically random variables - for example, between “price” and “quantity demanded”. However, in the human mind, there are an enormous number of such variables. How can anyone, then, really know whether all of those variables save for the ones under analysis are being controlled? I don’t think they can. What’s the alternative? The methodology of Austrian Economics.

11

Mademoiselle has the floor. This is going to be the real meat and potatoes of her paper. Till now it was just the intial softening up, to let us know who this Mises fellow is that we are dealing with: a muddleheaded old guy who confuses things right and left. So don’t be surprised when we catch him sheltering in the wrong trench.

What I want briefly to show is that, in so far as I can understand
von Mises’s position, it is not, in fact, Kantian. He seems to be sheltering
in the wrong trench,

So who cares? So he wasn’t Kantian.

and once his position is exposed, and left to stand
on its own logical legs, its tenability seems highly doubtful.

Oh, I see. Not only is it not Kantian, it’s highly doubtful.

Well, I am no student of philosophy, so I leave it to the experts to say if it is or it isn’t Kantian. To be honest, I don’t care, but that’s just me.

Let’s look into her other claim, that “its tenability seems highly doubtful”.

It is not too easy to discover precisely what von
Mises’s fundamental propositions are,

No, it’s not an easy book. Written for the intelligentsia.

but two important ones appear
to be that all human action—as distinguished from mere physical
behaviour or what he sometimes calls ’ vegetative reaction’—is
purposeful (he usually uses the term ’ rational’, but in a special sense)

1. When people do things, it’s for a reason.

I think she got it wrong. The very first page of Human Action [after the Intro] says the book is about, you guessed it, human action.

And it then DEFINES “human action,” for purposes of the book, as “a person doing something for a reason.”

In other words, humans do many things. They couch and sneeze and many other things. But the book is about people doing things for a reason.

and that the general purpose underlying all action is to remove ’ un-
easiness ’ or ’ dissatisfaction’, to exchange a less desirable state of
affairs for a more desirable one.

2. The reason people have for doing things is to feel better somehow.

(Economics is about that special class
of action where the conditions of the two states which are exchanged
can be fairly thoroughly described in terms of’ possessions’, which
are measurable on the same scale, using possessions in the widest sense
to include such things as ’ leisure’.)

And this is what’s not going to have a leg to stand on. Those two are the highly doubtful, untenable, muddled things.
OK, have at it, Anne:

Such propositions do not appear to belong to the category of
Kant’s ’ synthetic a priori '. They may indeed be a priori because they
depend on a particular definition of action; von Mises writes, for

instance 'The statement " he acts irrationally" is meaningless, because
it is not compatible with the concept of action '.* But that would
make them analytic propositions, i.e. truths of definition alone; von
Mises requires that they be synthetic, since he wishes these propositions,
or their consequents, to be empirically informative, to tell us about
the real world.

In other words, if we accept the definition of action used in the book, he’s right. But Mises wants more than that. He wants us to believe that what he says tells us something about the real world. Which of course it doesn’t. It’s just a truth based on a definition. It’s an elaborate way of saying A is A. Now A is A is true, but it tells us nothing about the real world.

Hmm, if she is right, Mises is not only non-Kantian, he’s been exposed as writing true but trivial jabber.

Let’s open the book and see the quote from Mises in context [from Epistemological Problems of Economics], with my comments in bold:

We must next deal with the objection of those who never weary
of asserting that man does not act rationally at all.

[OK, first things first. What are these people talking about? For defiteness, let’s take two examples he gives in Human Action. A witch doctor trying to cure the sick by waving sticks around, and someone who gives up material gain for principled living. Such people are sometimes called irrational

A****ccording to Ms Martin, the guys saying witch doctors and principled men are irrational are right. Or at the very least, Mises will not prove them wrong. All he can do is fiddle about with his A equals A.]

It has never been
disputed that man does not always act correctly from the objective
point of view; that is, that either from ignorance of causal relations
or because of an erroneous judgment of the given situation, in
order to realize his ends he acts differently from the way in which
he would act if he had correct information… Only a
perfect being, whose omniscience and omnipresence would enable
him to survey all the data and every causal relationship, could
know how each erring human being would have to act at every
moment if he wanted to possess the divine attribute of omnis-
cience.

If we were to attempt to distinguish rational action from
irrational action, we should not only be setting ourselves up as a
judge over the scales of value of our fellow men, but we should also
be declaring our own knowledge to be the only correct, objective
standard of knowledge. We should be arrogating to ourselves the
position that only an all-knowing being has the power to occupy.

[English translation: If those guys mean people are always going about getting what they want the wrong way, well that’s true enough. It happens all the time. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody knows it all, and thus cannot know the best way to get what he wants. But they certainly do they best they can, under the circs. And that’s what rational means. If we insist that rational mean the best way to do the deed from an objective standpoint, not from the perspective of the actor with his info and brains, then we can never be sure anythig is rational. Only an all knowing being can know what is the objective best way.

That’s the defense of the witch doctor being rational. He is doing what logic dictates to do, given his assumptions.

So that takes care of “irrational means”. How about “irrational ends”, like the man of principle who won’t sell out? Voila:]

The assertion that there is irrational action is always rooted in
an evaluation of a scale of values different from our own. Whoever
says that irrationality plays a role in human action is merely saying
that his fellow men behave in a way that he does not consider cor-
rect.

[In other words, what a person wants is also to be judged entirely from his perspective. If A says B wants something irrational, he is saying that B should want what A wants, not what B wants. But what makes A’s scale of values the correct one? Nothing. So the man of principle is also being rational.]

If we do not wish to pass judgment on the ends and the scales
of value of other people and to claim omniscience for ourselves, the
statement, “He acts irrationally,” is meaningless, because it is not
compatible with the concept of action.

[Because action means getting what you want the way you think is best suited to get it.]

OK, time for the summing up. Has Mises merely prattled off a tautology here? I didn’t think so. He is pointing out that any attack on a man’s actions as “irrational” are either value judgements or assumptions of omniscience [both big no nos, of course]. Was he merely saying A is A here? Nope. Has he taught us anything about the real world? Sure has. He has taught us HOW TO LOOK at the real world. To avoid value judgements and assumptions of omniscience.

Now, truth be told, her mistake is even worse than it looks. She is making the same mistake Bryan Caplan did, that I discussed in this post

When studying a system of logical reasoning, be it high school geometry, or advanced math topic such as set theory or group theory, or Mises’ system of economics [=praxeology], one has to be careful to distinguish the system itself from statements ABOUT the system. The system consists of the undefined terms, the initial assumptions about those terms, and the conclusions that may be drawn from those assumptions using logic.

An example from geometry: Undefined terms: triangle, degree, sum. Initial assumptions: a point on a straight line is surrounded by 180 degrees, and the parralell postulate. A conclusion: The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.

A statement ABOUT this system: You will never be able to prove the parallel postulate from the other postulates.

Ms Martin chose to accuse all Mises’ assumptions and conclusions of not referring to the real world, but be mere self contained tautologies. In other words, the assertions WITHIN praxeology are useless toys. She chose as an example a statement Mises made ABOUT praxeology, one OUTSIDE his system, which was DISCUSSING, not DEDUCING from, praxeology.

In other words. Mises assumes as his starting point that people use means to acheive ends. His critics attacked this by saying "people are so irrational when they do that. There is no point discussing it. Would one seriously study the sound and fury of a madman that we know in advance signifies nothing? And he defended with the above, you are judging or presuming yoru own omniciensce when you say that.

That whole discussion has nothing to do with Ms Martin’s question, which is “Do the conclusions drawn WITHIN the system apply to the real world?”

Whew. We move on in the next post.

12

Get ready, cause here it comes. She gets the italics, I get the bold font in brackets:

I think it is untrue that
we can derive from introspection any sort of certain knowledge about
economic behaviour; even of the existence of what Robbins calls an
hierarchy of ends. I will take the extreme view and maintain not only
that we have no grounds for generalising to all men our introspectively
gained knowledge of our own behaviour, but also that we do not get
much certain knowledge of ourselves from introspection, or at least
not knowledge about the causes of our actions.

[She is saying that I can’t learn much about myself just by introspection, certainly no economic truths about myself. And even if I could, my introspection would teach me nothing about the other guy. First the proof that I know nothing about myself from introspection:]

If we come to the
conclusion that we ourselves do have a consistent ordinal scale of
wants, or ends, we perceive this from our own behaviour, not from an
armchair study of our states of mind.

[Have you spotted the boo boo? It’s one word, that has built a cute little straw man.

“Consistent”. Who ever said our ordinal scale of wants or ends is the same from moment to moment, much less consistent over time?

Here’s Mises in HA discussing a related subject:

The attempt has been made to attain the notion of a nonrational action by
this reasoning: If a is preferred to b and b to c, logically a should be preferred
to c. But if actually c is preferred to a, we are faced with a mode of acting
to which we cannot ascribe consistency and rationality.6 This reasoning
disregards the fact that two acts of an individual can never be synchronous.
If in one action a is preferred to b and in another action b to c, it is, however
short the interval between the two actions may be, not permissible to
construct a uniform scale of value in which a precedes b and b precedes c.
Nor is it permissible to consider a later third action as coincident with the
two previous actions. All that the example proves is that value judgments
are not immutable and that therefore a scale of value, which is abstracted
from various, necessarily nonsynchronous actions of an individual, may be
self-contradictory.

Now that’s settled, we can skip a lot of Ms Martin’s verbiage, which deals with finding consistence.

She goes on:

I am not,
incidentally, saying that our knowledge of mental states can only be
obtained from externally observable behaviour.

OK, so much for knwoing about ourselves through introspection. Now she ax murders the idea that we can know about the next guy from our own introspection:

But I do not think
we can derive useful knowledge about the behaviour of men in a
situation of choice from the sort of self-interrogation which tells me
whether or not my gratification at having been asked to read a paper
to this audience outweighs my trepidation about the discussion which
will follow.

What does this even mean? It seems to be saying that I can’t predict if the next guy will read his paper [or instead get stage fright] from whether I read my paper. Oh. Didn’t know that. I thought everyone is exactly the same inside, and so did Mises. Sheesh.

The single most important question she has already conceded right here. She admits that there are “situations of choice” and that people will choose in those situations. Guess what? That’s all Mises was saying. Of course different people choose differently.

Hoist on your own petard, Ms Martin. Cause how do you know the next guy even HAS a situation of choice? Only from your own introspection.

As far as our work as economists is concerned, I would
incline to agree with Ian Little, even against such staunch champions
of commonsense as Professor Robertson, that there is no escape from
being behaviourist in our psychology.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and we value yours, Ms Martin, but how about some evidence, logic, you know, something to back up your opinion?

There follow a few more straw men of the same type as earlier, falsely attributing to Mises the belief that we can discover EVERYTHING about the next guy from our own introspection. Why he bought his farm. Why some cultures and climes foreign to ours value leisure over money, and to what exact extent they do so. Mises, she says, thought we can find this all out from introspection. Not worth talking about, so on to the next post.

13

Not much left. She repeats the same ole mistakes, straw man that Mises thinks we get it all from introspection, attack on action is rational.

Then comes a brainteaser. To say all action is to remove uneasiness is either a definition, which is bad, or an assertion, which is worse. If the former, it is not the customary everyday definition of action. If the latter, it is simply unfounded, and has to be tested by the shrinks in their labs.

My answer: It’s a corrolary of the definition of human action being purposeful behavior. purposeful means to achieve a goal, =something you want, =something you think you will be better having than not having, =admitting uneasiness at not having it.

There’s a little nugget:

Von Mises
himself appears to perform the operation he calls impossible when he
insists that the growth of material prosperity has been fundamentally
due to the unhampered private ownership of the means of production

I guess “the impossible” is deducing economic principles from empirical reality, which she earlier said Mises thought a no-no. She thinks Mises saw capitalism brings prosperity by looking in the shop windows. In reality, he wrote a thick book to prove it from first principles.

Then comes a tangled little thing on the last page:

Von Mises
[ says] that our
knowledge of human action is both empirical and certain because
action is an offshoot of reason, and hence our reason has a special
relationship to it, guaranteeing certain knowledge. But this seems to
be using ’ reason’ in two senses. In the first sense, action is held to be
’ reasoned’ because, by definition, it consists in exchanging a less for a
more satisfactory state of affairs: this sort of’ reason ’ could be possessed
by animals and psychologists seem to find it useful to assume that it is.
In the second sense, reason means the power of reaching correct
theoretical conclusions, which is an entirely different matter.

I assume she got this from Human Action. Let’s quote it first:

The real thing which is the subject matter of praxeology, human action, stems from the same source as human reasoning. Action and reason are congeneric and homogeneous; they may even be called two different aspects of the same thing. That reason has the power to make clear through pure ratiocination the essential features of action is a consequence of the fact that action is an offshoot of reason.

Her argument is that reason in the sense of “the ability of your brain to get devise a scheme to get you bananas off a tree” is not the same as “the ability to reach correct theoretical conclusions.” And of course she is right. But did Mises think they were the same?

Of course not. Once again, she has misunderstood Mises completely. Lemme explain [based on his elaboration of the above statement in Human Action]

The real thing which is the subject matter of praxeology, human action, stems from the same source as human reasoning.

[Meaning when you study marine biology, you are studying the life of fish. Even a dog gets what a “fish” is. But when you study “human action”, dogs don’t even know what that is. Because to have in the mind the very concept of “action”, to say, “I am studying action,” requires an incredible feat of reasoning and abstracation only humans can do. Just as you can’t explain math to a dog, you can’t explain to him what “action” is. What purposeful is. These are abstract concepts. More especially when we get to the economic details of it. Buying and selling, money, all abstract concepts.]

Action and reason are congeneric and homogeneous; they may even be called two different aspects of the same thing.

[By “action” here he doesn’t mean shaking the tree to get the banana. He means the concept of action]

That reason has the power to make clear through pure ratiocination the essential features of action is a consequence of the fact that action is an offshoot of reason.

[Again, not the tree banana action, the concept of action].

She then pats herself on the back for destroying Mises, and with him capitalism. Now we have to justify from scratch everything we don’t like about socialism, because our great defender of private property and laissez faire, Mises, has been exposed as a broken reed.

Sorry.

14

Thank you for an excellent, critical commentary Dave! I must confess you’ve shown a far greater tenacity with that paper than me. I kind of got discouraged when she started harping about Kantianism… perhaps I’m getting muddle headed studying my current degree or with age. In any case, regarding her remark you quoted above:

"physics, in which science the behaviour of electrons is now held to be
indeterminate."

Even for physics this remark is misleading. Behaviour of individual electrons is certainly indeterminate in a probabilistic sense(quantum mechanics 101). But single particle wavefunctions produce probability distributions that to a degree undreamed of in the social sciences match observational data obtained from repeated experimentation using single particles. On the other hand, behaviour of masses of electrons is entirely dependent on the particular scenario they are placed and how their interaction takes place(not to repeat here error but this is kind of analogous to economics!). Often individual characteristics and interaction terms don’t tend to matter too much and tend to cancel out(such as in statistical mechanics when ergodicity is satisfied) and we can simplify our treatments of these phenomena somewhat(such as in the theory of phase transitions).

No self respecting person with an actual understanding of physics would make such an unqualified remark.