But you seem to be trying to make some distinctions based on tendentious claims about certain psychological phenomena such as beliefs and desires, rather than on a phenomenological description of the necessary logical structure of action.
First of all, Mises talks about those “psychological phenomena” too, even though he uses different vocabulary. And secondly, my (Stoutland’s) distinction doesn’t depend on the validity of those psychological states.
Can you provide quotations, or at least citations, and your interpretations of them so we can see the passages you are referring to? And does he talk about those psychological phenomena in relation to praxeology or thymology? If the former, does he use them in the standard manner of psychology or as praxeological concepts? It is a common mistake among non-Austrians to not realize that he is using certain terms in a specialized (praxeological, rather than psychological) way.
Nothing I have seen so far has given me reason to believe that.
It seems that Stoutlands claims could be carried on to every action. And if so, I think it undermines his theory altogether.
For instance, we could say that according to Stoutland’s logic, the reason a person just handed the cashier $5 for a bottle of milk is because it’s price was $5. Such an interpretation does not take into account that that precise exchange embodies far more than what Stoutland interprets it to mean. Is this how humans interpret each other’s actions? Of course not. If such was the case, that the person purchased the bottle of milk for $5 simply because it was $5, then human civilization itself would break down. This is difficult to get your head around but I think it’s correct. You see, in order for humans to interact in any sort of successful way they have to interpret each other as purposeful beings. Beings who have certain ends will choose the appropriate means based on those ends. If the bottle of milk had been $1,000 the person would not have purchased it. Humans have to charge a price based on their understanding that other humans may choose other more appropriate means, etc. This sort of expectation is guided by the implicit belief in everyone that people are purposeful. The exchange of milk at a certain price embodies so much more than what Stoutland would have it embody. It embodies not only puposeful action by one person but by two or three or four or millions. The sign itself is there for a reason. Implicit in its being there is the idea of purposefulness. Purpose is everywhere and it’s implicit in everything we do.
You say that he believes in teleological action but then disputes that all actions are. It seems to me that he’s really saying some actions are deliberate while some are not. That doesn’t necessitate that they’re not teleological. Further, if I want to, I can say that every action has no purpose and if such is the case, as can be extrapulated from Stoutland’s argument, then my argument or his argument would itself have no purpose. Rather it would be reactive and if it’s simply reactive then it has no validity in the human sense. Once again, it seems his argument is simple 101 misinterpretation. Further, in order to show that his argument has any validity he has to come up with examples, that of which may just as easily be explained from a teleological perspective. It’s simple pedantry.
My point is simply that I find Stoutland’s views on what Wittgenstein wrote on signs peculiar. Which part of Philosophical Investigations is he drawing it from?
The Austrian School and cognitive science should be seperated. The Austrian School should be a formal system; should not derive statistical data from the real world. Neuropsychological, neuropsyiological, and neuroimaging studies conclude that all of our actions are reactive.
Take a set S of assertions which need to be true for some action A to occur. I think we can agree that |S| > 1 in most all or perhaps even all cases. Which assertion R could you pick out of S and say “R is true, so A was performed”. How could you eliminate the other assertions as not being the reason the action occured?