1 - In realist philosophy what is subjective and objective are both in the realist philosophy. In realism what is subjective is called agent-relative or agent-neutral. What is objective is the same as asking “What exists?”. That’s realism. There is no split. That’s a false dichotomy. My evalutions of the world concern knowing the evidence and how I will choose to participate with the known evidence. There is a TV. I choose to pick it up. I need to know the empirical data to do that. My choosing/desire also happens during the process of picking up the TV.
That’s called realism. It is subjective (agent-relative) and objective (object New York) at the same time.
2 - That quote of Hayek is how a realist would phrase it.
I’m not sure what you mean. Are saying in concern of who formulated the proposition? Or do you mean the ‘some people that live there’?
P.S. You’re into Menger, correct? Have you read any of Uskali Maki’s or Barry Smith’s works on him? And are you aware that Menger was Aristotelian? Also you appear to be influenced by Franz Brentano. Have you read any of his works? Realist phenomenology is related to all of this as well.
Do you believe that it is possible to find causal connections between events of the internal world and events of the external world? If so, does it not make sense, if you establish that only an event A of the internal world leads to an event B of the external, to say that, whether other people experience the event A is an empirical fact? For you are able to say, if you see the event B in the external world, you ‘know’ that the event A happened in their internal world. But that does not mean that you have to wonder whether the event A ‘really’ happened or not or whether, more generally, they are conscious or not. For you could use it only as a model, in which, for example, if you also know that the event A leads to a different event C in the external world, you would, if you observed event B, be able to ‘predict’ that you will be able to observe the event C. Plus, if you deny that my first assumption, that we are able to find causal connections between events of the internal world and those of the external, you are basically denying that a science of economics is possible.
(Also, keep in mind that what I am saying in this post is very tentative. My understanding of the relationship between pure praxeology and applied praxeology is pretty weak, to say the least.)
Yes the understanding of an axiom is in the realm of common sense. Philosophy in some circles (not saying Adam just a general notion) has attacked common sense, Hume for one, and thereby disconnects common sense from the person. It’s what an analytical philosophical approach does. It relegates understanding to ‘mental’ or analytical realms skeptical of evidential implications thereby detachess itself from the port hole of axioms (common sense).
“B may think that there are experiments of investigation that he would call ‘empirical’ in nature as opposed to abstract cogitation that would help him best adjust his web of beliefs.”
Nir:
As far as I can tell, we’re in agreement. This seems to fall within the general notion that an individual utilizes means he believes will attain his ends?
Feynman’s The Character of Physical Law is one of my favorites. : - )
I chose to emphasise arrears of agreement certainly
we can go yet further and consider that ‘realism’ explains why adopting an ‘empirical stance’ yields benefits over ‘empirical concerns’ than other approaches, with the answer that there are objects behind the data/phenomena.
I’m not as much interested in trying to convince non-praxeologists to become praxeologists, as I am in trying to convince those interested in praxeology to make their ideas more consistent. You have let it be known that you prefer an objective or realist approach. I accept that.
In leaving out the words “internal” and “external”, you do retain what is essential to that passage; but that is only because, in that passage, he (a) put the phrase “the external world” in apposition to the phrase “physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena” and (b) also put the phrase “the internal world” in apposition to “thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action”. If I were to write that “we are forced to acquiesce to an indirect, roundabout, method”, it would be accurate to say that, if we got rid of the word “roundabout”, we would be retaining what is essential to my point; but it would not be very helpful; it would not imply that we should stop using the word “roundabout” and just stick to using the word “direct”.
So what I am saying here is that he essentially defined the words “experience” as revealing to us “the external world”, which means the “physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena” and “reason” as revealing to us “the internal world”, which means “thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action”. So, in conclusion, that you were able to remove his one side of each of his appositions proves only that, as I said, they were appositions.
At first, I thought that those two passages were contradicting each other. But I changed my mind. When I was saying that the distinction between the “internal world” and the “external” world was essential, notice that, when we take into account what you believe is the point of the distinction between “causality” and “teleology”, which you said was to demarcate certain realms of science, which is the starting point of any methodology, the only thing that I mentioned that it was essential to was methodology:
So, in my other thread, I was using the distinction between the “internal world” and the “external world” only to clarify what the method of praxeology is, what the foundation needs to be. Before you are able to interpret action, which is the external manifestation of internal events, you have to analyze your own internal world. So the subject matter of pure praxeology, as I said in that thread, is only the contents of the internal world. If you do not use that distinction, it is impossible to demarcate the starting point of praxelogy, which is pure praxeology.
I disagree. Perhaps the terms “internal” and “external” are misleading. But I have yet to find something to replace them. I am not using “internal” and “external” to refer to any sort of spacial relationship between them. They have no spacial relationship.
I guess that it is not really the basis of social science. It is just the basis of defining the method, I think.
Well, Mises defined “teleology” as “a variant of casuality”. So, with that definition, it does make sense to talk of desires causing other desires or other things like that.
“Do you believe that it is possible to find causal connections between events of the internal world and events of the external world?”
I. Ryan:
Your question here does not refer to purpose. Your question is phrased entirely in physical terms: events happening inside of something and their relationship to events happening outside of something.
You are asking me whether I believe that there is some casual relationship between events happening inside a sphere, or box, or bag, and events happening outside of a sphere, box, or bag.
My answer is yes, I do believe this.
But I don’t believe this has anything to do with human action. I believe this has to do with physics.
That’s a perplexing bunch of statements, because praxeology is a realist approach. I don’t know why you arbitrarily excluded that. Watch the youtube video again and take note of Feynman using the word “implies” which is a term of logic.
“Before you are able to interpret action, which is the external manifestation of internal events, you have to analyze your own internal world. So the subject matter of pure praxeology, as I said in that thread, is only the contents of the internal world. If you do not use that distinction, it is impossible to demarcate the starting point of praxelogy, which is pure praxeology.”
I Ryan:
The approach you are outlining is essentially a branch of physical science.
You provide the following defintion of action:
“…action, which is the external manifestation of internal events,..”
You have just defined action as an external manifestation of internal events. You have removed the concept of purposiveness from the concept of action, and replaced it with a conception of two events, one happening inside something, and another event happening outside of something.
“Before you are able to interpret action…”
I think what you are referring to here, is actor A observing the movements of B, believing them or interpreting them to be actions.
As Hayek writes:
“…in discussing what we regard as other people’s conscious actions, we invariably interpret their action on the analogy of our own mind: that is, we group their actions, and the objects of their actions, into classes or categories which we know solely from the knowledge of our own mind. …We thus always suppliment what we actually see of another person’s action by projecting into that person a system of classification of objects which we know, not from observing other people, but because it is in terms of these classes that we think ourselves.” (“The Facts of the Social Sciences”)
As Schutz writes:
“For it is obvious that an action only has one subjective meaning: that of the actor himself. It is X who gives subjective meaning to his action, and the only subjective meaning being given by F and S in this situation are the subjective meanings they are giving to their own actions, namely, their actions of observing X.” (The Phenomenology of the Social World, p.32)
Praxeology is concerned with studying the logic of individual action.
In your example, we would need to make it explicit which action we are studying the logic of:
A’s action in observing/interpreting B. Or, B’s action in doing what he is doing.
In your example it is not clear whose action we are referring to in order to illustrate the logic of individual action.
“…nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.”
I will refer to this as Hume’s “theory.”
In Hume’s theory as conceived in this passage, a distinction is made between the objects which are our perceptions and impressions, and the objects that become known to us only by those perceptions and impressions.
He seems to conceive two distinct groups of objects: Perceptual objects and objects to which they refer (objects that become known through or by perceptual objects).
Question:
If these so-called external objects are not to be considered spatially external to the actor’s perceptual impressions, in what sense are they separated or distinct from the actor’s perceptual impressions?
I hate to correct I, Ryan and Richard Dawkins, but Evolution isn’t about the species themselves actively adapting to new conditions, but rather the new conditions weeding out the particular adaptations. This is the key distinction between Evolution according to Darwin versus Evolution according to Lamarck. In Darwin’s view, the environment is a filter by which only a certain set of species will ‘pass’ through without significant harm, where as a larger set will be wiped out (suddenly or slowly, it depends on fitness of the species). In Lamarck’s view, the species actively interacts with its environment to fit into new roles (a girrafe has a long neck because its ancestors tried to stretch themselves up to reach the leaves on trees would be an example of this).
In genetics, the genes themselves don’t seek out to survive, they merely replicate. In their replication, there will be those genes that will replicate better or worse in relation to the whole of the genome of an organism. This allows for fitness to be measured not as a raw quantity, but as a synergy between the genes. Thus, there is no need for Dawkins to pull a Lamarckian twist on the outcome. Nor does it require one to know how each gene influences another’s expression.
FWIW, I have to agree with the above. I’ve had some education on the subject of evolution when learning about evolutionary computation. (And when it comes to that topic, all you need to know is “Darwinian for the win, Lamarckian is malarkey.”)
“What follows from those two conclusions is the implication that the states which are the ‘fittest to survive’, those which will tend to exist for long periods of time and propagate their techniques, are those which take control of their system of education and establish such a monopoly. For such a monopoly spreads exactly what they need to spread to survive, pro-statist propaganda.”
Based on your theory, we should see municipal governments in United States annexing failed, adjacent municipal governments that are less capable of producing pro-statist propaganda and therefore have lesser survival value. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Even defaulting states generally don’t disappear; they continue surviving.
I think praxeology applied to the human beings running institutions provides a sufficient description. It is political careers facing destruction, not the destruction of institutions, that matters.
Have you read any of Stephen Jay Gould’s work? He took on Darwin in a massive way. He didn’t refute Darwin’s essential points but stripped away lot’s of unverified and inconclusive Darwinian theory. One major subject Gould changed with Niles Eldridge was “gradualism”. This is pretty old puncuated equilibrium stuff. The fossil record doesn’t show ‘gradualism’ for about 99% of all geological records yet for over 100 years paleontologists just assumed it was true.
No, I did not; again, they are just metaphors, like the word “high” in “that is a high number”.
I should have said “the action of other people, of the external world” instead of just “action”.
I am, yes.
Both, probably. For we have to presuppose that A is an actor to be able to suppose that A is able to interpret the movements of B as actions. Is that at all what you meant?
He makes the distinction between his “external impressions” and his “internal impressions”. He is not saying that they have any sort of physical relationship with each other, like the former are external to something and the latter are internal to something. He is just dividing his impressions into two categories.
Now the relevant question are these, on one hand, how do we determine what belongs to the former category and what to the latter, and, on the other hand, what is the point of dividing your impressions into those two categories?
Well, to answer the first one, the way that we determine which belongs to which is that, on one hand, internal impressions are ‘private’, other people around you do not have those same impressions at the same time, and, on the other hand, external impressions are ‘public’, other people around you do have those same impressions at the same time.
Now the second question is more difficult. Who cares about the division into the external world, that is, the ‘public realm’, and the internal world, that is, the ‘private realm’? Well, I think that the answer is what I was trying to explain before. We do not see the private realms of other people; yet the events of those private realms determine their movements. So, to make sense of their movements, we have to first examine the workings of our private realm and understand how it determines our movements and then we are able to assume that other people have private realms which work in a similiar way to ours.
So I think that it might be helpful, to avoid confusion, to replace the phrase “external world” with “public realm” and the phrase “internal world” with “private realm”.
