Praxeology's Place

[I_Ryan]

@Smiling Dave

So that for now, possibly forever, the two fields are as far apart as praxeology and first aid, which says that if one breaks his arms he wont lift heavy things because he can’t.

But didn’t my original analysis make their relationship clearer?

(By the way, in that analysis, I was trying to talk about the relationship between the 2 different points of view in terms of their method or whatever. I wasn’t trying to say anything about where the actual sciences themselves are. Notice that the last paragraph says nothing about what they really do, but only about what would happen if they were engaged in the same kind of prediction. I was just trying to explain the nature of their relationship, which is that of simply being 2 completely different points of view about the same thing. If they predicted the same thing, they would merely make you more confident about the prediction, I guess. Or something?)

[filc]

@I. Ryan

Where did I do that?

I don’t think you did. I wasn’t attacking you sorry.

[filc]

@I. Ryan

(The “aprioristic” part of the social science model has nothing to do with the natural science one.)

Yes it does.

[Smiling_Dave]

OK, glad we agree

[I_Ryan]

@filc

Yes it does.

In what way?

[filc]

@I. Ryan

(The “aprioristic” part of the social science model has nothing to do with the natural science one.)

@Filc

Yes it does.

@I. Ryan

In what way?

One is used as a guide when analyzing the other.

[I_Ryan]

@flic

One is used as a guide when analyzing the other.

For example, why would I need the social science model for this example (the one in the first paragraph)? A movement in their brain (picked up by the brain scanner) causes a movement in their body. Why would I need to think about desire, knowledge, or anything like that in that example?

I don’t think that I would, and I’m saying that the natural science model for predicting human behavior is simply that (predicting one movement in 3D space from another one). They often say things like “this brain scan predicts that they will choose to press the first button”, but either that’s metaphorical, or they’re somehow combining both methods. But that would be fine anyway. As you said, we often combine both models. We let one fill in the blanks from the other or whatever.

[filc]

@I. Ryan

For example, why would I need the social science model for this example (the one in the first paragraph)? A movement in their brain (picked up by the brain scanner) causes a movement in their body. Why would I need to think about desire, knowledge, or anything like that in that example?

I don’t think that I would, and I’m saying that the natural science model for predicting human behavior is simply that (predicting one movement in 3D space from another one). They often say things like “this brain scan predicts that they will choose to press the first button”, but either that’s metaphorical, or they’re somehow combining both methods. But that would be fine anyway. As you said, we often combine both models. We let one fill in the blanks from the other or whatever.

Ahh, in my refernece to you, when I said “A priori” I was not referring to praxeology or “Social Science Model”. I was just simply stating that scientists use both aprioristic methods, and aposterori methods in conjunction when performing thier tests. A good scientists will have a list of rules to guide him before he enters the lab lest he spends years deciphering data data with no guidance.

As far as praxeology is concerned, the study of Human Action, I don’t know that it does apply to the test you cited, but that doesn’t mean those scientists are not employing various levels of a prioristic reasoning. All scientists go into a test with various prior assumptions. Various variables they want held as true, or are assumed as fact based on thier understanding of reality around them. With that they interpret thier data.

“this brain scan predicts that they willchoose to press the first button”,

Does it predict what they will choose? Or does it simply show what the decission was, prior to the biomechanical response of the mental resolution. In other words, does the test know that Soandso would prefer orange, before Soandso was given the opportunity of color preference? Does the brain scan see into the future, and predict future preferences?

[I_Ryan]

@flic

Ahh, in my refernece to you, when I said “A priori” I was not referring to praxeology or “Social Science Model”. I was just simply stating that scientists use both aprioristic methods, and aposterori methods in conjunction when performing thier tests. A good scientists will have a list of rules to guide him before he enters the lab lest he spends years deciphering data data with no guidance.

As far as praxeology is concerned, the study of Human Action, I don’t know that it does apply to the test you cited, but that doesn’t mean those scientists are not employing various levels of a prioristic reasoning. All scientists go into a test with various prior assumptions. Various variables they want held as true, or are assumed as fact based on thier understanding of reality around them. With that they interpret thier data.

Oh okay.

@flic

Does it predict what they will choose? Or does it simply show what the decission was, prior to the biomechanical response of the mental resolution. In other words, does the test know that Soandso would prefer orange, before Soandso was given the opportunity of color preference? Does the brain scan see into the future, and predict future preferences?

It just predicts the movement of one 3D object (their arm and so on) from the movement of another 3D object (their brain or whatever). I don’t think that has anything to do with choice, preference, or anything like that.

[filc]

@I. Ryan

It just predicts the movement of one 3D object (their arm and so on) from the movement of another 3D object (their brain or whatever). I don’t think that has anything to do with choice, preference, or anything like that.

Yea doesn’t sound like it.

[Azure]

As he said in The Ultimate Foundation, “[a] characteristic mark of an a priori category is that any different assumption with regard to the topic concerned appears to the human mind as unthinkable and self-contradictory.” For Mises, something a priori is simply something absolutely impossible for us to imagine any other way. I can’t conceive of a universe without causality, because I wouldn’t be there. In other words, it’s “a priori” that there is causality. If you can’t imagine something any other way, it’s “a priori” in that sense.

To say that you find it impossible to conceive of something is a statement about your mind, not a statement about the something that you find to be impossible. Empirical science has given us knowledge of many things about our world our ancestors would never have guessed.

Now, what’s a priori? I think that it’s simply our volition. As long as I’m trying to study and extend the Misesian project, it’s certain that I’m gonna be acting. Sure, one day I mightn’t be around to act, but as far as I’m still here, it’s a safe assumption to make (that I’m acting or whatever). It would be impossible for me to be wrong about this, because the moment that I’m “wrong” about it, I’m incapable of being wrong about anything anyway. Our volition is a priori simply because we need our volition to think about our volition. We must act to consider our action.

It’s probably possible to engineer a mind without the ability of reflection. Its thoughts, goals, and actions are written purely in external things. If you pointed at it and said “look at that!” it would turn around and say “Where!?” (Already we’ve crossed into anthropomorphization! But these details are merely for illustration.) It could look at humans, figure out how they work, and come to notice humans say things like “I need my volition to think about my volition.” Upon further inspection, the mind could figure out that human brains possess internal models of the world, models that include the unit that makes the model!

At this point, the mind wouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t say “Wow, humans work so differently from me!” It doesn’t know how its own modeling system works. It doesn’t know that it IS a modeling system. It doesn’t even know that it exists! If you build two of them, they would come to understand each other’s modeling system, and wouldn’t think to apply that system to themselves. If you built a hundred thousand of them, none of them would ever realize that they, too, are a member of this group that they are studying.

The mind would never figure out it can’t reflect because it can’t reflect! This isn’t a sign the mind is broken but a sign that it’s working perfectly. If it said “I can reflect” then it would be incorrect.

That I think, if I am exposed to a phenomena then I will build a model of it which can predict with reasonable accuracy, is evidence that I can reflect. If I couldn’t, the only reason I would think so is if my mind was randomly generating nonsense. It is, therefore, the much more reasonable¹ guess (without further evidence) that I can reflect.

But the question is, “Did Mises understand that the a priori facts were simply pieces of reflective knowledge?” I’m not perfectly sure that I know what you mean by “pieces of reflective knowledge”, but I’m pretty sure. Anyway, as Mises said in Human Action, “The starting point of praxeology is[…] reflection about the essence of action.” Isn’t that the same thing that you’re talking about? The essence of action is what’s a priori about the world (right?), and he’s saying to start out with praxeology we “reflect” on the essence of action. Is there any difference between what he’s saying here, and what you’re trying to say? Or somewhere else did he demonstrate that he didn’t really get it?

What I think Mises got wrong was that he considered reflection to be fundamentally different from observation. I think reflection is a type of observation, that operates by the same principles as any other type of observation. Knowledge that is “a priori” and knowledge from running laboratory experiments are both fruits from the same vine. If Mises had understood this, then why did he present his ideas of epistemology as if they were in opposition to the mainstream ideas? Why speak as if knowledge of human action was in a separate magisterum altogether from the “natural sciences?” (as if we aren’t a part of nature too!) If Mises ever did say anything to the effect of “Empiricism and logical argument both work, because there is a common core to both of them” then I’d love to know where.

¹If I don’t have the power of reflection, why would I think that particular bit of random nonsense, as opposed to all the other semantically valid english sentences that happen to be untrue? Going off of my thought alone, the simplest explanation is that it is accurate. However notice this isn’t anywhere close to an infallible argument: If I was generating nonsense, and I happened to stumble upon something like “I can fly by flapping my arms really fast”, going by my thought’s existence alone as evidence would still lead to the proposition being true as the most probable case.

[I_Ryan]

@Azure

I think reflection is a type of observation, that operates by the same principles as any other type of observation. Knowledge that is “a priori” and knowledge from running laboratory experiments are both fruits from the same vine.

At the most fundamental level of analysis, I would say the same thing.

@Azure

If Mises had understood this, then why did he present his ideas of epistemology as if they were in opposition to the mainstream ideas? Why speak as if knowledge of human action was in a separate magisterum altogether from the “natural sciences?” (as if we aren’t a part of nature too!)

First of all, he didn’t think in practice they were in opposition to mainstream ideas:

@Ludwig von Mises

In asserting the a priori character of praxeology we are not drafting a plan for a future new science different from the traditional sciences of human action. We do not maintain that the theoretical science of human action should be aprioristic, but that it is and always has been so.

He must have thought that he was odd only in the respect that he was conscious of the method. It wasn’t as if he employed a new method, and everybody else employed something else. No, it was simply because he was aware of this situation that he was able to make his economics cleaner and so on. I imagine while everybody else was making a bunch of errors out of being confused about the method, he was above most of that strife, and able to go on his way without even entering into a lot of their controversies.

Now, why did he think that his epistemology (his awareness of the method) was different than the mainstream? He knew in the end, his method wasn’t different, but why did he think that his understanding of it was different? I’m pretty sure that it was, and I suspect that most people still haven’t even an inkling of the significance of his argument. After all of his effort, most economists still really have no idea what he was going on and on about in the beginning of Human Action. In a lot of respects, it’s not even their fault; I contend that Mises was systematically misleading in those opening sections, but I will leave it for another day to ask whether that reflects some sort of shortcoming of understanding on his part. For now, it’s simply important to admit that he systematically confused the hell out of everybody. Or at least that’s what I suspect.

But, to get back to the point, why did he speak as if the social sciences (praxeology) was in a separate magisterum altogether from the natural sciences? Well, first it’s important to recognize that he didn’t try to say that there would be no way to unify science ever: He simply said at this point we don’t know how to do that; I don’t want you (or anybody else) to think that he was some sort of nutcase who thought that the mind had nothing to do with the body. He said for now we need to aquiesce in some sort of methodological dualism. I mean, I contend that such a dualism would exist no matter what, but whatever. (I will get to that in a second.) I’m not even sure whether he would have disagreed with that. Did he mean that we could destroy the methodological dualism, or did he merely think that we could make it useless? Anyway, I’m probably starting to get pretty confusing, so I will simply move on to what the methodological dualism is.

As I said in my 2nd post in this thread, I think of the social sciences and the natural sciences (their opposition being the methodological dualism) simply as 2 different kinds of models for the same thing. In one case, you model the other people as conscious. And, in the other one, you just model them as 3D objects. In both cases, you’re simply making a mental model of the sensations that you’re experiencing, but it’s as if they’re 2 completely different “points of view” or something. In the 1st one, you model the cluster of sensations that you would call the other people’s bodies on yourself. And, in the 2nd, you model them as mere objects. Or whatever. In you everyday life, (I assume) you experience sequence of sensations, some being “in your head” and others being “in the outside world”. Well, the social science model uses some of the sensations in your head (visualizing stuff, feeling desire for something, and so on) to organize your thoughts about some of those in the outside world (the regularity of the 2D images on your visual field that you refer to as the other people), and the natural science one doesn’t do that. But, it’s almost impossible to overemphasize the point that both models are simply to predict what your future sensations will be (what 2D images will appear on your visual field, what bodily sensations you will experience, what sounds will surround you, and so on).

Anyway, that’s the methodological dualism, but now let’s talk about how (I assume) the mainstream didn’t understand that. In the social science model, you model your cluster of sensations that you call the “other people” on your cluster of sensations that you call your “thoughts”. To predict what you will experience in the future in terms of the first cluster (the ones making up the other people), you imagine that they have thoughts, feelings, and so on too. It’s not just you who thinks; it’s also the rest of the people. But, again, it’s not as if you actually see any of their thoughts; it’s just a damn useful model for predicting some of your sensations. For this exact point, it’s perfectly meaningless to ask whether animals are really conscious, or just act like it. If they act like it (if it’s useful to consider them as if), they simply are. When we say that the other people are conscious, we’re simply saying that it’s useful to act as if they are. If it’s useful to do that with animals, there’s absolutely no difference. Anything else would plunge us into a useless dispute of words.

But that means that we have to start out our investigation by turning our eyes inward. Before we can turn our attention to the other people in the outside world, we must get an understanding of how our action works (the “moving parts”, such as how desire works, how belief works, and so on), and that’s in our head. Before we can model other people on ourselves, we have to model ourselves. If we don’t have any idea how our desire, belief, and so on works, how the hell could we expect to predict anything on their basis? So we can’t just start going outside and seeing what other people do; we have to start out by sitting inside and seeing what we do. Only once we have an understanding of our own mind can we act as if anybody else has the same thing going on. We must build a model of ourselves before we build a model of anybody else.

So where did the mainstream mess up? Well, they didn’t realize that at all. Simply working off of their subconscious, common sense ideas of how their action worked, they started to try to “empirically” discover how people behave. But, as Mises stressed over and over, it’s not that they’re somehow forgoing the first step (building a model of their own action); it’s that they’re simply letting it stay in its unscientific, common sense formulation. I mean, this whole thing is pretty easy to understand when you take notice of the fact that you probably started modeling other people on yourself when you were less than 2. That machinery sunk into your subconsciousness many years ago. It’s takes an extremely self-reflective mind to dig up a program that you wrote so far in the past. So for most people, they take it so for granted, that they don’t realize that the program even exists. It’s as if they think that they really do see other people’s thoughts or something. And, I mean, the whole thing works pretty well for everyday life, but it’s certainly not rigorous enough for science. Or at least Mises didn’t think so.

So while the rest of the economists worked off of a model that they packed deep into their subconsciousness a few decades in the past, Mises worked off one that he was constantly revising and trying to understand. He understood that he really couldn’t see anybody else’s thoughts (see The Alter Ego in Human Action), so he knew that the first step in any economic theory was to build that model. It wasn’t an ultimate given to his experience; it was something that he had to construct out of a bunch of much more fundamental pieces. He understood that, and it gave him the tools to be an extremely reasonable, powerful economist.