I’m reading Human Action for the first time, and I’m following the study guide done by Kinsella. I’m on the first question and it aleady has my mind going lol The question is: What differs praxeology from psychology. Answer: Praxeology deals with actions as they are, Psychology deals with the internal events that can result in an action. (p. 12 1966 ed.)
my question is, why wouldn’t praxeology be concerned with the motivations of an person? Does praxeology need to be taken in pair with another social science? Is it a kind of magnifying glass if you will?
Think of your question in terms of geometry. The area of a triangle is 1/2(Height*Length). This is true for every triangle. While I can plug in the heights and lengths of various triangles to see that the formula does work out, I don’t really need to know the height or length of ANY triangle to make that formula.
In praxeology we have a similar situation. I can say that both parties in an exchange place higher value on the good they are receieving then the one they are giving up – and I can say this without knowing what the goods are and why they are valued. We can go back and observe this and say “Okay, Alice gave Bob her apple for his chocolate because she wanted to give Charlie chocolate for Valentines Day, and Bob took the apple because he had to feed his horse.” Thats fine, and it might be of interest to a praxeologist for other reasons, but it isn’t useful in helping us understand how ALL exchanges work.
I think that the scope of praxeology could drastically increased if it were combined with, or applied to other social sciences, because this would dramatically increase the size of the worldview that one would have and the number of judgments that could be made expand infinitely. To expand upon Mike’s analogy, geometry could tell you a lot about the dimensions a house would have to be to fit a particular size, but only physics could tell you if it would stay up, so one combining them would be in a much better position.
With this being said praxeology is still its own science, you cold be totally ignorant of psychology and you could still be great at praxeology because, as the study guide says, psychology deals with what culminates in individual action, what forms preference and perspective, but what does this have to do with the action which ultimately takes place? You can’t tell unless you take the outcome of the physical action itself, and the abstract which the actor MUST have been pursuing (AKA the most highly valued end), but wait, this is praxeology, so we’ve come full circle and we can tell that praxeology has a different place than psychology, but this does not mean that they cannot be combined, especially with sociology and psychology upon a historical basis.
kicks rocks now i’ll never be a real austrian economist.
I have another question: in “Causality as a requrement of action” Mises states:
"We are fully aware that in
asserting this we are moving in a circle. For the evidence that we have correctly
perceived a causal relation is provided only by the fact that action guided by
this knowledge results in the expected outcome."
i’m assuming that the circular logic is that cause=event=cause, etc. so how do you discern one from the other?
i think i may have answered my own question, but i’m also assuming you would pick a point in time essentially and work fom there. ie the day the stock market crashed, or something not as eventful like a store going out of business.
Close. Basically, he’s saying that we know Cause A will result in Effect A only because when we acted on the belief that Cause A results in Effect A we turned out to have been correct. For example, “building an addition to my grocery store will bring in more customers and the addition will pay for itself in two years” is only true if, when you do it, you turn out to have been correct. There is no other geometry or divination you can employ to be certain of the outcome of your actions.
Yet we say that action is purposeful in that it aims to bring about specific effects by the employment of specific means, that is, it employs a theory of causality. This is the circle - what constitutes purposeful action is revealed by the bringing about of intended effects yet we only know what effects will be brought about by a particular course of action (e.g. building an addition) by acting.
The question is: What differs praxeology from psychology. Answer: Praxeology deals with actions as they are, Psychology deals with the internal events that can result in an action. (p. 12 1966 ed.)