Well, after my little self exile, I has returned, to continue learning myself on Austrian Economics.
Aight, here’s my inquiry, and I hope the learned of you can aid me here, and wether I am spot on or not.
Months ago, I had a discussion with a professor of mine regarding the starting assumptions of the Austrian Schools, in contrast with the other schools. He expressed that he considered all Austrian research illegit, because they do not start from scientific starting points, but from a moral standpoints, and admittedly, I do have always noticed that in Austrian discourse, they always start off from moral stand points, as stated on the Marxian Virus article;
" Liberalism looks upon life primarily in moral terms. "
I thought, mmhhh, no clue if morality constitutes the entirety of Austrian Axioms. My professor strongly believes science must not begin from moral stand points or values. Later that day, I realized "Son of a gun!! Is not a love for truth, and the value of employing a rigorous system of never-ending tests (ergo Science as we know it today) a moral starting point in itself!? A love for science!? Is THAT not moral starting point in itself!?
Needless to say, I felt pissed that day, not having realized that before to counter my proffesor, and his own inconsistency.
Think I am spot on Ladies and Gentlemen? What would have been your responses?
My response would have been that he believes that science is only aposteriori, which simply isn’t the case. Further, AE itself is a value-free set (as econ should be). Liberalism as qua classical, which incorporates an econ view, can look at life in moral terms just fine.
If he’s talking about Austrian economics, then he is completely wrong, and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. ALL the major Austrian economists conceived of economics as a value-free science: even Rothbard (In Ethics of Liberty he wrote that his economics treatise “was praxeologic and value-free”).
That statement has nothing to do with Austrian economics. If the professor is challenging “Austro-libertarianism”, then that is a different matter. In any case, that sentence is too sweeping. Natural rights liberalism may look upon life primarily in moral terms, but the liberalism of Ludwig von Mises did nothing of the sort. Mises was very careful to abjure from moral arguments in ALL his scholarly work. Mises took all values as given. Mises took it as given that the vast preponderance of mankind was concerned chiefly for material well-being. Given that capitalism was objectively the best system for promoting material well-being, and that capitalism is only sabotaged by government economic intervention, Mises’ liberalism promoted laissez-faire as the best means for the ends given, not for the sake of any moral ends that he himself imposed on his readers. In Mises’ words:
“While praxeology, and therefore economics too, uses the terms happiness and removal of uneasiness in a purely formal sense, liberalism attaches to them a concrete meaning. It presupposes that people prefer life to death, health to sickness, nourishment to starvation, abundance to poverty. It teaches man how to act in accordance with these valuations.”
Yeah, your Prof got it all wrong, as the other posters explained.
Love of truth is the starting point of the scientist, but not of the science he studies. The atoms studied in chemistry have no love of truth, and are not assumed to have such a love. Triangles and circles and numbers, the objects of study of geometry and math, have no love of truth.
What the prof means is that Geometry does not assume triangles are good and circles are evil. Chemistry does not assume hydrogen is good and helium is evil. But Austrian Economics [he thinks] assumes capitalism is good and socialism is evil, that freedom is good and slavery is evil.
And prof is wrong, as the other posters pointed out, because none of this is true. AE studies what happens if you do this, not is it good or evil. Libertarianism is a different thing altogether, a philosophy of life, which apparently is full of moral judgements. Most AE people are both, thus perhaps prof’'s confusion.
The usual “scientific” objection to AE is that it scorns mathematics as an instrument of studying economics, and indeed scorns the inductive method, and experiments as well. Since the great gains in real world science to date have used all of the above [like physics], it is assumed [wrongly] that any discipline lacking these big 3 cannot possibly be a science, but is at best poetry or science fiction.
AE counters this in two ways. First it argues and claims to prove that economics cannot possibly be studied using those tools. Second it points to another method of learning about the real world, deduction from axioms. This was used to great effect by Euclid in studying Geometry. AE claims that axioms can be discovered for economics, and deductions drawn from them.
