The Critique of Praxeology from the Point of View of Natural Science

Economics Economics Questions
1

Mises claims that praxeology is a deductive science like mathematics or geometry, and that the validity of its conclusions (Y) derive from the consistency of its reasoning from its original premises (X).

As Robbins explains:

“Economic laws describe inevitable implications. If the data they postulate [X] are given, then the consequences they predict [Y] necessarily follow. In this sense they are on the same footing as other scientific laws, and as little capable of “suspension.” If, in a given situation, the facts [X] are of a certain order, we are warranted in deducing with complete certainty that other facts [Y] which it enables us to describe are also present. …If the “given situation” [X] conforms to a certain pattern, certain other features [Y] must also be present, for their presence is “deducible” from the pattern originally postulated.” (An Essay on the Nature & Significance of Economic Science)(X’s and Y’s added by AK)

What exactly is Mises’s original premis or axiom? He claims that people aim at ends; that they attempt to replace the situation confronting them with a different situation.

“In an a prioristic science, we start with a general supposition—action is taken to substitute one state of affairs for another.”

(The Free Market and its Enemies, p. 16)

“The starting point of praxeology is a self-evident truth, the cognition of action, that is, the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing as consciously aiming at ends.”

(The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 5)

Regarding praxeology in its most general and universal form, Mises is saying that the “X” which we assume, and from which we deduce Y, is the assumption or supposition of action. We assume X: that an actor attempts to replace the current situation with a different situation.

If we accept X, and if we accept the validity of his deductions, then we must accept Y.

Given that praxeology is a discipline as described above, what reason might there be for denying Mises’s premise or grounding axiom—the supposition of action?

From the point of view of natural science, one might reject Mises’s premise for the following reason.

The natural scientist may argue that while he accepts the “psychological” fact of action, he rejects the “ontological” fact of action. This means that while it may be true that I experience something like aiming at ends “inside my head,” the progress of natural science is likely to demonstrate, eventually, that the feeling I have, and which I believe is self-evident proof that I do aim at ends, is really (ontologically) just the relationships of particles in fields of force. That which I experience as my own aiming at ends, science will one day fully explain in physical terms. And thus, the ontological fact (what is real) is not action, but particles in fields of force. The subjective fact of action, the natural scientist may argue, is a subsidiary or residual effect of physical processes. The subjective phenomenon of action is of a lower ontological status than the phenomena of physics.

The phenomenon of action belongs to a specific class of like phenomena. Action (the experience I have of it in my head) belongs to the same class of phenomena as a mirage. One may see a mirage with one’s eyes, and one may accept this “psychological” fact. But one may also deny that the mirage is an “ontological” fact. What a mirage “really is,” is a certain arrangement of particles and forces. What I “subjectively” see as a mirage turns out to be illusory. What I see as a mirage is not “really” there. My own actions which I personally experience are of this same essential nature. One day the phenomenon of “action” and all other phenomena of consciousness will be explained entirely in terms of physical processes and then we will see that my subjective experience of aiming at ends is as illusory as a mirage. For this reason, we natural scientists reject the notion that action “exists” or that “man acts.” What exists are particles in fields of force. We thus reject Mises’s premise that there is such a thing as consciously aiming at ends.

This argument from natural science is impervious to any evidence of action based on self-reflection or observation. It is also impervious to the assertion, made by some Austrians, that in arguing against the axiom of action, one is acting. The naturalist may freely admit that he experiences, subjectively, something that may be referred to as action. But these internal “feelings” aren’t science. I may subjectively experience that glass is solid, but science shows us that glass is actually a liquid. Science will eventually explain how our subjective experience of aiming at ends is actually something else.

The naturalist will argue that science is natural science, which means the description of phenomena in terms of particles and forces. As science progresses, it describes in scientific terms, things which were once described in terms of opinions, appearances, sensations, and superstitions. Any discipline that relies on a description of things in terms of opinions, appearances, sensations, and superstitions, is, by definition, in a nonscientific state of development. A premise described in these terms is, by definition, a nonscientific premise. It is built on “subjective illusion” not on scientific fact.

The effectiveness of this argument derives from the naturalist premise that science will, in the future, succeed in explaining all phenomena of consciousness in terms of physical processes. This premise implies that the subjective phenomena of consciousness are essentially nonscientific in nature, and will, in the future, be given a purely scientific physical explanation. Until science succeeds in this endeavor, subjective verbal accounts of mental phenomena such as “action” remain, by definition, in a nonscientific state of development.

Science is the progressive description of subjective phenomena (things as they appear to us) in terms of objective phenomena (things as they really are). This is the natural-scientific premise. The premise entails the rejection of subjective appearances as evidence of the ontological (i.e., real) existence of things. Only scientific evidence given in terms of physical processes qualify as scientific evidence.

To the extent the axiom of action is derived from subjective evidence of the existence of action, it must be rejected as fundamentally unscientific in character. This follows from the natural-scientific premise.

A theory that supposes the existence of action and that reasons beginning from this supposition, requires an argument showing how or why the natural-scientific premise is faulty.

2

And yet quantum mechanics shows that, ultimately, there is no such thing as “particles” or “fields of force”. Now what?

3

I could be wrong, but I think praxeological economics is only comprehensible to the extent that you allow “acting man” to mean “the conscious portion of a brain which experiences the automatic unconscious uncontrollable calculations as choice” and “free will” to mean “the capacity of such conscious portion to experience output”. Thus Rothbard acknowledges an immediate problem is the concept of so-called “free” will, but he fails to acknowledge a distinction between “man” (the conscious portion that experiences choice) and the massive structure of unconscious uncontrollable automatic processes in the rest of the brain and body which work to output that which the conscious experiences. To me it seems this is the problem with everyone I’ve ever heard argue about free will.

Notice the problem here. “Man must learn then choose”. What is really happening is the unconscious brain is storing and processing input through a dynamic algorithm (“learning”) resulting in an output which the conscious brain experiences as choice. In the context of praxeology, “man” is “the conscious portion of the brain which experiences the output” and “free will” is “the capacity of such consciousness to experience output”.

4

Then substitute for “particles in fields of force”: “physical phenomena as described by the currently reigning physical theory.”

5

I don’t really get this objection. Regardless of what the scientist thinks we’re “objectively” doing, what is the scientist doing to present their conclusions, if not acting? This seems to run hand in hand with determinism being fraught with problems if you try and ask the determinist to apply the philosophy to themselves, or eliminativists/materialist reductionists to explain what exactly it is they’re doing if there’s no such thing as mental phenomena.

Even if they were to adopt this approach, given that natural science is often justified on instrumentalist grounds, you could simply take the same approach for praxeology, especially in light of the problems any one of these philosophies have when you apply them to the person advancing the argument itself. It’s embarrassing enough that natural scientists are helpless when it comes to justifying the principle of induction. In some ways I think Mises was an instrumentalist.

Natural scientists, or rather philosophers who claim to be representing natural science, tend to have the approach that if they cannot explain something, then it doesn’t exist. This may work for abstractions like God, which have no impact on epistemic pursuits (though some foundationalists may argue otherwise), but it becomes particularly troublesome when you apply it to mental phenomena.

6

Adam, please watch this lecture, it is well worth your time:

Where he talks about the “intentional stance”, I would argue that you can substitute “action axiom” without altering his meaning or doing any violence to Mises.

Clayton -

7

To be fair, I don’t think Adam is genuinely arguing for this viewpoint. I think he’s trying to see how it might be countered, though it’s only my suspicion.

Re Dennett, I like his work on free will. It seems to jive well with Mises and Hoppe’s own writings. Personally I think that it’d do praxeology well to get an “update” from the ground up, as Mises constructed it to more or less skirt around various philosophical debates, rather than adopt a concrete stance on them, except for a handful. To be honest, I think it’d be beneficial for a treatise on method to be published with the works of the aformentioned as well as the likes of Laurence Bonjour, Hollis & Nell (though Hoppe does mention them), Nagel and Henry Veatch, so that it can take on these controversies a little more heads on.

An issue with the Austrian method in my view is that writings on it are too dispersed, and therefore an up to date consolidation would be worthwhile. I think we can forget about positivism at this stage and focus on other issues.

8

Hi Jon

“Natural scientists, or rather philosophers who claim to be representing natural science, tend to have the approach that if they cannot explain something, then it doesn’t exist. This may work for abstractions like God, which have no impact on epistemic pursuits (though some foundationalists may argue otherwise), but it becomes particularly troublesome when you apply it to mental phenomena.”

Or, that if something cannot be explained in terms of science (defined as natural science), then it is not scientific (basically by definition). Thus, to the extent mental phenomena cannot be so explained, they are not (yet) scientific, and a discipline such as praxeology that accepts subjective phenomena in this unscientific state and tries to reason from them, cannot be truly scientific.

“To be fair, I don’t think Adam is genuinely arguing for this viewpoint. I think he’s trying to see how it might be countered, though it’s only my suspicion.”

Yes, correct. I’m not arguing for it but trying to summarize it in order to counter it. I think it has to be shown that subjective mental phenomena cannot, on epistemological principle, be described in physical terms. My intention is to describe the assumptions that must be made in order to attempt to explain mental phenomena in physical terms, and show that those assumptions preclude a consistent physical description.

9

If that approach is taken it generates issues for epistemology and methodology too, since their own subject-matter is based on mental phenomena. It even raises questions of an epistemic nature as to what the scientist is doing, as I mentioned, because if they are not acting, there’s the issue of what the justificatory force of their activities is? The issue pretty much has an explosive knock on effect for all knowledge, and I don’t think this has been dealt with adequately in any of the readings I’ve done on the topic from the materialist perspective.

Hence why if a philosopher is committed to instrumentalism for justifying the natural sciences (because they need to take a number of things as axioms to even get off the ground that they cannot justify via the scientific method), I think they can extend the same courtesy to those dealing with mental phenomena. Yes they may not be scientific in that they cannot be reduced to material constituents - not yet, anyway - but that just means they require a different approach to be studied. The sensation of subjectivity is inescapable and I see no logical reason not to infer that other humans experience it too. Hence, when dealing with them it’s best to treat of the matter from this vantage point, and in that case praxeology best elaborates on the implications of the fact that man acts.

The scientific method is ultimately a tool for gaining knowledge to navigate the world. It requires a number of assumptions to hold true, however, such as the law of non-contradiction, the principle of induction, the law of identity, causality, a theory as to what knowledge is etc, which it cannot establish by itself. So where is it left if it is concluded that because mental phenomena don’t fit neatly within it, that they cannot be ascribed a “scientific” status? Which leaves epistemology where? And if somehow epistemology can be salvaged, why not praxeology, of which epistemology is really just a subset?

Basically my point is, does the scientific label ultimately matter as to whether it can be considered knowledge? The scientific method is just a means of justification for obtaining knowledge. Essentially I would agree that it is very difficult to reduce mental phenomena to physical ones, unless one eliminates them or relegates them to epiphenomenal status, but then you’re just brushing the problem under a rug really, and pretending it doesn’t exist. So you’d probably need to look to other approaches for justifying this sort of knowledge. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him but Laurence Bonjour is quite a good read on these sort of questions.

As an aside, I am quite partial to Dennett’s argument on behalf of a sort of free will. I still want to refresh my reading my understanding of his argument some time. I’m trying to remember another philosopher whom I took a liking towards who wrote on the dissimilarities between AIs and brains but his name eludes me entirely. Not because either directly relates to this topic but I think you’d likely find them interesting.

10

Jon:

I’m in general agreement with you. But I believe that not only larger society, but many who are sympathetic to discursive economics/praxeology, share a belief that physical science is of a higher ontological status than discursive or philosophical-type disciplines. Re-phrasing your passage above:

“The discursive mental disciplines are not scientific in that they do not yet reduce the phenomena to material constituents. And this means that they require a different, non-scientific approach. The sensation of subjectivity is inescapable and we may grant that other humans experience it too. To date, this subjectivity has not been explained entirely in physical terms, but there is no doubt that one day it will be. Those who treat mental phenomena from this other, non-scientific vantage point do so only because a truly scientific account of mental phenomena is not yet available.”

The discursive disciplines are a stopgap until a physical description of consciousness is available. This is the argument, and it hinges on the validity of the proposition that physical science can, in principle, provide a consistent theory of the phenomena of consciousness. If physical science cannot, in principle, provide a consistent theory of consciousness, then discursive economics and praxeology are not a stopgap, but the only method available.

I’m going to demonstrate the assumptions that must be made in order to provide a physical description of mental phenomena, and show how those assumptions preclude a consistent physical description of mental phenomena.

“Laurence Bonjour is quite a good read on these sort of questions.”

Maybe you can recommend an essay or short book that best encapsulates his theory.

11

As a quick response, In Defense of Pure Reason is a great read. I don’t think it has all the definitive answers to the sort of epistemological questions rationalism tries to deal with, but it’s a very good pointer in the right direction. This article should also be of interest. I’ve not read his other works but if you look up his publications on wikipedia you’ll see he has a few works devoted to epistemology and naturalism, which is what I think this particular debate in the philosophy of mind really centers around, i.e. whether you can sustain epistemology absent mental phenomena.

I’d also agree with your comment. Mises viewed axioms as starting points of knowledge which had to be taken as true until human knowledge could reach such a point as to push them further back, so I don’t think he was in principle opposed to the notion that with a complete physical understanding of the mind that you could study economics as a physical science. As you state, however, this may be something that is in principle impossible (or which requires very forced, awkward assumptions), and this very much depends on the outcome of various controversies re mental phenomena. In particular there are certain axioms like the LNC that no amount of new knowledge can touch due to how fundamental they are to the very character of knowledge.

I’d argue that mental states are a particularly vicious thorn in the side of materialist philosophies and this is why there has even been a tendency to deny their existence in some circles or try reduce them to physical phenomena, and re-define them (in pretty much a similar way to how soft determinists try to re-define free will, to fit their conception of the world, which is not necessarily to say I am critical of this.) I’m not yet satisfied as to how they can be dealt with but I think eliminativism/epiphenomenalism/reductionism are all very crude tools for situating them.

I would be interested to see where this is going, for the reasons you mentioned but also because up to now it hasn’t really been an area in which Austrian epistemologists have delved too deeply, due to the school’s focus on historicism and positivism. It’s exactly the sort of question that has faced psychology, but even sciences like biology, where there’s been a thrust (or at least, a desire) to collapse them in time into chemistry and physics.

12

The problem with this thread, and with praxeological discussions resting on a concept about so-called “free” will, and with the video Clayton posted which I countered before and in my post above, is the incoherent use of words like “man” or “act”.

Man (his entire body) doesn’t act (behave with a conscious purpose). The vast majority of his body isn’t consciously aware and doesn’t think or value or choose. When you say “man acts”, what you mean is the conscious portion of the brain experiences the output resulting from mind-blowingly complex, unconscious, uncontrollable, automatic processes in the rest of the brain and body.

To the extent any discussion of this nature ignores that, it’s just a question-begging red herring circle-jerk. Case in point:

The assumed conclusion/premise is that the bulk of “the scientist” is acting in the economic sense (behaving purposefully), which is obviously not true. “The scientist”—that is, the vast majority of the scientist—isn’t “doing” anything in that regard; the matter forming “the scientist” isn’t consciously aware or valuing, and therefore it isn’t behaving purposefully.

What is the scientist’s consciousness doing if not experiencing the non-consciously-controllable output of processes from the majority of his brain and body?

13

Dennett addresses this in the video. The trouble with this kind of vulgar reductionism is that it decontextualizes the language of purpose and intentionality. When we say that man acts with purpose or that man has free will, we’re not making a statement about the fundamental structure of the physical world. Dennett expounds on this in terms of the “manifest image”, which is really what we’re talking about. The folk-theory of intentional/volitional language is simply mistaken and creates a false dichotomy between what Dennett rightly terms a miracle (supernaturally acausal choice) and causal reality.

Clayton -

14

Sorry, I really don’t understand what you just said. In any event, I’ve watched that lecture at your behest and he doesn’t address what I said, or if he does it must be in the form of a red herring.

“Man”—the vast majority of his body and brain—doesn’t act, it isn’t conscious and doesn’t value*, it isn’t consciously controllable, and doesn’t rely on whatever fraction of the brain may be consciously aware at any given time.* To say that “man acts” is just a misunderstanding and plain wrong.

15

I think you are misunderstanding how people use the word “man”.

16

I do not have the background in philosophy to frame this response ideally, but I do want to ask the OP: Why is this important?

What I mean is, that whether the subjective experience of purposive choice is illusory or not, it is the only way man may experience life. As such, any theories of human action must still start from this point, must they not?

In other words it seems to me that the question has no effective meaning.

17

@Lady: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The idea is supposed to be that “blind matter” does not act and does not choose. Hence, a very complex machine built out of this blind matter and following the mechanical laws of physics cannot properly be said to act or choose except as an illusion.

Dennett’s argument is that the “illusion” is precisely what we mean when we speak of choosing but that it’s a mistake to call it an illusion, that is, to assert that it is not real. It is real in the same sense that dollars are real or the mind itself is real, he says. Free will and action are no illusion but they exist in a different sense than, say, electrons exist.

The “hard-bitten physicalist” such as hashem will never see this point whether out of obstinacy or something else. It is just a convenient rationalization for his moral nihilism, in my opinion.

Clayton -

18

o the extent any discussion of this nature ignores that, it’s just a question-begging red herring circle-jerk. Case in point:

I can’t really see the significance of that to be honest. Adam is raising the situation in which mental phenomena are denied an existence altogether. This isn’t a free will discussion, and to the extent it has been mentioned, it is due to parallels between how compatibilists and certain materialists frame their position.

The assumed conclusion/premise is that the bulk of “the scientist” is acting in the economic sense (behaving purposefully), which is obviously not true.

No, that’s your own inference. I am asking what the scientist who eschews mental phenomena is doing exactly when they raise an objection along these lines, or one that denies the existence of mental phenomena based on natural science. How do they justify their position?

“The scientist”—that is, the vast majority of the scientist—isn’t “doing” anything in that regard; the matter forming “the scientist” isn’t consciously aware or valuing, and therefore it isn’t behaving purposefully.

What of it?

What is the scientist’s consciousness doing if not experiencing the non-consciously-controllable output of processes from the majority of his brain and body?

I don’t know. I can’t peer into it. Are you able to?

Man in this context refers to a conscious being. Whether it directly controls every aspect of its body or not is pretty much a red herring itself in regards to whether it acts.

The “hard-bitten physicalist” such as hashem will never see this point whether out of obstinacy or something else. It is just a convenient rationalization for his moral nihilism, in my opinion.

Just play dumb and pretend words are nothing but collections of characters on a screen with no meaning. What is meaning, even? You cannot quantify it or operatinalise it.

19

LOL, good idea. “Wow, what an interesting pattern of characters you have made on my computer screen. Too bad they don’t mean anything, whatever it would mean for them to mean something anyway.”

Clayton -

20

“…whether the subjective experience of purposive choice is illusory or not, it is the only way man may experience life. As such, any theories of human action must still start from this point, must they not?”

I believe the question is the scientific status or scientific validity of the particular theoretical description of the subjective appearance. The question has to do with a description of the subjective experience in discursive, philosophical-type prose, versus a description of the subjective experience in terms of ‘science’ meaning physical science.

I may see a rainbow. That is a subjective experience. Then I may say that a rainbow is pleasing, and that pleasure is a category of subjective experience. And I may say that I value rainbows, and that value is a category of subjective experience. And I may proceed like this linking various subjective experiences together in a discursive, philosophical-type word-scheme. Then I call this ‘science.’

But I may also describe rainbows in terms of physical science. I may use the reigning physical theory that shows how rainbows result from specific physical circumstances. The validity and scientific standing of this approach is confirmed by the overwhelming success of its ability to link the effect Y to the cause X.

There are two conceivable approaches. As it has not been ruled out that consciousness can be explained in physical terms, and as physical science is, by unanimous agreement, more successful than social science in explaining regularities of phenomena (constant relationships between X and Y), then if there is a choice whether to devote our energy to describing subjectivity by discursive prose versus physical science, we should choose ‘science’ over discursive prose.

This way of looking at things depends on the validity of the proposition that it is in principle possible to provide a physical description of consciousness. Mises does not rule out that one day physical science may provide such a description:

Concrete value judgments and definite human actions are not open to further analysis. We may fairly assume or believe that they are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. But as long as we do not know how external facts–physical and physiological–produce in a human mind definite thoughts and volitions resulting in concrete acts, we have to face an insurmountable methodological dualism. In the present state of our knowledge the fundamental statements of positivism, monism and panphysicalism are mere metaphysical postulates devoid of any scientific foundation and both meaningless and useless for scientific research. Reason and experience show us two separate realms: the external world of physical, chemical, and physiological phenomena and the internal world of thought, feeling, valuation, and purposeful action. No bridge connects–as far as we can see today–these two spheres. Identical external events result sometimes in different human responses, and different external events produce sometimes the same human response. We do not know why.

In the face of this state of affairs we cannot help withholding judgment on the essential statements of monism and materialism. We may or may not believe that the natural sciences will succeed one day in explaining the production of definite ideas, judgments of value, and actions in the same way in which they explain the production of a chemical compound as the necessary and unavoidable outcome of a certain combination of elements. In the meantime we are bound to acquiesce in a methodological dualism.

Human action is one of the agencies bringing about change. It is an element of cosmic activity and becoming. Therefore it is a legitimate object of scientific investigation. As–at least under present conditions–it cannot be traced back to its causes, it must be considered as an ultimate given and must be studied as such.

Thus, we engage in praxeology (discursive descriptions of subjective experience) as an acquiescence due to the fact that our present state of physical knowledge is inadequate. Praxeology is a stopgap discipline that is all we can hope for under the present state of physical knowledge.

This is not my belief. This is how the world at large sees things.

To overcome this belief, it has to be shown that we are not lacking a physical description of consciousness due to the insufficiency of physical knowledge; rather, we are lacking a physical description of consciousness because the attempt to provide one is fundamentally misguided. I.e., a physical description of consciousness cannot be provided because consciousness is not describable in physical terms.

The way to demonstrate this would be to show that any proposed physical description of consciousness cannot overcome X, which proponents of physical theories of consciousness agree must be overcome for the physical theory to be valid or consistent. In other words, demonstrate that with the means at our disposal (the means that it is possible for us to have, not the means we presently have), a physical description of consciousness is not possible.

Until this is demonstrated, individuals will direct their energy into attempts to describe consciousness in physical terms.