Here’s something I have a problem with. From HA , Mises says,
“T w o actions of an individual are never synchronous; their temporal relation is that of sooner and later. Actions of various individuals can be considered as synchronous only in the light of the physical methods for the measurement of time. Synchronism is a praxeological notion only wirh regard to the concerted efforts of various acting men. A man’s individual actions succeed one another. They can never be effected at the same instant; they can only follow one another in more or less rapid succession. There arc actions which serve several purposes at one blow. It would be misleading to refer to them as a coincidence of various actions.”
Can someone explain this? If I’m walking to the park, that’s an action. But let’s say I’m half way there and I start talking to someone on my phone as I’m walking, isn’t that a synchronous action? Or am I now engaged in a new action i.e. walking to the park while talking on my phone? If so, have my means/goals values preferences changed?
What if I play the Moonlight Sonata on my piano? That’s an action, but I can’t play the Moonlight Sonata without playing the notes. The notes are what Roderick Long calls the constitutive means. But each of those constitutive means has to be produced in an action, and aren’t these sub-actions synchronous with the larger action of playing the piano? Doesn’t this depend on what I think I’m doing at any given instant? Which begs the question, when is my preference demonstrated by the action? After I play each note, after I’ve finished the piece?
my 2cents. (please excuse the clumsy language, I am not well practised at discussing these ‘technical’ topics.)
if you are supposing that it might be possible for a person to ‘act synchronously’ how would you describe the intenional nature of the action?. i.e. are you supposing that the person acts with two independant plans in mind?, i.e. there are two independant means-ends assesments he has conducted and he has seperately embraced the employment of both means? would you not agree that one could understand the actors action just as well (if not more holistically and reductive of unnecessary complexity) if one assumed he had an ‘overarching single’ means-ends assesment, which not only included achieving the two ends, but made analysis of their competative or mututally supportiveness not only in their endidness but in the means that are required for the two.
For Example.
lets say you are half way to the park, do you suppose that you simultenaously assess the various means through which your end of ‘arriving at the park’ could be achieved?, and seperately but instantaneously asses the various means through which your end of ‘conversing with John’ could be achieved? and that you might do this without any regard for how the means available might compete or support your two ends, ? and last of all that you simultaneously embrace both the means for achieving the first and also the means for achieving the second.?
The Alternative
Lets say you are half way to the park, and your situation changes, your phone rings, you have an instant in which you go through a means-end analysis to determine your action (if you do and arent being instinctive/reflexive!!!). the end you are considering is ‘bringing about a superior state of affairs in the world than what would pertain if you did not act’ , you analyse that this super end- might be achievable by achieving some sub-goals , sub-ends, such as arriving at the park, and having spoken to John. ruminating on the means you might use to achieve as much of your sub-ends as effortlessly as possible you find that the means to achieve these sub-ends are non-exclusive, and so you can achieve both with the action of ‘answering the phone whilst walking to the park’ so you do that single action.
Yes. I think you have to simultaneously assess the means in a single thought process.
Yup.
No. Obviously, it’s possible (probable) the means available to me to talk on the phone, while I’m wlaking to the park, will be impacted by the means I choose to walk to the park, and by the fact I’ve chosen the goal of walking to the park. E.g. If I decide to “walk” to the park on all fours, I might have to choose a different means than my hands to speak on the phone to John. Or if my goal had been to sit in a movie theater instead of walking to the park, I might choose to go outside before I start talking.
If they’re separate actions, no; I can’t have two separate thoughts at the same time. If we amalgamate them into one action, then yes., I suppose so.
I don’t like this idea. If this were true everything we do would be subsumed into one giant action. I’m “walking to the park”… then I stop that and embark on a new action, “walking to the park while talking” , then I stop that and start yet another action “walking to the park while talking while looking at a tree” etc etc. This doesn’t sound very plausible, because how could you ever differentiate what you were doing? You’d go through life looking for a superior state of affairs without ever knowing the particular results of any one action. You could never learn. No. I think each action has to be discrete. So we get back to the original problem.
no because we do different things at different times… we do actions in sequence. its just that when we do one action, it can encompass many behaviours that 3rd parties see us doing.
first i walk to the park, then i walk and talk, then i just walk, then i arrive and read a book. they go in sequence, and when they have appearance of being multiple acts, they are really not but singular acts succeeding each other.
i dont understand your criticism, if you can diffirentiate what you are doing then you can.
you may be confusing action with behaviour, i.e. the action of wlaking to the park, with the behaviour of moving one foot after the other. you can certainly keep track of the effects of your behaviours whether they are voluntary acts or even instinctive reflexes…
they are discrete… so whats your objection? you can make several discrete actions one after the other, even thoguh they all point to the same end, its just that time changed and means available changed so you reassesed. each one is distinct because you did a means-ends assesment for each.
No, if I am walking in a park, and switching a song on my iPod, I am doing to actions at the same time for two different ends utilizing two different means. They are both very much conscious actions that I have control over, and they are occuring simultaneously.
The action of walking in the park is still a conciously controlled action, because it can be stopped at any time, aimed at attaining an ends. Nevertheless, to prove a point to myself about this, I just conciously controlled my walking, and switched a song on my iPod simultaneously - two actions at once.
Of course, they are two distinguishable ‘behaviours’ , walking, and ipod listening, but by what grounds do you draw a line between them as two seperate 'action’s? doing so would imply that you did not do the due diligence of a proper means-ends assesment , which is what is necessary for human action to be so understood as such.
in your most recent example, your goal was to demonstrate that you could perform two behaviours simultaneously, you assessed the means for so doing, and engaged those means, you behaved so as to walk and behaved so as to ipod listen. but it was one act. it must have been, because you intentionalised it as such.
your want is a single want which is conjunctive.a single want with two parts. so you are agreeing with me… and why shouldnt you, you are a human, acting.
Human action. Purposeful behavior; an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one; a conscious endeavor to remove as far as possible a felt uneasiness. Man acts to exchange what he considers will be a less desirable future condition for what be considers will be a more desirable future condition. Thinking and remaining motionless are actions in this sense. Human action is always rational (q.v.), presupposes causality and takes place over a period of time.
i am assuming that you believe that a world in which you walk and switch a song on your ipod is a more satisfactory state of affairs for you, even given the costs of doing so, than a world in which you did not employ the means to achieve these sub ends and they did not result. the more satisfactory state, which is the conjunction, is what your action is intentionalised to achieving, as such there is one action, comprising the two behaviours, which lets you bring about your improved world state.
i suppose it is a semantic question of whether you prefer to say that Man acts to exchange what he considers will be a less desirable future condition for what he considers will be more desirable multiple future conditions.
or Man acts to exchange what he considers will be a less desirable future condition for what he considers will be a more desirable future condition. (singular)
An action is applying means to suit an ends, while I am walking, and switching the song on my iPod, I am doing two actions. I am applying two seperate means to two seperate ends, and ergo doing two actions at once. No amount of analysis will be able to take that fundamental fact away.
I think Mises means that when one considers achieving some end, then the given actions as such will be coordinated as such. In the case of walking through a park while changing songs on your Ipod, these two occur in sequence in relation to one and other as neither preempts each other. So one can assume from an outsider point of view that both actions can be seen as one, with walking through the park subsuming the changing of songs on an Ipod into itself as walking is still the primary method of achieving a perceived end: moving through space. As such, Mises thoughts might be considered a little loose in terms or framework, but the idea itself seems sound to me.
The two actions are related to the future in two independent ways. They are both aimed at creating one future world, but they have different ends. If action were only defined with the application of means to bring about a future world, then all of life would be one action, but it is not, action is orientated in a means-end framework, not a means-future world framework.
In the example, I am aiming at two different ends, and those different ends all relate to the same future world differently.
Iam, still the motion of changing songs on an Ipod do not become an efficient cause of the motion through the park. Unless you got some fancy physics or causal argument up your sleeves. o_O
thank you attis, that is a more elegant way of saying what i have failed to communicate effecitvely. when one acts, one is setting out to employ means, (and not employ other means) to achieve an end,(and forego the achievement of other ends) . as such at the point where you begin to want to switch ipod songs, either, you are going to throw away your walking to the park, and just stand there listening to your ipod, or you will combine your two compatible desires under the one banner and walk and listen.
For me, the most useful conception of “action” is the embarkation of a behavior which executes a deliberate choice: in other words an execution of will. This behavior can either be “doing something” or “intentionally not doing something”. When you first consider taking a walk, then choose to, and then actually begin to, that beginning, impelled by the choosing, is the action. Continuing to walk is only an action if at any point it even crosses your mind whether to stop or continue. If your phone rings, and the choice of stopping or continuing your walk doesn’t even cross your mind, and only whether or not to answer the call crosses your mind, then answering the phone is the only action at hand, and there is no synchronism.
I don’t think it’s possible for one conscious mind to make two conscious decisions at the exact same time; and it is the decisive part of action that necessarily must be nonsynchronous for Austrian value scale theory to make sense. This is the case because of the following: If an actor chooses A over B, B over C, and C over A, all at the exact same time, that would seem irrationally inconsistent. The Misesian contention would be that all action is rational, since nobody ever could make all 3 choices at the same time. These three choices must be made in succession; and between the instants of the first choice and the third choice, the actor’s value scale has, by definition, changed.