Was Mises influenced by Descartes? Mises’ axiom of action is self-evident as a law of thought, and the most famous law of thought is Descartes’ c**ogito ergo sum (which incidentally was first discovered by St. Augustine). It’s interesting, because Descartes hoped to reconstruct the entirety of human knowledge on the foundation of his cogito. He clearly failed. But it would be a sweet fulfillment, if Mises had, to some degree, resuscitated the Cartesian scheme to reconstruct the entirety of economics and praxeology in general.
only in the sense that all axiomatic basis for ideology are related.
it is an inductive approach as opposed to an deductive one.
Thanks for the reply. I know there is relation there; I’m wondering if there was influence or inspiration. Did Mises ever cite Descartes as an influence? Or was there a deductivist strain of scholarship he was drawing from. I wonder, because t seems that in between Descartes and Mises, empiricism and inductivism reigned supreme (largely because of Bacon and Newton).
You know I’m glad I tried to verify, because your answer made me realize that praxeology is actually abductive in its methods.
? Praxeology isn’t abductive. It’s axomatic-deductive, but before praxeology proper the axiom and other concepts are arrived at via (classical, not modern) induction.
I don’t think Mises was directly and specifically influenced by Descartes. Mises was something of a realist Kantian, a rationalist. Praxeology also has some similarities to phenomenology. Mises was familiar with Husserl, who more explicitly adopted a Cartesian starting point.
Thanks for that! That clears things up, and gives me some leads for further research.
hypothesis in the social sciences can not be empirically verified because there is no way to have a control group. therefore all hypothesis involved in the social sciences are abductive in nature.
I think you need to read the relevant epistemological and methodological works by Mises, Rothbard and others. Austrian economics does not make or rest upon hypotheses. I believe there is a reading list at the top of this forum.
My pleasure, Daniel. You might check out the bibliography in my working paper, “On Praxeology and the Question of Aristotelian Apriorism” for a number of useful references. The realist phenomonenologist Adolf Reinach is interesting. Barry Smith also has some interesting work.
if it isn’t a theory it is a hypothesis, and as I said, since nothing can be empirically verified in the social sciences it is impossible to ever have a real theory. real scientific theories rest upon a body of empirical data. without a control you can not have empirical data, therefore you can not have a theory of social sciences.
No, a hypothesis is merely something that will either be confirmed or disconfirmed (usually the latter) in accordance with empirical data. This is the hypothetico-deductive model of science, and applies to the natural sciences. To understand economics as a science you must study the works Geoffrey mentioned. It is to beg the question to assert all sciences must conform to the straightjacket known as the “scientific method”. Better put, there are scientific methods.
I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed as to the nature of science. It does not all conform to the model fo physics. You really should read the relevant epistemolgoical and methodological works in Austrian economics.