What makes it a trick question?
There are no meaningful truths that can be logically derived from it. It’s just a bunch of gibberish with no semblance of falsifiability.
The very fact that you can’t refute it without contradicting yourself should show you that it’s nothing more than a rhetorical tool.
Do you, as a conscious being, act to achieve ends?
The question isn’t how is that a trick question, but how could it NOT be.
How do you know?
Is there something wrong with not having any semblance of falsifiability?
Why’s that show that it’s nothing more than a rhetorical tool?
But that wasn’t even my question.
I agree. Let’s throw out the laws of logic, since they are neither falsifiable nor capable of being denied without contradiction.
Oh, wait.
Could you give me an example of a logic of law which fits that description?
You can do an indirect proof on the law of non-contradiction or excluded middle. It’s basically a formal reductio.
E.g.:
(A v ~A) (excluded middle)
~(A v ~A) A, IP (the start of the reductio)
~A +~~A 2, (by DeMorgans)
~A + A 3, Double negation.
(A v ~A) 2-4 IP
This is how the excluded middle is proven–by showing the absurdity of the contrary.
Humans act purposefully.
Is that the same as a proof by contradiction? If so, it’s wonderful how widespread they are.
Yes, you already answered. I merely clarified. :-p
“Human” in Mises’ works is basically defined as an actor. So the above statement is tantamount to “Acting beings are acting beings.”
I think people who virtually only read Rothbard, Hoppe, and others, and not Mises himself, would be surprised to know that Mises did not use the term “axiom” once in Human Action or Theory and History. And I don’t think he ever used the term “action axiom”.
Praxeology is not a grammatical exercise. It is not an unbundling of the meaning of a proposition. It is an unbundling of the meaning of a conception already present in all our minds.
Praxeology is the result of reflecting on the essence of the conception we think of when we hear the single word “action”, not the result of reflecting on the meaning of the proposition “action is purposeful behavior”.
When Mises brings in the term “purposeful behavior”, he does so as a clarifying substitute for “action”, just in case readers are thinking of another meaning of the word “action”, not as the second half of proposition from which to derive theorems.
Just as much as we can say that “praxeology is the result of reflecting on the essence of action”, and then just stop there, we can also say that “praxeology is the result of reflecting on the essence of purposeful behavior” and just stop there. We’d be saying the same thing.
For more on Mises’ ideas about apriorism and praxeology, please read the paper in my sig.
Mises actually disagreed. In that section he’s talking about how we can only make sense of the quasi-teleological (but not really teleological) processes in biology (e.g. animal and infant behavior, the operations of organs and plants, etc) by reference to our understanding of true teleology. He explicitly said that animals (and infants) don’t act.
However, I think Hume was right, and Mises was wrong, with regard to higher animals.
The “action axiom” is non-falsifiable.
Anything and everything derived and deduced from this starting point is absolutely testable and falsifiable, no?
Are you saying that implications deduced from the axiom that are sound and valid may be testable and falsifiable? If that is what you mean, the answer is no, especially on the subject of economics.
Starting from the action axiom one can logically deduce that when there is inflation of the money supply wealth is transfered to those who get the new money first from those who get the new money last.
Is this hypothesis of wealth transfer testable?
I am having trouble seeing how it is not.
Unless the only reason is that we cannot set up an experiment, but just because people are unwilling to conduct real life economic experiments does not mean economic hypothesis are not testable…
Even without conducting an actual experiment there should be some emperical evidence to support or refute the hypothesis?
tanstaafl, read the geometry analogy in the paper in my sig.
when you make a statement like " whenever there is inflation, X get the new money first" you have to hold everything else constant ( centeris paribus). But in the real world, there is never a state where everything is held constant so you can test the law. Since there are always things changing in the world, you can’t make up Econ. laws based on experiment or empirical evidence. Now does Praxeological Economics ignore empirical evidence? No, but economists should only use empirical evidence to ILLUSTRATE a law…
A quick good read about this is Austrian Economics, Praxeology, and Intervention" by Walter Block and William Barnett...
As the source mentioned above says: Economics is not a hard science that needs evidence in order for something to be proven… It is a praxeological science where the knowledge of Economics is apriori… Loosely speaking, the difference between Austrian Economics and Neoclassical is that Austrians stick with the statement that Economics is apriori knowledge, we already KNOW economic laws, we do not need to test them in order to prove them, but we can use emperical situations in order to illustrate the law of course. But neoclassical(positivists) hold that one can never hold the knowledge of laws because in theory the “next time” could always turn out to be the first time that the expected result did not occur; that is, all truths are tentative and subject to be disproven by the next event. Therefore, there are no laws, only provisinoal hypotheses. (Some parts are loosely quoted from the source above.)
For example: Do you need emperical evidence to prove that All Bachelors are unmarried? The answer is “no you don’t.” It is a fact that does not need any evidence to support it. But can I use evidence to support the fact that “All Bachelors are unmarried?” Of course I can, it would be a waste of time, since I already know the statement is fact, but I can go out in the world and ask every bachelor if they are unmarried. And with those results, I can illustrate the claim… Same thing applies the Economic laws…
Yep, same thing but different name.
The more I try to find a rationalization for it, the more I see the concept of a priori as nonsense. It seems to be only a priori after the fact of language… in other words, it is, in fact a posteriori after all. For instance:
For example: Do you need emperical evidence to prove that All Bachelors are unmarried?
Are all bachelors of arts unmarried? The answer is no. Do all humans act with a purpose? Idk, do vegetative humans? Fetuses? Does purpose mean clearly defined goal, or just to do something, which is just what action is in the first place.. in which case, why even bring it up? You’re basically just saying acting actors act…
Even 1+1=2… what is a “one?” Can you show me?
when you make a statement like " whenever there is inflation, X get the new money first" you have to hold everything else constant ( centeris paribus). But in the real world, there is never a state where everything is held constant so you can test the law. Since there are always things changing in the world, you can’t make up Econ. laws based on experiment or empirical evidence. Now does Praxeological Economics ignore empirical evidence? No, but economists should only use empirical evidence to ILLUSTRATE a law…
A quick good read about this is Austrian Economics, Praxeology, and Intervention" by Walter Block and William Barnett...
As the source mentioned above says: Economics is not a hard science that needs evidence in order for something to be proven… It is a praxeological science where the knowledge of Economics is apriori… Loosely speaking, the difference between Austrian Economics and Neoclassical is that Austrians stick with the statement that Economics is apriori knowledge, we already KNOW economic laws, we do not need to test them in order to prove them, but we can use emperical situations in order to illustrate the law of course.
In other words, we cannot verify if our conclusions are correct. It must merely be taken on faith that the “laws” are in fact that… tho in scientific terms, that would be the opposite of “law.”
A priori, for any benefit it has in finding truth, has no possible means of verifying it. Only through empirical search can we even begin to define the terms on which we base any a priori knowledge with a positive truth value.
“Only through empirical search can we even begin to define the terms on which we base any a priori knowledge with a positive truth value.”
Please prove this empirically.
Btw Mises doesn’t say that all humans necessarily act. He says that humans can act under certain conditions. I just did.
I was wondering about that.
Isn’t he assuming that MOST of what they do is acting? Or else how does the law of diminishing returns and the law of benefit of division of labor and of comparative advantage follow from just assuming one human acts once in a million years?
Like Vincent Bugliosi added on to Lincoln, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool most of the people most of the time.
What’s the difference between quasi action and true action?