I seem to recall reading somewhere where Mises relegates those considerations to the study of psychology. He acknowledged the existence of psychological factors in human action.
Clayton -
Condillac’s 1754 Treatise on Sensations and Mises’ 1912 and 1949 works can be used to answer this question.
What I think: Time, in reality, is quantum, it doesn’t flow. That is a physical fact. But we sense that it does, and sometimes faster and sometimes slower. (David Deuatch’s 1997 Fabric of Reality, for instance, lists reasons people think time flows when it doesn’t. Good to read at the same time as Condillac’s chapter on time from 1754.)
But this is because perception or apprehension of time actually depends on our actions, our sensations of our actions, and our observation of our actions occuring relative other changes in the environment.
Consider: a person totally bored and a person really busy might think time passes really quickly and plan far ahead, because the bored one acts few times and is attentive to few things; while the busy one acts many times but is attentive to many things.
They make a plan, which to a person acting few times but attentive to many things, for whom time passes slowly, is very forward-looking. In reality, the actual list of preferences to be satisfied at any moment (Mises in 1912/1949 clarified that these lists change everytime something happens) may be equally forward-looking for all three people insofar as they are # of elements being ordered in a set: an ordered list of change in quantities @ changes in time.
That is, the quantity of thought each puts in to generate his preference list may be the same and the length of the list may be the same, for each of the three people, but because the times in question to which each list refers can be totally different.
Then, furthermore, there is the important fact: we can be certain of some events decades from the present but uncertain of other events just in the immediate future. Professor Herbener explained this is why Rosenstein-Rodan’s paper to reconstruct time-preference based on uncertainty is wrong, after I asked him just a bit ago.
Thus: three people, can have preference lists equally long, but referring to entirely different timeframes, and these may change from moment to moment.
Depends on how much you know. If you are omniscient, a single value scale “directs” his action forever.
@FredFurash
Thanks. Yes. Also, the world changes as we act—(a) as a direct consequence of my action; (b) as an indirect consequence of my action; (c) as a direct consequence of each individual’s action; (d) as an indirect consequence of each individual’s action. Stuff is always changing and rearranging, so when you think about it, how possibly COULD one’s value scale remain constant for any length of time? To concieve of a static value scale, and to use it to try and understand human choice and action in a constantly-changing environment/world makes little sense.
@KCFarmer
Thanks. You don’t think it matters what I think ABOUT? I would rather ask “How often does my thinking cause me to change my assessment of either (a) means; (b) ends?” Do you agree that a change in either of these assessments is the sufficient condition for causing (a new) action?
Thanks. I was trying (in the passage you quote) to say that the “value scale” exists only at the moment of choice. Also, that as far as discerning the so-called “duration of one’s value scale” is concerned, the question isn’t about value scales per se (as originally I incorrectly thought), but about identifying the timing (i.e. relative to the previous choice) of the actor’s next moment of choice, and therefore the factors causing the actor to reconsider his options. My writing was maybe/probably unclear—I don’t follow what you are getting at regarding psychology here.
Thanks.
Right. Longer-term vs. shorter-term is interesting. I’m still not clear on how to conceive of longer-term vs. shorter-term goals (i.e. ends). I’m going to attempt to here.
Entrepreneurs, for example, seek profit. Production takes time. Is it fair to conclude that every action of an entrepreneur—in between (a) the moment he/she decides to produce for the market; and (b) the moment of final sale of his/her product—is directed by the goal of profit?
This seems wrong. At the same time, it is wrong to deny that the entrepreneur’s main objective is profit, and therefore considerations of how to make profit enter into a great many of his/her decisions.
In this case, I’m estimating that the way to conceive of this is that the entrepreneur holds several longer-term goals in mind simultaneously, and at each moment of choice, selects among them according to his/her preferences. For example, suppose our entrepreneur wants to earn profit to provide for his family; but also he is a devout Christian; and also loves to surf; and one of his main long-term goals is to buy a boat and sail around the world one day with his wife.
But, also, our entrepreneur has more mundane short-term goals, such as “I’m hungry, what’s for lunch today?” and “I’m picking up Billy from soccer, what’s the best route to take?”, etc.
Here’s the point: It may be tempting to look at our entrepreneur as ONLY an entrepreneur, and assume that earning profit is his primary end (indeed, his only end). But, as our Austrian forebears correctly insist, INDIVIDUALS act. And individuals, being human, have a multitude of ends which they seek at any given moment, including but not limited to earning a living.
Thus, regarding the value scale: “Earning profit” is not at the top of the entpreneur’s value scale at every moment of his life. In fact, what IS at the top varies constantly. What’s important regarding the value scale is the FACT of choice (not the content)—i.e. the FACT that individuals select one value and forego others at every moment of choice. Indeed, moments of choice occur constantly, because internal and external factors change constantly—thus, individuals choose among competing values constantly.
We can’t know what motivates an individual’s specific choice, even if he’s told us what his long-term goals are. But we can be sure that his choice reflects (a) the current state of his preferences; and (b) his plans to maximize his psychic income. i.e. Given his knowledge of (a) the nature of cause and effect; (b) the past and present state of his environment; and (c) his assessments of the future state(s) of his environment.
@IRyan
Ha ha. Indeed, you would need to know a lot.
Do you think if one were omniscient, would one even have a value scale? Maybe you’d just be all blissed out, and find everything equally pleasing and displeasing.
That hits on something very important.
As Clayton said, that would be pyschology, or more specifically thymology.
But I think that one of the next major revolutions in Austrian economics will be making the already present thymology completely explicit, and founding thymology as a sister science, such that, to use an analogy which I don’t completely understand, praxeology would be to thymology as mathematics is to physics. Ideas such as desire, value scales, and so on used by Austrian economics are thymological in that they don’t make sense without considering sequential actions, but, to paraphrase StrangeLoop, aren’t scientific, but are just “folk thymology”!
This is still being discussed? Praxeology (and therefore Austrian economics) is not concerned with the contents of value scales nor with the principles regarding their formation. The only thing that has to be given is that they exist; That a decision-maker can prefer A over B. Any considerations beyond what can be logically inferred from their existence is irrelevant.
Are you responding to my post?
That concession gives away the whole thing. How do we find out that they exist?
What could the “content” be?
And what does it mean to be a “principle[…] regarding their formation”?
bcyclwutztht:
IRyan:
I don’t understand why you guys see sequential actions to necessarily involve individual psychology (or thymology). To be sure, moving from action to action involves individual evaluations and preferences, but I don’t see where these preferences need to be specifically identified.
Can you expand a bit on what you’re getting at? Sorry, I’m not following.
What does it mean to prefer A to B?
It won’t be possible to even address that question without resorting to explaining the causal connections, between, on one hand, some way of thinking, and, on the other hand, a way or moving or another way of thinking. How could we explain what the “will” is without talking about something appearing in our private world causing something else to appear in our private world or our body to move in some way? In Austrian economics, it is just “folk thymology” which tries to answer that question, and as such it tends to sound like mysticism to most people. It doesn’t give a scientific development of the ideas of “desire”, “belief”, and so on, but just assumes that everybody already have a clear enough idea of them. They use our folk thymological ideas of “desire”, “belief”, and so on; and this tends to come off as mysticism to a lot of people.
Praxeology can say, for example, that wanting A, and believing that B will lead to A, means wanting B, but can’t tell you what the hell wanting or believing even are. Wanting A and believing that B will lead to A doesn’t cause wanting B, but just is wanting B. For example, if I were to want to get home, and to believe that walking in some direction for some time would lead to pulling that off, I would of course want to walk in that way; but, in that case, wanting to get home and wanting to walk in that would by no means be two different things. Wanting to get home would just be wanting to walk in that way. There wouldn’t be a sequence in time. Assuming that I have that belief, wanting to get home and wanting to walk in that way are just two different levels of description of the same thing. Praxeology doesn’t talk about any caual sequences in time. It just talks about the necessary connections between one kind of acting and another kind of acting. No, even that would be exaggerating it. It doesn’t talk about anything but the fact that proposition A about acting means the same thing as proposition B about acting, or that it means something different. Praxeology is the logic or mathematics of action, but, until thymology gives it meaning, is just a bunch of arbitrary, formal relationships between propositions. Wanting A, and believing that B will lead to A, means wanting B. But what the hell is wanting and believing? Where can I observe wanting? Where can I find believing?
But thymology can tell us what wanting and believing are. It doesn’t have to say anything about one desire causing another desire. It doesn’t need to say that wanting to drink alcohol at some frequency is associated with wanting something else at some frequency. That kind of thing is history. When the people who you are paraphrasing say that praxeology isn’t concerned with the contents of the value scales or desires, that is exactly what they are talking about. It doesn’t matter what desires generally cause what other desires. It doesn’t matter what value scales generally precede what other value scales. But this isn’t what I am talking about. What I am talking about is explaining what wanting and believing are in terms of how, in the most general sense, they are causally connected with other things. Wanting and believing exist. Wanting is an object and belief is something else. But both are observable. Imagining something conjoined with the object which we usually call desire and imagining moving your body in some way preceding that colored by belief is causally connected with moving your body in that way. This is a pretty rough outline what we call volition.
The category of action is a thymology category. We group what is contained in this category into a group only because the objects in the category are casually connected with other things in some way. The logic of this category is conditioned by those causal connections. Just like most other categories, the category of action gets its meaning from its casual connections. We refer to cars as “cars” simply because they are casually connected to us in some way - they transport us in some way. We refer to chairs as “chairs” simply because they are causally connected with us in some way - our bodies conform to it in such a way that they let us, well, you get it. And so on. It is the same way with the category of action. For example, the word “desire” refers to a group of observable objects in our private world, and we group those objects together under that word simply because all of them are casually connected with other categories in some way - there is no other reason.
Let me know whether my response to Azure helps. If not, I will try again and try to be clearer.
My post wasn’t a reply to you. Actually, I pretty much agree with everything you said. I had just finished reading the topic and was too lazy to go back to the first post, so I “replied” to yours instead. My apologies for the misunderstanding.
@IRyan
I don’t understand why the imperative of defining “wanting”, or “believing”.
Is it your opinion that praxeology is currently “unpersuasive” because, on the theoretical level, it is lacking these formal definitions?
"Forming. No scientist can explain how you come to make a choice, that is, the sequence of neurons firing that spits out a certain result. Our only knowledge of how we form decisions is from introspection. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S16EHfKRLfc
Umm this is incorrect. Molyneux even gave pop-science examples of how the perceived concepts of action and preference were artificially created on patients in lab tests with purely physical deterministic means. See ~11:00 in the vid..