My listening to and interest in Mises’s Human Action has declined dramatically. Though I don’t think I am quite ready to “liberate myself” just yet, it has fallen well down the queue
The problem is this. It was lovely when we were talking about methodology but went down hill when we started talking about economics.
Mises’s presentation of Praxeology in the abstract makes for wonderful conversation. The core arguments cut to the nature of reality and the meaning of introspection.
Though I think he confuses the matter on a few occasions my strongest interpretation of the case for Praxeology would go like this:
- Logic is the rules by which we construct our conception of reality. Thus whatever exists within our conception is bound by the rules of logic. Whatever exists outside of our conception is meaningless to talk about.
- As humans we have unique access to the process of our own introspection.
- We also observe an external world in which there are other humans.
- If we are to operate on the assumption that other humans have minds like our own then our conception of reality demands logical coherence between our own introspection and the minds of other humans.
- Thus we can derive a theory of human action based on introspection, logic and the assumption of other minds.
He doesn’t take the conversation here but where I think its gets interesting is when we want to talk about what it means to say that logic is the rules by which we construct conception.
I think this is true, but on one level it leaves open the possibility of sensory experience for which there is no logical construction. You might, say well no we would just invent one. This I think is an empirical question though, I am not sure we can rule it out a priori.
We need some type of “no magic” assumption.
Which is fine as maintained hypothesis of science and inductive reasoning. And, of course the problem of induction is by no means unique to praxeology.
In addition his justification for praxeology on practical grounds rests in part on the irreducibility of human thought, what he refers to as an ultimate given.
This is something that few of us believe today. While there are measurement and calculation problems I think most of us think that the standard model of particle physics “explains” everything there is to be explained about human behavior.
Still, all of that is an interesting conversation. What’s disappointing is when we get to laying out praxeology. Rather than a meticulous derivation what we get are gross statements backed up by causal reasoning and limited thought experiments.
That’s mildly interesting if you want to tell me “this is what I think about Human Action.” However, I felt like I was promised a derivation from first principles. I want to hear words like “let” and “for all” not “this comes from” and “one should see.”
No, if we are doing it this way then I want to hear “there can exist no . . . such that . . .” and “suppose not, then . . .”
To be clear, its not just the word choice. Its what the word’s signify. Its whether we are arguing that this line of reasoning seems to make sense or that no other line of reasoning could possibly make sense.
In any case, that’s my take so far. We’ll see how it goes from here.
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Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Josh
Thanks for continuing your series on Human Action. I’m reading through it now (I’m on Chapter 21: Work and Wages), and I’ve been looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the entire piece. (I have my own thoughts, but I’m not an economist – by education or by profession – so it will help my understanding to read a professional’s perspective.)
Could you let us know how far you’ve gotten with each new post? It will help to know what you’ve read and what you haven’t.
Please don’t give up on it. It’s long, dense reading, but it has given me much good food for thought.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Curt Doolittle
Karl,
Praxeology is another foolish attempt to make economics into a science. Mises was trying to undermine the tidal wave of managed economy advocates – and he was right to do so. And I forgive him his error. He did end up defeating the argument for socialism (managed economies.)
With his ‘praxeological reasoning’, by failing to account for forgone opportunity costs (the costs of the human informal institutions necessary to for a polity and to hold land), Mises sewed the seeds of handing over the Liberal movement (classical liberal) to the libertarian anarchist movement where it is today. Hayek was a gentleman and besides not writing a book to undermine keynes (because he thought it was so obvious he shouldn’t bother) he also only criticized Mises indirectly by attributing his failure to his ‘upbringing’. However, neither Hayek nor later Parsons, solved the problem of the social sciences. From that point on ward, we have had a top down school of positivists (like yourself) who assume a neutral polity, and a group of bottom up political scientists (austrians) who assume a neutral economy. Both are tending to meet in the middle. (Or at least, moderates like me who are actually looking for the ‘truth’ are trying to meet the positivists in the middle.)
I think Hoppe has probably added significantly to the movement but it is so wrapped in Rothbardian anarchism, and dependent upon an uncomfortable bit of reasoning (Structure of language) that it’s indigestible by anyone even vaguely disturbed by turgid germanic prose, or philosophical rigor.
However, the Propertarian insights are, at present, the most important insights into human social, political, and economic behavior we humans have yet made. And as such, if one is able to combine the liberal tradition with the Propertarian, and correct the error in Misesian reasoning, we do not end up with a science, but we end up with nearly infinite explanatory power to which will explain the limits to which Fiscal and Monetary policy may be employed in a polity – and the risks to an economy that such policy creates. Because they create inter-temporal fragility.
And that is the entire purpose of science. Explanatory power and prediction, for utilitarian purposes.
I usually think this kind of stuff isn’t in your wheelhouse. You’re amazing with the data. Your insights are solid and skeptically empirical. But as political philosopher you’re punching above your weight. Not that you can’t get there – you wouldn’t be able to reason as you do otherwise. But if you do, you will change those metaphysical assumptions you rely upon and treat as normative but which are really only preferences, not chosen in full understanding, but merely accidents made out of assumptions in ignorance.
Affections.
Curt
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Karl Smith
Can you be more specific about the metaphysical assumptions that I rely upon and treat as normative?
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
scineram
” the standard model of particle physics “explains” everything there is to be explained about human behavior.”
Really? How exactly?
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
todd
I agree. It’s been about 5 years since I read “Human Action”, but the idea of an “ultimate given” did stick with me. I recall this idea not so much as a refutation of materialism, but rather that given our current understanding of the world, the gulf between human thought and the fundamental particles comprising the neurotrasmitters, dendrites & axons was sufficiently vast as to render futile the attempt to construct a coherent and comprehensible explanation. Without that bridge, however, debating human action beyond the level of human thought serves more as a distraction than a productive path for policy level decisions.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
freemancw
I have to agree with the sentiment that the philosophy part of it is more interesting than the economics portions, and I’ve always wondered where I could find the logical derivation but it is either obfuscated or just non-existent.
“This is something that few of us believe today. While there are measurement and calculation problems I think most of us think that the standard model of particle physics “explains” everything there is to be explained about human behavior.”
Do you think taking action as “the given” is a pragmatic decision? In the same way that computer scientists take what computer engineers create as given – there is some level of abstraction below which delving either doesn’t provide any illumination or would just take way too long to ever get anywhere.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
Wonks Anonymous
Robert Nozick asked they Austrians why they stopped at the level of the individual instead of going further down into the components of the brain. Ludwig Lachmann replied that they sought understanding rather than prediction. I’m more in the prediction camp.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Wonks Anonymous
I’ve heard various “internet austrians”* scoff at insufficiently rigorous empirical economics, saying it has to be all be logic based on certain axioms, though they never laid out any such derivations themselves. I guess they didn’t fall too short of their idol if even Mises didn’t do so.
*Laymen with no econ degrees and quite possibly a limited understanding of the actual Austrian texts.
Curt, I’m one of those people turned off by Hoppe. Didn’t he get his phd from studying philosophy under Habermas rather than economics? I’m surprised by your remark that Hayek thought it was “too obvious to bother”. I had never heard that. The story usually goes that he thought it was pointless after his previous critique of Keynes’ treatise on money just resulted in the General Theory rather than a more direct response, and Hayek was working on his own opus on capital. Critics from Knight to Hazlitt didn’t think it was too obvious to bother.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
gcallah
Yes, I think Curt is confused on this point. What Hayek said was that he thought Keynes would just change his mind again.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
gcallah
‘This is something that few of us believe today. While there are measurement and calculation problems I think most of us think that the standard model of particle physics “explains” everything there is to be explained about human behavior.’
It’s funny how economists are always 40 or 50 years behind in their philosophy. Positivism was biggest in economics after it was totally defeated in philosophy. Now we have Karl Smith declaring that “most of us believe” something that philosophers are rapidly abandoning as a totally untenable principle. (And it is interesting that there has never been a single lick of evidence for it: this has always been a matter of sheer faith: “One day, we’ll have it all explained by physics! I swear!”
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 6:03 am
Axel
“Positivism was biggest in economics after it was totally defeated in philosophy.” : could you describe/sketch/hint on what’s replaced it 50 years after ?
(Besides this ‘progress’ theory of an idea being wrong because it’s old looks quite positivist & old to me as well…)
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 4:45 am
Tel
“Logic is the rules by which we construct our conception of reality. Thus whatever exists within our conception is bound by the rules of logic.”
I’ll solidly disagree with this one. Logic is one tool that helps us construct a conception of reality but it’s not the only tool. Logic has its good and bad aspects, but on the bad side it doesn’t cope well with small samples amongst large numbers of unknowns, and it can suffer from infinite recursion, failure to properly self-reference, etc.
Most of physics is based on empirical knowledge (e.g. F=Ma is an empirical formula, not derived from logic).
“Whatever exists outside of our conception is meaningless to talk about.”
I’ll disagree with that one too. In many situations (e.g. poker, trading, military strategy) knowing how much you don’t know is hugely valuable. When taking any measurement you should be constantly estimating the errors in that measurement (there are errors).