“Praxeology is a priori. All its theorems are products of deductive reasoning that starts from the category of action. The questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as ‘merely’ tautological are of verbal interest only.Mises’s main epistemological concern is to maintain the a priori status of praxeology.
What praxeology asserts with regard to human action in general is strictly valid without any exception for every action. There is action and there is the absence of action, but there is nothing in between. Every action is an attempt to exchange one state of affairs for another, and everything that praxeology affirms with regard to exchange refers strictly to it. In dealing with every action we encounter the fundamental concepts end and means, success or failure, profit or loss, costs. An exchange can be either direct or indirect, i.e., effected through the interposition of an intermediary stage. Whether a definite action was indirect exchange has to be determined by experience. But if it was indirect exchange, then all that praxeology says about indirect exchange in general strictly applies to it.
Every theorem of praxeology is deduced by logical reasoning from the category of action. It partakes of the apodictic certainty provided by logical reasoning that starts from an a priori category.
Into the chain of praxeological reasoning the praxeologist introduces certain assumptions concerning the conditions of the environment in which an action takes place. Then he tries to find out how these special conditions affect the result to which his reasoning must lead. The question whether or not the real conditions of the external world correspond to these assumptions is to be answered by experience. But if the answer is in the affirmative, all the conclusions drawn by logically correct praxeological reasoning strictly describe what is going on in reality.” (Mises 1962: 44–45).
But his remarkable statement is here:
“The questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as ‘merely’ tautological are of verbal interest only.”According to Mises, whether praxeological theorems or derived theories are “synthetic” or “analytic” is of “verbal interest only.” That is an incredibly ignorant statement, because if praxeological theorems say anything necessarily true of the real world, as Mises says in many other passages (Mises 2008: 39), then they must be synthetic, not analytic.
Mises is logically committed to defending the synthetic a priori status of praxeology, but was so confused that he dismissed the first of these concepts as merely of “verbal interest,” when the synthetic nature of any praxeological theorem ought to be a straightforward consequence of his epistemology.
This confusion, or lack of interest in the analytic or synthetic distinction, mostly likely explains his equally confused discussion of Euclidean geometry in Human Action (Mises 2008: 38).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mises, Ludwig von. 1962. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method. Van Nostrand, Princeton, N.J.
Mises, Ludwig von. 2008. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.
Hi, I was actually looking to critique Austrian a priorism when I stumbled upon this blog linked (and see you have others on a similar topic). I hope you don't mind if I collaborate with you in some regards.... although as fair warning, I collaborate by disagreeing with people (I find agreeing with people to be (1) boring and (2) unfruitful.)
ReplyDeleteIIRC, Mises had at least name dropped figures such as Hilbert and Poincare (I suspect he probably read the latter's "Science and Method"). There was a lengthy discussion on the project conducted by the "logicians" (Russell and Hilbert) in that text that I think may have been relevant to his opinion above.
So Kant's analytic distinction had essentially 3 definitions which he treated as equivalent but were not:
A statement is analytic:
1) if it follows from the principle of noncontradiction.
2) if the predicate is contained in the subject.
3) if it does not amplify our knowledge.
Frege ultimately rejected the latter two and was attempting to show (along with Russell) that mathematics could be reduced to (1). He still thought mathematics added to our knowledge.
So it strikes me that Mises concern was more or less "I don't want to bother myself with this little 'ol squabble" which strikes me as a fair statement.
The interesting question is, does it actually matter? I mean, so what if Austrian economics is synthetic. Within the Kantian framework, those synthetic a priori things were every bit as much about how our minds work as the rest of it all.
Space and time weren't out there (and if they were, we couldn't know anything about them.) All we know is that all of our experiences will conform to what we know about space and time because our minds necessarily construct our experience in that way.
Now, the only other interesting thing here would be a claim I came across by Mr. Hoppe which claims that Mises' idea of action could save Kantians from this dreaded idealism. Granted, my interest in it is not so much in my thought that it's likely to be a fruitful line of inquiry but more as intellectual curiosity.
So I guess my question, does it really matter if Austrian economics is analytic or synthetic, and I guess I'll side with Mises on this one, it doesn't matter.... but perhaps for different reasons.
This post is more incredibly ignorant rather than that statement. In saying that, Mises is rejecting the analytic-synethetic distinction altogether. See Boettke Leeson this paper by Boettke and Leeson http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/Mises.pdf. This places Mises closer to, say, Wilherd Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism than Kant's belief in synethetic a priori; it might build on Kant, but, as Boettke and Leeson say, it goes beyond it.
ReplyDeleteMises wasn't "confused" about the analytic/synthetic distinction, he rejected it and recognized that was only a language game philosophers play.
If Mises really thought, with Quine, that there is no meaningful analytic/synthetic distinction, then the epistemological basis of his praxeology is even more intellectually bankrupt than anyone ever thought.
DeleteYou cannot claim that praxeology yields necessary true synthetic propositions of the real world, if the analytic/synthetic distinction does not even exist.
One can only marvel at your level of ignorance of basic epistemological issues here.
“You cannot claim that praxeology yields necessary true synthetic propositions of the real world, if the analytic/synthetic distinction does not even exist.”
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely not the case. First of all, Quine was arguing against the notion of analyticity, not the notion of the synthetic. If Quine is right, it is just useless to distinguish between the two because everything is empirical. In other words, if the analytic/synthetic distinction does not exist, then seemingly *a priori* truths become justified by evolved empirical observation and, more importantly, the role it plays in our understanding of the world (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/#AllPriKno). I suspect it is no coincidence that this is precisely what Mises actually argued. See this from Kirzner's "Mises: The Man and his Economics:”
"This writer [Kirzner] once asked Mises how a person can know human beings other than himself act purposeful….Mises’ answer surprised me greatly; it may perhaps soften the image of Ludwig von Mises as an extreme apriorist. Mises answered my query, in effect, by saying that we become aware of other agents by observation. It is observation that convinces us not to be solipsists."
For Mises, on this reading, a priorism is a matter of method, not a matter of epistemic status. The term a priori desribes how the economist reached them not whether the economist really knew it as some knowledge embedded in the nature of reality. In other words, a priori is just a word to describe what we did to reach a conclusion, not its eternal epistemic status. On such a view, the ideas that come from seemingly a priori reasoning become tools in a toolkit, to use Steve Horwitz's term (http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/09/05/steven-horwitz/empirics-austrian-economics), instruments for comprehension of reality when we approach history. This is what Mises meant when he said "conception" is the scope of praxeology and "understanding" is the tool of history.
I would go one step further than Mises myself, I readily admit he is being somewhat inconsistent or misleading when he speaks of the ""apodictic certainty" or "truth" of a priori praxeology. I would say they are only true insofar as they help us accomplish the end of conception which is necessary for understanding that comes from history. In other words, I would say they are true only from a pragmatic view rather than a correspondent one. I'm not sure to what extent Mises himself would agree with that and he may be inconsistent if he doesn’t, but that is what seems to follow if Boettke and Leeson are right in asserting he rejected the analytic/synthetic distinction (and the quote you cite in the article does follow that).
Also, I understand you're more preoccupied with "debunking" Mises and proving Austrian economics completely wrong than actually understanding it. But sitting there and abrasively screaming "One can only marvel at your level of ignorance of basic epistemological issues here” when you obviously don’t see the implications from a priori writing that comes from a basic reading of Quine is counter-productive to discussion, intellectually irresponsible, and quite disrespectful to your readers. If really think that Mises was “intellectually dishonest,” you obviously didn't even read the Bottke/Leeson paper I linked to. He arguably may have been inconsistent in stressing “apodictic certainty,” but so have a great many great philosophers who formulated the language we speak in today (including Kant for not rejecting certainty, and arguably even Quine himself for not embracing the Myth of the Given as stated by Sellars as argued by Rorty in “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”). At least seek to understand before you make such strong verbal attacks, please.
(1) "In other words, a priori is just a word to describe what we did to reach a conclusion, not its eternal epistemic status .... I would go one step further than Mises myself, I readily admit he is being somewhat inconsistent or misleading when he speaks of the ""apodictic certainty" or "truth" of a priori praxeology. I would say they are only true insofar as they help us accomplish the end of conception which is necessary for understanding that comes from history. In other words, I would say they are true only from a pragmatic view rather than a correspondent one"
DeleteHmm. So you are telling us that Mises' use of "a priori" was contrary to the standard usage of that expression. If so, it is enough to damn praxeology and its alleged necessary truths of the real world, and vindicate what I have said above.
(2) Also, I've already dealt with that passage from Kirzner. It just confirms what I have argued:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2014/04/mises-and-empiricism.html
(3) "Also, I understand you're more preoccupied with "debunking" Mises and proving Austrian economics completely wrong than actually understanding it"
You "understood" wrong.
I had previously been very pleased in my reading of Lord Keynes' website, since I thought he (1) generally took the time to understand and (2) did not intentionally misrepresent others' views.
ReplyDeleteAnd then...this post. This was a simultaneous misrepresentation of both Kantian epistemology and Misesian praxeology.
Look, Kant has his detractors (some legitimate, too) and both Mises and Hoppe have narrow, specific questionable applications of synthetic a priori arguments.
But Mr. LK (I'm assuming isn't actually a lord and doesn't actually carry the title), correctly points out that Kant differentiated between Synthetic and Analytic...then confusingly argues that Mises, by not categorically labeling his arguments, suddenly fails at A Priori reasoning.
Well that's nonsense. Pure nonsense. The two are entirely unrelated. Then, in the comments, Mr. LK wildly plunges into ad hominem attacks. Very disappointing.