Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Mises, Action and Uncertainty

If we want a spectacular example of why Mises was a third-rate thinker, we need look no further than this:
“The uncertainty of the future is already implied in the very notion of action. That man acts and that the future is uncertain are by no means two independent matters. They are only two different modes of establishing one thing.

We may assume that the outcome of all events and changes is uniquely determined by eternal unchangeable laws governing becoming and development in the whole universe. We may consider the necessary connection and interdependence of all phenomena, i.e., their causal concatenation, as the fundamental and ultimate fact. We may entirely discard the notion of undetermined chance. But however that may be, or appear to the mind of a perfect intelligence, the fact remains that to acting man the future is hidden. If man knew the future, he would not have to choose and would not act. He would be like an automaton, reacting to stimuli without any will of his own. Some philosophers are prepared to explode the notion of man’s will as an illusion and self-deception because man must unwittingly behave according to the inevitable laws of causality. They may be right or wrong from the point of view of the prime mover or the cause of itself. However, from the human point of view action is the ultimate thing. We do not assert that man is ‘free’ in choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts and that we are at a loss to use the methods of the natural sciences for answering the question why he acts this way and not otherwise.

Natural science does not render the future predictable. It makes it possible to foretell the results to be obtained by definite actions. But it leaves unpredictable two spheres: that of insufficiently known natural phenomena and that of human acts of choice. Our ignorance with regard to these two spheres taints all human actions with uncertainty. Apodictic certainty is only within the orbit of the deductive system of aprioristic theory. The most that can be attained with regard to reality is probability.” (Mises 2008: 205).
The words in yellow are a gross non sequitur.

It is untrue that, if a human being knew the future perfectly, then he would not act. On the contrary, a simple thought experiment suffices to show how absurd this idea is.

Imagine you knew the future without any uncertainty, that is, a perfect knowledge of the future and perfect knowledge of the consequences of your acts. Would you suddenly cease acting?

Of course not. Unless you want to die, you would continue eating. You would know what foods pleased you best and would never have the misfortunate to eat some spoilt food which would make you sick.

Furthermore, you could, for example, make all the money you ever dreamt of by betting at horse races, playing the lotto, or gambling at a casino, and win precisely because you would know what actions to take in order to win a fortune. You would, moreover, never have any serious accident because you could foresee all consequences of all actions.

Endless examples quickly multiply for why we would continue to act even if we knew the future.

And Mises is also wrong to think the reality of uncertainty is deduced from the action axiom.

How could Mises know that there are no human beings who have perfect knowledge of the future to begin with?

You cannot know this a priori. The statement
(1) no human being now or in the past has or has had a perfect knowledge of the future
is a synthetic a posteriori statement. We can establish it as true to a high degree of probability, but only with empirical evidence and inductive arguments.

For example, we have no recorded example of a human being who could predict perfectly all things in the future. Instances where people claim to know the future (as in astrology, magic or clairvoyance) are unconvincing. Frequently such people are wrong, can be shown to be charlatans, or their “predictions” when apparently true are neither impressive nor out of the ordinary in that they can be shown to be lucky guesses or deductions based on evidence they already have (think of a clever palm reader who simply guesses things about people on the basis of observation and probability).

We know from empirical investigation of human beings that they have experience of the present and memories of the past, but no memories of the future. And there is no scientific evidence that dreams, for example, foretell the future.

Modern science and biology make it extremely unlikely that any human being could know the future, and no possible scientific explanation for how this could be possible has ever been proposed.

All in all, the weight of evidence can be used to construct a set of inductive arguments to the effect that it is highly probable that proposition (1) is true.

But Mises’s action axiom cannot establish its truth. Indeed, the very idea that “all human action by non-mentally-ill human beings aims at ends and is, in this sense, purposeful” can only be proved by empirical evidence and inductive argument too.

Why? Because Mises cannot even establish a clear definition and criteria for
(1) what constitutes a non-mentally-ill human being, or

(2) what constitutes conscious and voluntary human action in the first place
without recourse to a vast amount of empirical scientific evidence about human behaviour, via medicine, psychology and biology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mises, L. von. 2008. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

10 comments:

  1. " If man knew the future, he would not have to choose and would not act. He would be like an automaton, reacting to stimuli without any will of his own"

    If someone knew every detail of the future they would by definition know every details about their own role in it and have no ability to change this. This surely qualifies as making them "like an automaton, reacting to stimuli without any will of his own".

    Your thought experiment appears to assume that you continue to choose in the future which contradicts Mises premise.

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    1. "If someone knew every detail of the future they would by definition know every details about their own role in it and have no ability to change this

      First, that assumes no free will, but Mises leaves open the question whether people have free will:

      "They may be right or wrong from the point of view of the prime mover or the cause of itself."

      Secondly, even if we assume no free will, then this totally invalidates the idea that people freely choose to act now: so Mises can't even say that people who are uncertain freely choose and act voluntarily, because with no free will they cannot act voluntarily.

      Thirdly, even with no free will you cannot choose to not act, as you are not free to not act: there is no free will!

      With free will of course the argument is fine.

      Even with no free will Mises' argument is still incoherent.

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  2. Mises point is that from an individuals perspective if the future is totally known then free-will (and the basis for human action) is redundant.

    If the future is not known (and the agent has the subjective feeling of free will) then meaningful human action becomes possible,

    I agree that this is a bit philosophically dubious but hardly makes Mises a third-rate thinker.

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    1. Mises does not say "totally known" in the sense of inevitable and changeable.

      He says "known". Even if the future is "known" that does not necessarily entail no free will: you could choose from different actions at each point in time and know the different worlds that would result from each choice: just like possible worlds modal logic.

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    2. But would you know before you choose which possible world you would were going to choose to realize?

      How would you feel about that?

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    3. "But would you know before you choose which possible world you would were going to choose to realize?"

      That is just abolishing the condition of free will, though. In which case, you would be a conscious being with no free will but able to see the future completely.

      But this does not help Mises, because his whole argument about human beings having conscious ends and purposeful behavior with real choice would totally collapse without the assumption of free will.

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    4. Praxeology would then be based on nothing but an illusion: the illusion of "acting" man:

      "We do not assert that man is ‘free’ in choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts "

      That is another non sequitur.

      Man needs to be free to choose and act.

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  3. I think a good refutation would be people who watch movies and shows more than once. I know with absolute certainty how my favorite movie will end yet I continue to warch it over and over again.

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  4. Mises was not speaking about a lone time traveler playing slots at The Wynn on predicated knowledge of the outcomes. He was speaking of the totality of man, that if everyone knew the future they would have no reason to make a choice based on competing options when the result was known. I believe you are straying more into the realm of science fiction than what Mises was alluding to. His argument was not so deep and complex, which I'll get back to.

    " "We do not assert that man is ‘free’ in choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts "

    That is another non sequitur.

    Man needs to be free to choose and act."

    Mises was writing an academic treatise where he had to account for as many views as possible, i.e. in this case the view that choice is an illusion. It's really not that complex of an argument and more one that he had to write to fulfill a specific audience. In that respect whether choice is an illusion or not is immaterial, he shows that people have to choose to act based on uncertainty, inside or outside of free-will. I believe you're missing the forest for the trees here.

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  5. Mises was not speaking about a lone time traveler playing slots at The Wynn on predicated knowledge of the outcomes. He was speaking of the totality of man, that if everyone knew the future they would have no reason to make a choice based on competing options when the result was known. I believe you are straying more into the realm of science fiction than what Mises was alluding to. His argument was not so deep and complex, which I'll get back to.

    " "We do not assert that man is ‘free’ in choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts "

    That is another non sequitur.

    Man needs to be free to choose and act."

    Mises was writing an academic treatise where he had to account for as many views as possible, i.e. in this case the view that choice is an illusion. It's really not that complex of an argument and more one that he had to write to fulfill a specific audience. In that respect whether choice is an illusion or not is immaterial, he shows that people have to choose to act based on uncertainty, inside or outside of free-will. I believe you're missing the forest for the trees here.

    ReplyDelete