Tuesday, March 11, 2014

How does an Austrian Praxeologist make Predictions?

According to Rothbard, not as a praxeologist qua praxeologist, but as a “forecaster,” a process which is essentially like that “of the historian”:
“How may praxeology be applied to forecasting, to the prediction of future historical events? The process is essentially that of the historian, except that the difficulties are greater. Thus, using the above example the forecaster may see a considerable increase in the money supply take place. He asserts B; C he knows as a praxeological truth. In order to forecast the probable future course of purchasing power, he must make an estimate of the probable course of the demand for money in the period under consideration.

If, on the basis of his judgement, he decides that the relative change in demand will be negligible, he is in a position to predict that the purchasing power of the money unit will decline in that period. With the help of praxeology, his judgement is the best he can offer, but it is still inexact, dependent on the correctness of his estimate—in this case, of the movement in demand for money. If he wishes to make a quantitative estimate of the change in purchasing power, his estimate is still more inexact, for praxeology can be of no help in this attempt. If his prediction proves erroneous, it is not praxeology that has failed, but his judgment of the future behavior of the elements in the praxeological theorem.

Praxeology is indispensable, but it does not provide omniscience. It furnishes laws in the form of: If X, and if Y remains unchanged, then Z. It is up to the historian, and his counterpart, the forecaster, to determine the specific cases in which the law is applicable.” (Rothbard 2011: 116).
So praxeological truths can be used to make contingent predictions by means of conditional statements (e.g., if x, then y) about the future, but the Austrian is not a “praxeologist” when doing this, but a “forecaster.”

This is a rather important datum, because the internet is filled with vulgar Austrians who (bizarrely) assert that Austrian economics cannot be used to make predictions of any kind whatsoever.

A secondary point is this: why a praxeologist cannot make predictions qua praxeologist remains unclear.

Elsewhere we read that the “forecasting” role that any Austrian must assume when predicting the future involves the Austrian being a “thymologist”:
“Austrian economists, as Austrian economists, or praxeologists, do not predict. They can predict not as formal economists, or praxeologists, but, rather, in their role as thymologists, or economic historians. In praxeology, A causes B, other things remaining the same. But, in the real world, other things cannot be relied upon to always remain constant. Therefore, predictions of the ‘A will necessarily lead to B’ type are strictly prohibited. Instead, praxeologists, but not thymologists, must limit themselves to statements of the if-A then-B variety.”
“Austrian Predictions,” Mises Wiki
http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Austrian_predictions
The word “thymology” or “thymologist” does not even appear in the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn.), so you know immediately you are dealing with a highly obscure or archaic word.

It speaks volumes about Austrian methodology that they resort to truly obscure terms, and that the actual praxeological laws are supposed to be universally and necessarily true, but when applied to the real world in prediction suddenly the laws become contingent, as Rothbard says:
“Praxeology is indispensable, but it does not provide omniscience. It furnishes laws in the form of: If X, and if Y remains unchanged, then Z. It is up to the historian, and his counterpart, the forecaster, to determine the specific cases in which the law is applicable.”
It is difficult to see how such “laws” based on conditional statements are anything but analytic a priori statements.

For the whole epistemological justification of praxeology is that praxeological laws, on the basis of the action axiom, are synthetic a priori truths, and thereby have necessary truth about the real world: yet suddenly when applied to the real world they become contingent.

These statements by Austrians about the nature of prediction must be judged a severe epistemological problem for Austrian economics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mises, Ludwig von. 1978 [1962]. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method (2nd edn), Sheed Andrews & McMeel, Kansas City.

Mises, Ludwig von. 2007 [1957]. History and Theory. Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

Rothbard, M. N. 2011. Economic Controversies. Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

23 comments:

  1. Oh, I wouldn't worry, LK. It's not much of a logical problem. You see the Austrians always make inaccurate predictions. Their epistemological status is the same as the epistemological status of my fantasies. :-D

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  2. It seems to me that Austrians are essentially propagandists for a certain type of world-view; one they wish to be shared by as much of society as possible.

    It is the nature of their theories that they could only be true if operating in a society that shared Austrian values universally.

    Thus the Austrians are extremely cagey about the line between the perscriptive and the descriptive. And they are right, that in the hands of clever propagandists, the perscriptive can become descriptive.

    Austrian economics seems to operate best at the level of common vulgar politlical discourse. The harder you press the Austrians, the more they fall back into the shadows of obscurity. That's why Lord K is doing yeoman work here.

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  3. If you are interested, I would recommend reading this essay that I think clarifies many of the things you talk about in this blog post. It addresses a lot of the questions you have.

    http://praxeology.org/2013/06/22/deduction-from-the-categories-of-action-versus-deduction-from-the-content-of-action/

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  4. Rothbard is not the authority on praxeology. The authority on praxeology is Mises. Rothbard was one of Mises's lesser students who wrote a dumbed-down version of Human Action (Man Economy and State) for mass consumption. Rothbard made no significant contributions to praxeology. He merely defended a conception of praxeology which supported his own normative free-market convictions. In fact he argued against praxeology in his book The Ethics of Liberty, claiming that praxeology was OK in market theory, but not OK as a method of analyzing other forms of human action. Rothbard's top student, Hoppe, dismissed Rothbard's natural law ethics theory with the following words: "the concept of human nature is far "too diffuse and varied to provide a determinate set of contents of natural law." Rothbardians then dropped Rothbard's natural law theory in favor of Hoppe's argumenation ethics.

    In Misesian and Mengerian social thought one can generally make two kinds of "predictions": Exact, formal, or "apodictically certain" predictions on the one hand, and empirical or "thymological" predictions on the other hand. There is no question that Mises conceives that exact propositions (exact predictions) are possible concerning future actions:

    "Praxeological knowledge makes it possible to predict with apodictic certainty the outcome of various modes of action." (HA, 3rd rev. p. 117)

    For example, if it is a person's intention to walk toward a location in the future (action A), we can say with "apodictic certainty" that the person, if successful, will also walk away from a location (result or consequence B). The exactness or certainty involved occurs because the result or consequence B is a component or constituent of the intended action A, though not necessarily a conscious intention of the actor. The actor did not necessarily consciously intend to walk away from location X. He consciously intended to walk toward location Y, and walking away from X is a necessary part of walking to Y.

    Mises holds that similar exact propositions are possible with respect to market-related intentional actions. Given the above example, it seems reasonable to hold that exact propositions are possible with respect to intentional actions besides walking from one location to another.

    If a person's intention is to walk to location A, then according to Menger and Mises, it is an "empirical" or "thymological" matter whether that person will actually arrive at location A. There is no certainty here. The person may or may not reach destination A.

    If one tries to predict whether a person will successfully reach destination A, one may do so "thymologically" but not "praxeologically." For example, one may reason: Jim is generally lazy and lacks determination. Reaching destination A will require vigor and tenaciousness. Therefore I predict Jim will not succeed in reaching destination A.

    The person making a "thymological" prediction is a person making a prediction that is empirical in nature. This is a prediction about the occurrence of Y, which cannot be demonstrated to necessarily occur as a result of intentional action X.

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    1. It follows from this that the assertion that praxeology yields synthetic a priori truths about the real world is not true, for you admit that actual thymological prediction about what happens in the real world becomes contingent and probabilistic.

      Whatever certainty that obtains in deductive reasoning or models about human behaviour can only be a property of an analytic a priori system.

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  5. I never made any claims about synthetic a priori truths and I see you haven't provided such a claim made by Mises. Thus, I assume you are critiquing Rothbard or one of his followers. Thymological prediction is, by definition, contingent and probabilistic. "Praxeological prediction," by contrast, is exact and necessary, as indicated by the example provided.

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    1. Sure, Mises needs synthetic a priori knowledge to support his ridiculous claims about the allegedly irrefutable nature of praxeology:

      http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2014/03/david-gordon-on-praxeology-and-austrian.html

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  6. You haven't provided any passages where Mises claims that praxeology arrives at synthetic a priori knowledge.

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    1. On the contrary, the passage from Human Action I quote in that post that ends with these words entails that Mises needs to accept the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.

      "The theorems attained by correct praxeological reasoning are not only perfectly certain and incontestable, like the correct mathematical theorems. They refer, moreover, with the full rigidity of their apodictic certainty and incontestability to the reality of action as it appears in life and history. Praxeology conveys exact and precise knowledge of real things.” (Mises 2008: 38–39).

      And I assume you are not so ignorant that you do not know that this is exactly how many interpreters of Mises both Austrians and non-Austrians alike understand him: e.g., Hoppe, Lachmann, Thomas E. Woods, Hans Albert, George Selgin, David Ramsay Steele.

      And both Robert Murphy and David Gordon also held this view too before they misinterpreted that passage on HA.

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    2. And there is also the clear evidence that Mises was trying to defend the existence of synthetic a priori propositions in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method (1962), p. 5.

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  7. The combined premises and formal implications of one deductive system do not invalidate a separately chosen premise and the implications that may be formally derived from it. Neither the premise that results in the conception of the synthetic a priori, nor the results that may be formally derived by taking the notion of the synthetic a priori as a premise, can invalidate the separate premise and formally derived results of praxeology.

    The initial premise of praxeology is the attempt of a conscious agent to replace the present state or situation with a different state or situation (i.e., the initial premise of praxeology is cognition of the phenomenon of action). The premises of professional philosophy and the premises of physical science do not enter into the chain of praxeological reasoning.

    “In an a prioristic science, we start with a general supposition—action is taken to substitute one state of affairs for another.” (The Free Market and its Enemies, p. 16)

    Whatever premise one begins with that leads to the notion of the synthetic a priori, or whatever conclusion one draws based on the supposition of the synthetic a priori, is not relevant to the original supposition and formally derived implications of praxeology.

    Thus, if the social thinkers you refer to are trying to reconcile praxeology with the synthetic a priori, they are making a mistake. They are trying to reconcile an element of one system of thought with an element of an entirely different system of thought.

    You provide the following passage from Mises as proving that Mises must accept the notion of synthetic a priori knowledge:

    "The theorems attained by correct praxeological reasoning are not only perfectly certain and incontestable, like the correct mathematical theorems. They refer, moreover, with the full rigidity of their apodictic certainty and incontestability to the reality of action as it appears in life and history. Praxeology conveys exact and precise knowledge of real things.” (Mises 2008: 38–39).

    However, Mises need not borrow from the definitions, premises, and conclusions of established philosophy to make his argument. His argument may be summarized as:

    1. A conscious agent will attempt to attain X.

    2. If he is successful in attaining X, then Y must also occur, because Y is a necessary feature of the attainment of X.

    3. Though Y must occur if X is attained, a conscious agent may intentionally aim for X without intentionally aiming for Y.

    It is taken for granted that X is “real” (i.e., X is some situation or state that occurs in the conscious field of the agent concerned)

    Here is Lionel Robbins’ description of Mises’s argument:

    “Economic laws describe inevitable implications. If they data they postulate (A) are given, then the consequences they predict (B) necessarily follow.” “If in a given situation, the facts (A) are of a certain order, we are warranted in deducing with complete certainty that other facts (B) which it enables us to describe are also present.” “If the “given situation” (A) conforms to a certain pattern, certain other features (B) must also be present, for their presence is “deducible” from the pattern originally postulated. The analytic method is simply a way of discovering the necessary consequences (B) of complex collocations of facts (A)—consequences whose counterpart in reality is not so immediately discernible as the counterpart of the original postulates.” (An Essay on the Nature & Significance of Economic Science, 1945, p. 121-122) (A’s and B’s added for clarity)

    Again, no mention of the synthetic a priori.

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  8. Regarding Mises’s mention of the synthetic a priori on page 5 of The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, here Mises argues against logical positivism to the extent it denies “the cognitive value of a priori knowledge by pointing out that all a priori propositions are merely analytic.” Mises makes the point that the proposition “all a priori propositions are merely analytic” cannot be established by experience, and so this proposition must be “merely analytic.” Mises is turning the argument of logical positivism back on one of the fundamental propositions of logical positivism, using the accepted philosophical terminology of the time. He is not necessarily arguing that praxeology satisfies or conforms to the conception of the synthetic a priori as it is conceived by established philosophy.

    (as an aside, from our point of view the proposition “all a priori propositions are analytic” can be seen as a tautological proposition that conveys the kind of information we claim praxeology conveys. The proposition states essentially that A = B, meaning that A is identical to B in some respect, but not in every respect (in the latter case we would write A = A). The cognitive value of the proposition “all a priori propositions are analytic” is that it gives us certainty that if we are successful in producing an a priori proposition (A), we must necessarily also have produced or achieved analyticity (B), whether or not we were intentionally trying to achieve or produce analyticity.

    In The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Mises’s conception of the a priori is laid out on pages 17 and 18, not on page 5. Here are two sentences:

    “A tautology must ex definition be the tautology—restatement—of something said already previously.” “But the question is: How did we get the first—the basic—proposition of which the second—the derived—proposition is merely a tautology?”

    Thus we can see that Mises’s conception of analytic social science entails the supposition of a given situation or set of facts (A)—a situation or state that a conscious agent may possibly aim for. By analysis, the praxeologist tries to ascertain “certain other features” (B) which must necessarily be present if A is attained. This is potentially valuable knowledge to a conscious agent who may not know that B must necessarily result as a “consequence” of his attainment of A. As Mises writes, it is the vocation of praxeology “to render manifest and obvious what was hidden and unknown before.” (HA, 3rd rev. p. 38)

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    1. (1) "“Economic laws describe inevitable implications. If they data they postulate (A) are given," etc.

      This implies that such economic laws as descriptions of reality are contingent on real events and phenomena present in the real world.

      But that is clearlynot Mises's view.

      In any case, a quote from Lionel Robbins hardly proves what Mises himself believes!

      (2) you have just evaded the implications of the Mises quote I gave you in a completely unconvincing argument.

      E.g.,
      "However, Mises need not borrow from the definitions, premises, and conclusions of established philosophy to make his argument."

      So Mises was some sort of eccentric who just invented random epistemological ideas contrary to 300 years of philosophy!

      (3) look at how laughable your argument is: if Mises is really saying that the necessary truth of praxeological inferences is merely the result of them being deduced in an analytic a priori system that is only contingently true of the real world, then he has no essential dispute with the logical positivists, and no need to defend synthetic a priori knowledge.


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  9. (1) I'm glad you brought that up. Mises conceives TWO definable sources of economic or praxeological laws: (1)Those that derive from the CONTENT of action (as described in the Robbins quote, as illustrated in my previous example, and as discussed by Hayek in his article "The Facts of the Social Sciences"), and (2) those that derive from the STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (which Mises refers to as the structure of action).

    An example of the latter kind of law would be, for example, a generalized interpretation of the phenomenon of conservation (i.e., the thesis that the general law of conservation is a feature of consciousness, not a feature of the "external world") A formulation of this type of "epistemological law" would be something such as: "every observed or perceived event entails a similar but unobserved and unperceived event." (illustrative example only)

    Epistemological laws of this sort are what Mises has in mind in the first 200 pages of Human action and in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. Epistemological laws are the subject of Eddington's book The Philosophy of Physical Science in which Eddington argues that the primary physical laws are all epistemological laws.

    Personally, I don't think Mises would worry about the objection that laws deriving from the content of action are contingent upon the presence of that specific content for their validity. If Mises asserts that suppressing the interest rate below the market rate must result in X, then he likely wouldn't worry about the objection "well, this law is contingent upon someone actually suppressing the interest rate below the market rate in real life."

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    1. http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2014/03/why-misess-praxeological-theories-are.html

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  10. (2) "So Mises was some sort of eccentric who just invented random epistemological ideas contrary to 300 years of philosophy!"

    Well, that's how it appears from the point of view of the practitioners of physical science and professional philosophy. For their systems of thought, they adopted various premises, such as the notions of distance, weight, and velocity. Or, they constructed systems of thought using ideas and premises borrowed from Aristotle, Plato, and Kant.

    Mises had the insight to found a logical science (non-empirical science) on an entirely new foundation: the premise or supposition that a conscious agent attempts to replace the present situation with a different one.

    Because Mises doesn't begin his reasoning from the premises of physical science or established philosophy, but instead begins his reasoning from "the category of action," he is seen as an eccentric by mainstream intellectuals. However, from Mises's point of view:

    "The epistemologists dealt with thinking as if it were a separate field cut off from other manifestations of human endeavor. They dealt with the problems of logic and mathematics, but they failed to see the practical aspects of thinking. THEY IGNORED THE PRAXEOLOGICAL A PRIORI." (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 2)

    My interpretation: They assumed that the premises of their reasoning were the only ones available or valid. They failed to see or acknowledge other possible premises on which a logical science might be founded. They ignored the "praxeological a priori." They overlooked the universal phenomenon of a conscious agent attempting to replace the present situation with a different one, as a possible foundational premise of analytical reasoning. They assumed that the only premises available or valid as a basis for a meaningful body of knowledge were those of physical science, mathematics, traditional philosophy, and formal logic.

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    1. So what you are positing is that practically all interpreters of Mises -- both Austrian and non-Austrian -- totally misunderstood Mises's epistemology?

      E.g., Robert Murphy:
      “Mises affirms Hoppe’s interpretation regarding synthetic a priori truths (though not in these terms) when he writes,
      ‘It is consequently incorrect to assert that
      aprioristic insight and pure reasoning do
      not convey any information about reality
      and the structure of the universe. (p. 86)’”
      Murphy Study Guide to Human Action A Treatise on Economics, p. 26.

      Hoppe:
      “The characteristic mark of Kantian philosophy is the claim that true a priori synthetic propositions exist?and it is because Mises subscribes to this claim that he can be called a Kantian. “
      Economic Science and the Austrian Method, p. 18.

      Selgin:
      “In countering positivism Mises took refuge in Kantian epistemology and especially in Kant’s defense of the category of the synthetic a priori”
      Selgin, George, Praxeology and Understanding, p. 13.

      Thomas Woods:
      “Much has been written about how Mises and Rothbard justified the action axiom. Mises did so on Kantian grounds, arguing that this truth about human action was an example of the Kantian synthetic a priori: a statement which, made prior to experience, is both substantive and true.”
      Thomas E. Woods, The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, p. 16.

      “Mises drew his inspiration from … the Neo-Kantian philosophy that dominated academic Germany in the first decade of … [the 20th century]”
      Lachmann, L. M. 1976. “From Mises to Shackle: An Essay on Austrian Economics and the Kaleidic Society,” p. 56.
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      Many other examples could easily be found too.

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  11. My points are the following:

    Mises's theory as he himself conceived it is not founded on the explicitly defined concepts developed by past philosophers--concepts such as the synthetic a priori. His theory is founded on an independent supposition and proceeds directly from that supposition. The application of the construct "synthetic a priori" to Mises's theory is done by OTHER THINKERS, as you well document.

    Mises's theory does not depend or rely on the synthetic a priori construct, and this construct is largely irrelevant to Mises's theory and argument. His theory is independent of the constructs of professional philosophy. He argues simply that if a conscious agent is successful in attaining X, then Y must also occur if it can be demonstrated that the attainment of X necessitates the occurrence of Y.

    If we read the many passages in which Mises defends his theory, we see that he defends his theory by asserting that praxeological reasoning begins from the "category of action" and proceeds from this point. He never states that praxeological reasoning begins with the distinction between synthetic and analytic propositions. Other thinkers, perhaps in the attempt to understand Mises's theory (or perhaps being misled by still other mistaken thinkers) have attempted to apply the constructs of professional philosophy to Mises's theory. This is definitely a mistake, since Mises's theory begins from a supposition that is independent of the suppositions of professional philosophy.

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    1. " His theory is founded on an independent supposition and proceeds directly from that supposition. The application of the construct "synthetic a priori" to Mises's theory is done by OTHER THINKERS, as you well document. ... If we read the many passages in which Mises defends his theory, we see that he defends his theory by asserting that praxeological reasoning begins from the "category of action" and proceeds from this point."

      The very notion of a "category" comes from Kant, and "category of action" was something inspired by Kantian a priori categories:

      “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.” (Mises 1978: 44).

      "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, Ludwig von. 1978 [1962]. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, p. 44.

      "Following in the wake of Kant's analyses, philosophers raised the question: How can the human mind, by aprioristic thinking, deal with the reality of the external world? As far as praxeology is concerned, the answer is obvious. Both, a priori thinking and reasoning on the one hand and human action on the other, are manifestations of the human mind. The logical structure of the human mind creates the reality of action. Reason and action are congeneric and homogeneous, two aspects of the same phenomenon."
      Mises, Ludwig von. 1978 [1962]. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, p. 42.
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      The statement that Mises's praxeology is "not founded on the explicitly defined concepts developed by past philosophers" is bizarre: for right before your eyes, Mises uses the concept of a category, analytic and synthetic and a priori and a posteriori knowledge.

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  12. Here are some historical reasons why Mises's theory is misunderstood.

    First, Mises's most capable student, Hayek, argued in his essay "Economics and Knowledge" that Mises was mistaken in holding that praxeology applied to study of the market. Hayeks' argument was flawed, as demonstrated here:

    http://mises.org/daily/6248/Hayek-and-Praxeology

    If Hayek, an Austrian-related thinker in close contact with Mises, could make such a mistake, then how were other economists, less able than Hayek, and with less knowledge of Mises's theory, to understand Mises's theory?

    Second, in the US, it is a historical fact that most advocacy of Mises is done by Rothbardians (those closely associated with the Mises Institute). Rothbard wrote an entire book (The Ethics of Liberty) based on the argument that praxeology does not apply to "...the sphere of "politics," i.e., [to] violence and non-violence as modes of interpersonal relations." (p.25) He wrote: "Value in the sense of valuation or utility is purely subjective, and decided by each individual. This procedure is perfectly proper for the formal science of praxeology, or economic theory, but NOT NECESSARILY ELSEWHERE." (p. 12, caps added)

    Rothbard essentially considered praxeology and economics synonymous. He concluded that when we turn to intentional activities aside from market transactions, we switch to normative theorizing.

    This conception of things (praxeology for market activity, normative theorizing for social activity) underlies Rothbard's natural law ethical theories as well as Hoppe's argumentation ethics. However, it is clear that this was not Mises's idea at all. Mises conceived praxeology as a general science that would study all forms of action (all forms of intentional activity). Rothbard was successful in advocating his own scholarship paradigm (praxeology limited to market study) over the one advocated by Mises (praxeology studies all intentional actions). But from the point of view of Mises's conception, Rothbard's conception is a HUGE mistake.

    Mises's most capable student argued that Mises's theory didn't apply to the market, while Mises's most influential student in the US argued that Mises's theory ONLY applied to the market. Both Hayek and Rothbard made FUNDAMENTAL arguments against praxeology. And this explains why over the last sixty years there has been a paucity of scholarship devoted to understanding, developing, and extending the theory that Mises was actually working with.

    Rothbardians are not reliable authorities on Mises's praxeology. To understand praxeology we have to read Mises directly.

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    1. I am not quoting from Rothbardians, Adam, so this comment is irrelevant to my argument.

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  13. Your argument has been that Mises's theory is invalid because it does not overcome the synthetic-analytic dichotomy. But now you seem to be arguing that Mises's theory is invalid because he employs the concept of the category which was employed by Kant. In the passage you present to demonstrate that Mises employs the concept "category" Mises explicitly states that the analytic synthetic dichotomy is of no relevance to his theory.

    "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"

    This shows that Mises considered his theory, which proceeds directly from the supposition of action, to be independent of the synthetic-analytic dichotomy, a construct that itself is derived from DIFFERENT suppositions.

    Mises need not accept any particular philosopher's notion of "category." He could easily substitute the word "classification" for the word "category." He could develop his entire theory never mentioning the word "category" and only using the word "classification" and thus sever his theory completely from the constructs of professional philosophy.

    Reference Hayek:

    "...we invariably interpret their action on the analogy of our own mind: that is, that we group their actions, and the objects of their actions, into CLASSES or categories which we know solely from the knowledge of our own mind." (The Facts of the Social Sciences)

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    1. No, Mises says that:

      "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 is not saying that "the analytic synthetic dichotomy is of no relevance to his theory" -- only that he does not care to argue about it.

      And, of course, you totally ignore that most important quote which is devastating to your arguments:

      "Following in the wake of Kant's analyses, philosophers raised the question: How can the human mind, by aprioristic thinking, deal with the reality of the external world? As far as praxeology is concerned, the answer is obvious. Both, a priori thinking and reasoning on the one hand and human action on the other, are manifestations of the human mind. The logical structure of the human mind creates the reality of action. Reason and action are congeneric and homogeneous, two aspects of the same phenomenon."
      Mises, Ludwig von. 1978 [1962]. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, p. 42.
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      Here he links his epistemology clearly to that of Kant.

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