Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Hoppe’s Ridiculous Attack on the Epistemological Foundation of Moderate Empiricism

I get mercifully few libertarians in the comments sections these days, but I recently got this challenge here.

Patrick asks me to respond to this critique here.

This is a passage from the Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Hoppe 2007: 33–34), and Hoppe is a defender of Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge as the epistemological foundation of epistemology and Misesian praxeology.

The proposition that is the epistemological foundation for classical and modern moderate empiricism, as Hoppe notes, is this:
“This is empiricism’s central claim: Empirical knowledge must be verifiable or falsifiable by experience; and analytical knowledge, which is not so verifiable or falsifiable, thus cannot contain any empirical knowledge. If this is true, then it is fair to ask: What then is the status of this fundamental statement of empiricism? Evidently it must be either analytical or empirical.” (Hoppe 2007: 33).
Hoppe notes that this must be defended and classified as either (1) analytic a priori or (2) synthetic a posteriori.

So which one is it? The answer is that it can be rationally and easily defended as a synthetic a posteriori proposition (that is to say, an empirical proposition).

But, according to Hoppe, this somehow leads to this:
“So perhaps we should choose the other available option and declare the fundamental empiricist distinction between empirical and analytical knowledge an empirical statement. But then the empiricist position would no longer carry any weight whatsoever. For if this were done, it would have to be admitted that the proposition – as an empirical one – might well be wrong and that one would be entitled to hear on the basis of what criterion one would have to decide whether or not it was. More decisively, as an empirical proposition, right or wrong, it could only state a historical fact, something like ‘all heretofore scrutinized propositions fall indeed into the two categories analytical and empirical.’ The statement would be entirely irrelevant for determining whether it would be possible to produce propositions that are true a priori and are still empirical ones. Indeed, if empiricism's central claim were declared an empirical proposition, empiricism would cease altogether to be an epistemology, a logic of science, and would be no more than a completely arbitrary verbal convention of calling certain arbitrary ways of dealing with certain statements certain arbitrary names. Empiricism would be a position void of any justification.” (Hoppe 2007: 34).
Huh? No longer “carry any weight whatsoever”?

If that were true, then all human natural or social science of any kind based on foundational empirical propositions or assumptions would not “carry any weight whatsoever.” This is nonsense.

The standard ideas we presuppose in either the natural sciences or social sciences (or indeed in everyday common sense) can indeed be justified empirically, by experience, inductive argument and inference to the best explanation (which is just another non-deductive, or inductive form of reasoning) by long debates and arguments in philosophy or in the natural and social sciences too.

At the most basic level, there are all sorts of assumptions that are epistemological foundations of our beliefs and scientific theories (including economics), such as the following:
(1) the real existence of other human minds;

(2) the real existence of an external world of matter and energy that is the causal origin of our sensory data (= an indirect realist ontology);

(3) that the past had real existence (and is not some figment of our imagination);

(4) the existence of a set of physical and chemical laws that have been discovered by the natural sciences that account for the order and nature of the universe;

(5) the view that our earth is about 4.54 billion years old;

(6) the view that all livings things on our earth are the product of a Darwinian process of evolution by natural selection (and, if one wants to be technical, also by (i) sexual selection and (ii) artificial selection by humans);

(7) the human mind is the product of the physical activity of the brain, and so on.
And of course we can keep listing such propositions too as we move from natural science to the social sciences.

None of these assumptions can be justified as analytic a priori or as Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge. They are all empirical propositions. Does the admission that they are not 100% certain make science impossible? No.

For example, we have the empirical proposition that:
“the earth and the planets of our solar system revolve around the sun.”
This is an empirical proposition, which is contingent, known a posteriori, and its truth is probabilistic.

That is to say, even though there is an enormous amount of empirical evidence in its favour, it could be that this proposition is wrong, because as a contingent and probabilistic truth, it is not 100% certain and never can be. It’s not impossible that it might be false, though it seems extremely improbable given all we know.

We must always be open to the possibility that new evidence might suddenly emerge that would throw doubt on our belief, even if (again) this seems extremely improbable.

But, at present, we have overwhelming evidence that it is true. The proposition therefore stands as a rational and defensible foundational assumption of any branch of cosmology studying solar systems.

There is no profound epistemological problem with this state of affairs, or with the foundation of the physics of solar systems, because we never said that the empirical propositions were 100% certain, nor do we need them to be, in order to get empirical knowledge whose truth is probabilistic and rationally defensible as true on the current evidence.

We accept the truth of all empirical propositions only as long as the weight of current evidence demonstrates that we have a good or very good case to think they are true. E.g., we have no good reason to doubt that gravity will suddenly stop operating 5 seconds from now, though it’s not impossible that it might for some unknown reason. Is that any reason to jump out of a 100 story building now and expect to float to the ground unharmed?

It is the same, broadly speaking, with the foundational proposition of moderate empiricism.

Our defence of the original epistemological principle is empirical and its truth is only probable or highly probable, but the lack of certainty produces no such epistemological crisis for empiricism, for the reason that it never aimed at absolute necessary truth in the first place, as Hoppe demands. Our best scientific theories do not have apodictic truth, nor does the inductive method yield absolute certainty, yet modern science is incredibly successful.

The rejection of dogmatism and the willingness to regard any scientific theory as capable of revision or falsification are what give modern scientific epistemology its great strength.

But if we adopted the same type of argument used by Hoppe, then we must conclude that modern science must “no longer carry any weight whatsoever” and “would cease altogether to be an epistemology.”

Secondly, the legitimate response of an empiricist to a Rationalist that “all heretofore scrutinized propositions fall indeed into the two categories analytical and empirical” can be defended as true. Hoppe’s point here carries no weight.

We need only look at the way Kant’s original synthetic a priori knowledge, such as Euclidean geometry, necessary and deterministic causation, or certain laws of logic have either been refuted by modern science or seriously questioned.

Hoppe’s next statement that the empiricist’s classification of knowledge “would be entirely irrelevant for determining whether it would be possible to produce propositions that are true a priori and are still empirical ones” is also a non sequitur, since, on the contrary, it is a defensible starting point for analysing all statements and all future statements and determining whether they could possibly provide synthetic truth but be known a priori. If, for example, some Rationalist asserts that statement x is a synthetic a priori truth, but we discover that the real world produces overwhelming empirical evidence against the proposition, then it is the Rationalist who is faced with an epistemological crisis.

In essence, there are very good reasons why most analytic philosophers have rejected Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge, as follows:
(1) The paradigmatic type of synthetic a priori knowledge that was Euclidean geometry, when asserted as a universally true theory of space, has been shown to be severely contradicted by the empirical evidence – and this is not what we would expect to find if this theory really was necessarily true and an irrefutable theory of reality.

(2) We can eliminate the problem of virtually all proposed synthetic a priori knowledge by carefully separating pure maths/pure geometry (which is analytic a priori and necessarily true, but not describing reality) from applied maths/applied geometry (which is asserted as true of reality but is synthetic a posteriori and contingent).

For example, most of mathematics can be clearly explained as an analytic a priori system, as derived from pure logic and set theory (Schwartz 2012: 19), as shown by the work of Frege, Russell, and Whitehead.

(3) From (1) and (2), we can satisfactorily explain proposed synthetic a priori knowledge either as (i) analytic a priori or (ii) synthetic a posteriori, eliminating a complex and unnecessary category.
If any Kantian or libertarian has any further nor new example of an alleged Kantian synthetic a priori statement, then he or she can make it, and we can scrutinise any and all such proposed propositions and see whether the claim is convincing. I’ve not yet seen any such proposed or credible proposition. For example, the idea that the human action axiom is a synthetic a priori truth collapses like a house of cards when seriously scrutinised.

Ultimately, we can reject synthetic a priori knowledge by inference to the best explanation and Ockham’s razor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. 2007. Economic Science and the Austrian Method. Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn. Ala.

Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK.

Further Reading
For anyone interested in understanding why Misesian praxeology and Kantian synthetic a priori epistemology is wrong, see my posts here:
“Mises’ Praxeology: A Critique,” October 1, 2010.
“Limits of the Human Action Axiom,” February 28, 2011.
“Hayek on Mises’ Apriorism,” May 23, 2011.
“Mises and Logic,” August 26, 2011.
“Karl Popper’s View of Mises,” October 2, 2012.
“My Post on Praxeology gets some Attention,” March 7, 2012.
“Mises Flunks Evolution 101,” April 2, 2013.
“What is the Epistemological Status of Praxeology and the Action Axiom?,” July 27, 2013.
“Barrotta’s Kantian Critique of Mises’s Epistemology,” July 28, 2013.
“David Friedman versus Robert Murphy,” August 4, 2013.
“Mises Fails Philosophy of Mathematics 101,” August 30, 2013.
“Bob Murphy All At Sea on Geometry and Economic Epistemology,” August 31, 2013.
“Mises’s Non Sequitur on synthetic a priori Knowledge,” September 2, 2013.
“Tokumaru on Mises’s Epistemology,” September 3, 2013.
“Reply to a ‘Red Herring on Praxeology,’” September 6, 2013.
“Mises versus the Vienna Circle,” September 7, 2013.
“Mises’s Flawed Deduction and Praxeology,” September 8, 2013.
“Hoppe’s Caricature of Empiricism,” September 10, 2013.
“Hoppe on Euclidean Geometry,” September 11, 2013.
“Robert Murphy gets Mises’s Epistemology Wrong,” September 13, 2013.
“Hoppe on Euclidean Geometry, Part 2,” September 14, 2013.
“Mises on Kant and Praxeology,” September 15, 2013.
“Mises was Confused about the Analytic–Synthetic Distinction,” September 15, 2013.
“What is the Epistemological Status of the Law of Demand?,” September 19, 2013.
“A Simple Question for Austrian Apriorists,” November 20, 2013.
“Mises, Action and Uncertainty,” December 4, 2013.
“Córdoba on Praxeology and Economics,” December 7, 2013.
“Schuller’s Challenge to Misesian Apriorists has never been answered,” December 7, 2013.
“Mises versus Ayer on Analytic Propositions and a priori Reasoning,” March 16, 2014.
“David Gordon on Praxeology and the Austrian Method: A Critique,” March 13, 2014.
“Why Mises’s Praxeological Theories are not Necessarily True of the Real World,” March 15, 2014.
“Mises and Empiricism,” April 17, 2014.
“Mark Blaug was Right on Mises’ Method,” April 30, 2014.
“Why Should we reject the Existence of Synthetic a priori Knowledge?,” May 23, 2014.
“Detlev Schlichter on Mises’ Apriorism,” June 5, 2014.
“Robert Taylor versus David Ramsay Steele on Praxeology,” June 6, 2014.
“John Quiggin on Apriorism in Austrian Economics,” July 28, 2014.
“Hutchison on the History of Hayek’s Views on Economic Methodology,” August 2, 2014.
“Hayek on Prediction in the Social Sciences,” August 6, 2014.
“Are all Facts Theory-Laden?,” December 21, 2014.
“Walter Block’s An Austrian Critique of Mainstream Economics: A Critique on Epistemology,” October 8, 2015.
I’m on Twitter:
Lord Keynes @Lord_Keynes2
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10 comments:

  1. Hoppe is gibberish, as ever. Here there is the
    small kernel in what he says: it's hard to justify empiricism as a road to apodeictic truth. Well, duh. It doesn't make you younger either; so many shortcomings!
    The Rothbard types imagine they can have apodictic certainty, which is why they swallow this stuff up.

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    1. There is no contradiction between empirism and apodictic knowledge. Gödel wasn’t a believer in Kantianism or empiricism either. He preferred to rely on the philosophies of Leibnitz, Husserl and Brouwer. Study the beginning of the Hegelian Encyclopaedia! Capitalism is both a priori necessary and historically determinate society. This is proven by the fact that zero is equal to zero. Anticapitalism is caused by a lack of education. Aristotle, for instance, wasn’t a capitalist, as opposed to libertarian myths. He didn’t understand the value form because greek science wasn’t advanced enough. You cannot grasp the distinction between use value and exchange value without the concept of imaginary numbers and you cannot reduce complexity of operations without logarithm. At the beginning of the 19th century, society had the unique chance to make progress based on the internalization of the Hegelian system. Instead the elite chose to dumb down the population with epistemological neo-kantianism and vulgarian materialism. The working class as of yet doesn’t understand its own interest, because it doesn’t understand the relationship between the different classes of numbers and it doesn’t understand the world of human action because it fails to reduce complexity appropriately and see the relationship between different mathematical operations.

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  2. Hi LK,

    I'm on a weak wicket when it comes to philosophy, so thanks for this article.

    So-called Austrian praxeology is only one kind of praxeology. How does one distinguish between several forms of praxeology which do not yield the same conclusions? e.g. Hollis and Nell's Rational Economic Man, Mises's Human Action, Oscar Lange's writings on praxeology?

    Hypotheses need to be tested against empirical data and rejected if there is clear evidence against them.

    Theories than cannot be tested (e.g. the metaphysical Marxian "Labour theory of value") have no basis in any kind of science, including the social science of economics.

    There is no place in the social sciences for pure deductive logic without testing the implications of the assumptions.

    Enthusiasm for Miserian praxeology over at the Mises website, seems to dull people's perceptions of the need for 'realistic' assumptions, model building based on these assumptions, then testing the implications of the assumptions against real world empirical data.

    Hoppe and his mates just want to sprout their Miserian "theology". It's crazy.

    John Arthur

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    1. John Arthur
      Actually it's even worse than that. For instance they will argue for a policy on the basis say, that it raises the money price and thus reduces the consumption because "people respond to incentives". Then if you point out a case where this fails, Geffen goods for example, they just deny that the moeny was the incentive in this case, so they are not refuted. Now this shows the problem: they are prevaricating relentlessly on what's an incentive. "money is an incentive" is implicit in their *policy recommendation* and it's an empirical claim.

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    2. JA,
      I think the point you raise about testing social theory is one of Mises's key points in favor of praxeology. How do you test theories if you can't isolate variables? No "evidence" is actually evidence in a scientific manner if you haven't isolated variables for experiment. Just because you're convinced it is evident, does not make it proof. Mises just points out the impossibility of this and says "well I guess this method can't provide anything remotely free from perpetual speculation about which variable was the causal factor. The only way to correct for this is ceteris paribus conditions in logic."

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    3. Hi Patrick,

      What use are ceteris paribus(other things equal)conditions in logic if they cannot be related to the real world? e.g. What value are logical models of macroeconomics that assume price flexibility and market clearing when we know that many labour markets (where there is an excess supply of labour) do not clear through lowering wage rates? In the real world, some trades appear to occur at off-equilibrium prices and market adjustments are often through quantity adjustments more than through price adjustments?

      While I agree with you that correlation does not imply causation (confounding of variables problem), I cannot see how mental experiments under ceteris paribus are real experiments (controlled or randomised) and can result in real world isolation of variables. Maybe you can help me out by explaining how this can be done. Also, what do you think of Granger causality?

      John Arthur

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  3. Thanks LK.

    I guess to simplify what I'm seeing here against what Hoppe is proposing, you're in agreement that empiricism provides no certain knowledge. But you're saying that's ok because certain knowledge is impossible (?) And practically creates stubborn intellectuals?

    That's all well and good as far as it goes but it also doesn't answer the point that you can't have certain. Knowledge that you can't have certain knowledge. Or more specifically you can't have certain knowledge that this proposition is true in the first place.

    It sounds to me like Hoppe (and I) think this is devastating to the empiricism moving forward, or bothering to argue in the first place, and you see it as no problem whatsoever.

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    1. (1) yes, you can have necessary truth: but it is a property of analytic a priori statements, e.g., "all bachelors are unmarried."

      (2) it seems like you haven't even read this post properly. All foundational principles on which ALL physical and social sciences are based are empirical propositions whose truth is probabilistic only, e.g.,:

      (1) the real existence of other human minds;

      (2) the real existence of an external world of matter and energy that is the causal origin of our sensory data (= an indirect realist ontology);

      (3) that the past had real existence (and is not some figment of our imagination);

      (4) the existence of a set of physical and chemical laws that have been discovered by the natural sciences that account for the order and nature of the universe;

      (5) the view that our earth is about 4.54 billion years old;

      (6) the view that all livings things on our earth are the product of a Darwinian process of evolution by natural selection (and, if one wants to be technical, also by (i) sexual selection and (ii) artificial selection by humans);

      (7) the human mind is the product of the physical activity of the brain, and so on.
      -----------------
      Are you capable of proving that "other human minds apart from my own exist" with 100% apodictic truth?

      If not, then praxeology is totally screwed, because it requires that you assume that other human minds exist.

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  4. So you're in agreement then that an the argument in question being "an empirical one" can never be proven with certainty? In other words you can't know with certainty that synthetic a priori knowledge is impossible? I have to ask for clarity there because this seems to be the one thing you're so certain of and have written on so many times.

    You frequently cite the discovery that euclidean geometry isn't true in all times and places. Fair enough. But then it seems you throw the baby out with the bath water simply because that had been the previously most common example of a synthetic apriori argument.

    Do you also agree with Mises when he refers to economic statements from deductive logic as non-falsifiable by experience? This I think is critical. If the answer is yes, then you obviously lack the empirical evidence to disprove his economic theory. If the answer is no, then the method of collecting that evidence comes into question, and as I usually argue, completely misses the mark of the "scientific method" for experiment in the first place.

    I don't know that I'm moving towards proving anything to you, but hopefully I'm clarifying why I don't think it is possible to dissuade me from an empiricist bent.

    Also, above you mentioned something interesting:
    "That is to say, even though there is an enormous amount of empirical evidence in its favour, it could be that this proposition is wrong, because as a contingent and probabilistic truth, it is not 100% certain and never can be. It’s not impossible that it might be false, though it seems extremely improbable given all we know.

    "We must always be open to the possibility that new evidence might suddenly emerge that would throw doubt on our belief, even if (again) this seems extremely improbable."

    Mises essentially says the same thing of Praxeology. That we must repeatedly and continually rework the logic to verify no errors. Because it cannot be falsified by experience, the only way to avoid (the cardinal sin, it seems) of dogmatic belief is to challenge oneself.

    As for your question, am i capable of proving that other human minds apart from my own exist with 100% apodictic certainty? I don't know. I've never given it a thought in philosophic terms. It seems plainly obvious on its face. I can only imagine this is an old argument dating back a long way, and you believe the answer to be no. But I'm not sure that without this "proof" praxeology shouldn't be studied or given credence.

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    1. (1) “So you're in agreement then that an the argument in question being "an empirical one" can never be proven with certainty? In other words you can't know with certainty that synthetic a priori knowledge is impossible?”

      If you had only read the post properly, you’d already know.

      We do not know with absolute 100% certainty that no synthetic a priori propositions exist. However, given the failure of all proposed ones, it seems very improbable that they exist. None of Kant’s or Mises’s ones are credible.

      If you have any proposed synthetic a priori proposition, then give it, and we can subject it to scrutiny and accept or reject it on the basis of logic, coherence, evidence, inductive evidence, and inference to the best explanation. I’ve seen no such synthetic a priori proposition that could be defended.

      (2) “ Do you also agree with Mises when he refers to economic statements from deductive logic as non-falsifiable by experience?”

      No, not if he thinks they are synthetic (empirical). Any statements that Mises thinks are a priori are in fact empty analytic a priori statements.

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