In the "Production" section, which follows the "Creative Genius" section of Human Action, Mises defines prouction as (p. 140)
not an act of creation [...]. The producer is not a creator. Man is creative only in thinking and in the realm of imagination. In the world of external phenomena he is only a transformer.
Yet, he seems to contradict this, saying that production "is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon" (p. 141), as though production were creative in addition to being transformative.
He concludes this section with (p. 142):
[W]e do not know what mind is, just as we do not know what life, motion, and electricity are. Mind is simply the word to signify the unknown factor that has enabled men to achieve all that they have accopmlished.
If Mises does "not know what mind is," other than it being an "unknown factor," then how does he know "mind" is not matter and that, against the Marxist materalists, "the 'productive forces' are not material" (p. 141)?
This thread was inspired by discussions on the "Birthrates best economic indicator?" and "Economics of Science?" threads.
Thanks
Mind is matter. Mises is atheist, and says so in all of his books. We merely cannot trace individual currents going from one neuron to another, because we are external observers to other people, and because of difficulty of doing so even if we may open up somebody's skull. We also lack knowledge of life-experience which determines these neural connections, so we cannot even find out what conditioned reflexes and what model of their world people actually have in their brain.
Marxists and behaviorists do not claim merely that mind is matter. They claim there is no such thing as mind, and that it is not important for economics to know how mind works: that its all simple or conditioned reflexes or instincts. This is false neurophysiologically. They also claim different classes have different brains. False: 90% of brain operation is identical for people at birth, 10% includes mostly any possible inheritence of brain-related heritable illnesses and some heritable positive traits (Donald Hebb, 1949).
Production is creation of utility, not creation of matter or new things; it is only tranformation (Mises gets this straight from J.B. Say, H.H., Gossen, & E. Bohm-Bawerk). There are no productive forces. World is not animate (e.g., J. Hutton, C. Darwin, H. Spencer, E., Bohm-Bawerk). There is only random construction and destruction of useful things without any intention, but this cannot be relied on to regularly sustain people with goods. They must work to regularly force useful transformation.
Scientific thought is creation of new things, i.e., new ideas, not just transformation of new ideas (Mises gets this straight from J. Hutton & J.B. Say). = absolutely new arrangments of neural networks.
Being an atheist doesn't necessarily imply he denies the immateriality of the mind.
As much as Mises focuses on methodology and first principles, how is he not adopting Marxism's exact principles?
I could be wrong, but I think Mises means that production is not creation in the sense of creating matter and/or energy from nothing. That is, he seems to be keeping in line with the physical law of the conservation of mass-energy.
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Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
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To Alan:
Lets do foundations of mathematics in Leibniz Version:
A = B
If you substitute A for B, you do not get anything more than you started with. Because everything may be expressed as dynamical equations through equality, there is conservation of energy or perpual motion despite work being done is impossible (S. Stevin, G. Leibniz (especially his specimen dynamicum), J. Mayer, E. Mach).
There is no such thing as creation of anything. Only transformation, if we are talking about things, which all goods are. Goods are range of function, F(X).
What can be created are new arrangments (e.g., of neurons) = ideas. Ideas are function F.
Range cannot be added to, since at most it is real or complex space. But we can "discover" new functions or mapping between different parts.
See what I mean?