Hey guys. I'm currently writing my dissertation on Praxeology for my (BA). As such, I'm trying to find as many critics of the theory as I can, and then some supporting evidence to destroy them. I've already dealt with Caplan, Guiterrez and Calder thus far, but browsing the web, I came across this: http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2010/10/mises-praxeology-critique.html
Anyone here read, or responded to this peice? If so, if you could provide the link, I'd be much obliged. Also: If you have any other material on this topic, or thoughts, imput, please throw in your two cents.
Granted, in your particular case the mild trolling angle is obvious from previous experience. But can you describe a scenario where someone voluntarily acts without expecting greater satisfaction than would result from not acting?
I'm sorry for being rude. I should have thought of a better way of making my point.
I cannot think of such a scenario. I also can't think of any way this would change how I do economics.
Fool on the Hill: What are some of these truths? I thought all necessary truths were analytic.
What are some of these truths? I thought all necessary truths were analytic.
There are necessary truths implied in this axiom of action, which are categories of economics (goals, means, ends, cost, profit, and loss are implied in the axiom of action). To illustrate this concept, say someone absurdly claims the negation of what was just said (i.e., goals, means, ends, costs, profit, and loss, are not implied in the axiom of action). The act of making this statement in of itself constitutes an action, with the goal of refuting the truth of the axiom itself or the necessary truths that follow, using argumentation as means, hoping to be proven right in the end; yet it is hopeless because anyone who makes this statement does not profit from their performative contradiction and, as a result, is at a loss. None of these necessary truths derived from this axiom are self-evident, of course; this is why the action axiom is not analytic.
You could argue that all truths are analytic, but this would technically be an all out philosophic assault on reason. After, all we can define things how ever we want I suppose, but Aristotle's law of indentity holds. Here's an idea: next time you go into work, show up 3 hours late. If you have to be at work at 9, then show up at 12. Claim that 9 o'clok really means 12 o'clock to you; since all truths are analytic (from your position), then this shouldn't really be a problem.
This is helping me see why Austrian Economics is often so confused. If the concept of profit is derived from this axiom, then it explains why the Austrian definition differs from the one used in the mainstream. In AE, profit seems to be the same thing as a goal, an end, or a benefit. But in mainstream usage, it means something like ending up with an objectively greater quantity of money (or equivalent value) than the quantity that one spent. The concept of value is similarly transformed. The problem is, to do proper economics we still need to be able to talk about the concepts according to their old definitions. So to me, Mises's method only seems revolutionary in its ability to obfuscate and limit certain discourses.
FWIW, Wikipedia says that self-evident propositions and analytic proposition are different. I think I understand what your saying though.
Fool on the Hill: This is helping me see why Austrian Economics is often so confused. If the concept of profit is derived from this axiom, then it explains why the Austrian definition differs from the one used in the mainstream. In AE, profit seems to be the same thing as a goal, an end, or a benefit. But in mainstream usage, it means something like ending up with an objectively greater quantity of money (or equivalent value) than the quantity that one spent. The concept of value is similarly transformed. The problem is, to do proper economics we still need to be able to talk about the concepts according to their old definitions. So to me, Mises's method only seems revolutionary in its ability to obfuscate and limit certain discourses. FWIW, Wikipedia says that self-evident propositions and analytic proposition are different. I think I understand what your saying though.
In AE, profit seems to be the same thing as a goal, an end, or a benefit. But in mainstream usage, it means something like ending up with an objectively greater quantity of money (or equivalent value) than the quantity that one spent.
Profit has the same definition in Austrian economics - having more money than you started with. In fact, the Austrians are more insistent about it being money (and not some kind of psychic general warm-fuzzy) because what is meant by economic calculation is the pricing of all non-money goods in terms of money, thus permitting the direct comparison of the objective exchange value of many disparate goods.
But action is not motivated by profit. Action is motivated by ends. Profit permits calculation of one's success in attaining one's ends in the most general possible sense. The anti-materialists get confused on this point... "money can't buy happiness" but they miss the fact that bringing about the conditions for happiness necessarily entails some sort of material processes and that money is the most general means for bring about any particular material state of affairs.
Perhaps another child is what will make you happy. But the money to build an addition to your house for the extra bedroom and to birth, clothe, feed, etc. the new child are the means by which you will be able to bring about the state of affairs of having another child. Money is the most general means for bringing about these material conditions and profit permits the calculation of the extent of the means at your disposal for bringing about material states of affairs.
Clayton -
The disutility of labor is not of a categorial and aprioristic character. …. Experience teaches that there is disutility of labor. But it does not teach it directly. There is no phenomenon that introduces itself as disutility of labor. There are only data of experience which are interpreted, on the ground of aprioristic knowledge, to mean that men consider leisure—i.e., the absence of labor—other things being equal, as a more desirable condition than the expenditure of labor (Mises 1949).
Doesn't the first part contradict the bold part? The disutility of labor doesn't seem to be an empirical observation, but rather a synthetic a priori axiom. If we were to say, "Q has stopped laying bricks" and then add "because he is tired," the addition would make the statement not empirical, but synthetic, no? We can't observe someone getting tired; we can only understand that someone is getting tired by reflecting on what we observe. We only notice Q get tired because we understand the nature of what he is doing is stressful and that he needs a break. We can't derive the disutility of labor axiom purely through empirical observation, can we? Hoppe explains in his Economic Science and the Austrian Method:
It is true, as Kant says, that the true synthetic a priori propositions are grounded in self-evident axioms and that these axioms have to be understood by reflection upon ourselves rather than being in any meaningful sense "observable."
So its not that we can see someone getting tired, but that we see someone doing work and understand that the work is tiring and that there is therefore a disutility associated with it. This seems to be the only specific critique offered by this author.
Do I have this right?
EDIT: I don't know how I suggested this post, but, obviously, ignore it.
Contribution from Libertarian Monarchy:
Here is a simple way, using praxeology, to deduce the disutility of labour. Leisure can be defined as engaging in the action that immediately maximizes utility. Labour can be defined as engaging in an action which is just a means to acquiring an end. The end is the goal that will maximize utility. The means is only done for the satisfaction of acquiring the end. Therefore, the end is valued more highly than the means. If the actor could achieve the end without ever going through the means he would do so. So, there is inherent disutility that comes from using the means, labour. Hence the disutility of labour.
I, personally, would skip the definition of leisure. Just associate labor as an action, which is a means, and the rest follows. Defining leisure as utility maximizing activity would be an empirical definition that is unnecessary in his train of thought. Thoughts?
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
But can you describe a scenario where someone voluntarily acts without expecting greater satisfaction than would result from not acting?
Oh, but charity, scarifice, goodness! Certainly those don't benefit us at all ;)
Fool on the Hill: can you describe a scenario where someone voluntarily acts without expecting greater satisfaction than would result from not acting? I cannot think of such a scenario.
can you describe a scenario where someone voluntarily acts without expecting greater satisfaction than would result from not acting?
I cannot think of such a scenario.
So it would not be unreasonable to say that we know this to be true a priori, right? And that this must logically apply to the voluntary action of trade as well?
I also can't think of any way this would change how I do economics.
What if the economic model were shown to contradict this principle?
Consumeriat: "The article linked does the job better than I can, but my main problem with Praxeology is that its claims to being apodictically certain are completely overblown. I've never once met anyone able to deduce economic laws from the Action Axiom without slipping in assumptions that require empirical evidence. So Praxeology's claim to being a-priori are nonsense."
Hahaha, how about no. Terrible strawman.
And you whole argument just got shattered... because you didn't have one in the first place. Further clarification:
Praxeology and Economic Science
Praxeology says that all economic propositions which claim to be true must be shown to be deducible by means of formal logic from the incontestably true material knowledge regarding the meaning of action. Specifically, all economic reasoning consists of the following: an understanding of the categories of action and the meaning of a change occurring in such things as values, preferences, knowledge, means, costs, etc; a description of a world in which the categories of action assume concrete meaning, where definite people are identified as actors with definite objects specified as their means of action, with some definite goals identified as values and definite things specified as costs. Such description could be one of a Robinson Crusoe world, or a world with more than one actor in which interpersonal relationships are possible; of a world of barter exchange or of money and exchanges that make use of money as a common medium of exchange; of a world of only land, labor, and time as factors of production, or a world with capital products; of a world with perfectly divisible or indivisible, specific or unspecific factors of production; or of a world with diverse social institutions, treating diverse actions as aggression and threatening them with physical punishment, etc; and a logical deduction of the consequences which result from the performance of some specified action within this world, or of the consequences which result for a specific actor if this situation is changed in a specified way. Provided there is no flaw in the process of deduction, the conclusions that such reasoning yield must be valid a priori because their validity would ultimately go back to nothing but the indisputable axiom of action. If the situation and the changes introduced into it are fictional or assumptional (a Robinson Crusoe world, or a world with only indivisible or only completely specific factors of production), then the conclusions are, of course, a priori true only of such a “possible world.” If, on the other hand, the situation and changes can be identified as real, perceived and conceptualized as such by real actors, then the conclusions are a priori true propositions about the world as it really is. [19] Such is the idea of economics as praxeology. And such then is the ultimate disagreement that Austrians have with their colleagues: Their pronouncements cannot be deduced from the axiom of action or even stand in clear-cut contradiction to propositions that can be deduced from the axiom of action.
Praxeology says that all economic propositions which claim to be true must be shown to be deducible by means of formal logic from the incontestably true material knowledge regarding the meaning of action. Specifically, all economic reasoning consists of the following:
Provided there is no flaw in the process of deduction, the conclusions that such reasoning yield must be valid a priori because their validity would ultimately go back to nothing but the indisputable axiom of action. If the situation and the changes introduced into it are fictional or assumptional (a Robinson Crusoe world, or a world with only indivisible or only completely specific factors of production), then the conclusions are, of course, a priori true only of such a “possible world.” If, on the other hand, the situation and changes can be identified as real, perceived and conceptualized as such by real actors, then the conclusions are a priori true propositions about the world as it really is. [19]
Such is the idea of economics as praxeology. And such then is the ultimate disagreement that Austrians have with their colleagues: Their pronouncements cannot be deduced from the axiom of action or even stand in clear-cut contradiction to propositions that can be deduced from the axiom of action.
~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method, pg 25.
There's nothing confusing about this position at all. Profit doesn't neccesarily mean gaining money. Certainly, if one volunteers one's own time to serve in a soup kitchen (for free), there may not be any monetary benefit involved, but the profit from this action in manifested in a different form: the additional satisfaction that one gains from "doing a noble thing" takes place in the form of added social capital.
Yes, that would be a priori. Once you apply it to the external world, however, you are no longer doing something a priori (or at least not purely a priori). I see what you are saying now more since starting Human Action. Mises actually says that all economics employs a priori reasoning. I had the mistaken impression that AE claimed to be exceptional in this regard.
I am not aware of any economic models that contradict this principle. Obviously, they would be invalid if they did.
I just jumped ahead and found that Mises makes the same error in his explanation of Autistic Exchange and Interpersonal Exchange. Autistic "Exchange" refers to the selection of possible states within a single period of time--if I go to the museum tomorrow I can't go to the baseball game. While Interpersonal Exchange refers to the transfer of things between two periods of time--I have money now, but if I give it to the clerk for a pair of shoes, I won't have it later. Interpersonal Exchange has nothing to do with the action axiom. Autistic "Exchange" does relate to the axiom. However, it has nothing to do with exchange as it is normally understood. It strikes me as incredibly odd to use the word exchange to describe this phenomena.
So in both the case of profit and the case of exchange, it is only the unorthodox definition that meets Mises's action axiom. Hmm, can you blame me if I start getting a wee bit suspicious?
Fool on the Hill: Here Mises mentions a temporal component. Clearly this cannot be derived from his action axiom.
For Mises, only the indisputable axiom of action is a priori; he conceded the details to be broadly empirical.
Fool on the Hill: Someone is not necessarily happier after they achieve an end than before they achieve it. That would mean, provided we always achieve our ends, that we get happier and happier as our life goes on.
Someone is not necessarily happier after they achieve an end than before they achieve it. That would mean, provided we always achieve our ends, that we get happier and happier as our life goes on.
I keep saying "ex ante" "ex ante" "ex ante"
Goal attainment is a continuous process in which full satisfaction in an absolute sense can never be reached (otherwise you wouldn't act at all). Each action undertaken gives way to new states of knowledge, circumstances, etc. Maybe you reach your goal; maybe you don't. Sometimes action brings about additional happiness and sometimes it doesn't. The only part that matters here is that, prior to acting, you think that your action will result in increased satisfaction.
Clayton: ...happiness necessarily entails some sort of material processes and that money is the most general means for bring about any particular material state of affairs. Clayton -
...happiness necessarily entails some sort of material processes and that money is the most general means for bring about any particular material state of affairs.
This is not true. Happiness does not necessarily entail a materialistic process. I'm in agreement with your anti-materialists-don't-get-it argument, but it's not true for all circumstances.
For example...when I was using an elevator today I decided to hold the door open for someone. This action resulted in additional social capital for me (otherwise I wouldn't have done it); it cost me nothing in a materialistic sense. Anyone that's ever engaged in this behavior, or held a regular door open for someone, or picked up something for someone else when they dropped it, etc, is doing it for pure social capital gains. Profit/Happiness does not necessarilyhave to result from something materialistic (though most all of the time it does).
For starters if anyone denies the truth factor of this axiom, then please write up a piece that shows how denying this self-evident axiom is not a performative contradiction.
Is the axiom that there exists at least one human actor, or is it more general, that everyone "acts" all the time?
If the former, the standard results of economics do not follow from such a weak axiom. If the latter, it it is not proven just because one guy has been shown to act by trying to disprove it.
[But in any case, I agree that it's silly to deny such an obvious thing, and don't think any proof is needed].
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