General

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Student — Wed, 01 May 2013 03:35:03 GMT

Holy shit. The voice of Scrooge McDuck is the guy that played Filby in The Time Machine (1960).

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Student — Wed, 01 May 2013 03:27:03 GMT

This is the new Abe-Simpson-leaving gif. Jump on the band wagon!

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Malachi — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:08:47 GMT

"consumer should pay"

the nerve! why, thats laissez-fascism!

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proxyamenra — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:05:13 GMT

I was at a electrical engineering conference two weeks ago where Bob Frankston was speaking. He offended the sensibilities of most of the engineers there. Most of the engineers believed that the consumer should pay and private companies not the government should be investing in the technology.

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Clayton — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:10:55 GMT

+1 GL

Clayton -

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gotlucky — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:21:11 GMT

Mises:

Leaving aside for the present any reference to the problem of the human will or free will, we may say: Nonhuman entities react according to regular patterns; man chooses. Man chooses first ultimate ends and then the means to attain them. These acts of choosing are determined by thoughts and ideas about which, at least for the time being, the natural sciences do not know how to give us any information.

Mises:

Methodological dualism refrains from any proposition concerning essences and metaphysical constructs. It merely takes into account the fact that we do not know how external events—physical, chemical, and physiological—affect human thoughts, ideas, and judgments of value. This ignorance splits the realm of knowledge into two separate fields, the realm of external events, commonly called nature, and the realm of human thought and action.

Mises acknowledged that theoretically humans could someday have the knowledge to understand the causal process of thoughts in terms of physics and chemistry, though he was skeptical of humans actually achieving this level of knowledge. Methodological dualism allows for humans to study and learn about human action without fully understanding the causal process that leads to it.

Mises did not believe that this conflicts with a properly defined understanding of free will, though he apparently didn't like the term:

Mises:

Activistic determinism is by no means incompatible with the—rightly understood—idea of freedom of the will. It is, in fact, the correct exposition of this often misinterpreted notion. Because there is in the universe a regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phenomena, and because man is capable of acquiring knowledge about some of these regularities, human action becomes possible within a definite margin. Free will means that man can aim at definite ends because he is familiar with some of the laws determining the flux of world affairs. There is a sphere within which man can choose between alternatives. He is not, like other animals, inevitably and irremediably subject to the operation of blind fate. He can, within definite narrow limits, divert events from the course they would take if left alone. He is an acting being. In this consists his superiority to mice and microbes, plants and stones. In this sense he applies the—perhaps inexpedient and misleading—term “free will.”

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Smiling Dave — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:03:54 GMT

After looking around, I found Theory and History, Chapter 5, which lays out his views very clearly.

Bottom line, he sees three possibilities.

1. Man chooses between modes of action incompatible with one another. Such decisions, says the free-will doctrine, are basically undetermined and uncaused; they are not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions.

This is what he calls ""free" in the metaphysical sense of this term" in that part of HA you quoted in your article. He rejects this, because of course a person's decisions are influenced by his past.

2. Man, they say, deceives himself in believing that he chooses. Something unknown to the individual directs his will...Man does not act, he is acted upon.

He rejects this one, too. Accepting it. btw, would mean throwing all of praxeology out the window.

3. The choices a man makes are determined by the ideas that he adopts.

This is the one he thinks is right.

It follows, of course, that if there is some area of life where he has no preconceived notions, he has 100% free will.

The free-will doctrine is correct in pointing out the fundamental difference between human action and animal behavior. While the animal cannot help yielding to the physiological impulse which prevails at the moment, man chooses between alternative modes of conduct. Man has the power to choose even between yielding to the most imperative instinct, that of self-preservation, and the aiming at other ends.

Do you see any need to revise your article in light of that chapter from T and H? So you still think Mises and Roth. are at odds?

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HabbaBabba — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:03:23 GMT

The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/04/26/the-lunacy-of-our-internet-access-and-how-google-fiber-could-provide-needed-shock-therapy/

Super-Google to the rescue! Not an oligopoly, one company to rule them all. Maybe I read wrong but the whole article seems to advocate Google doing stuff that the government would eventually take over for the greater good. This stuff includes an electronic, online grid throughout every nook and cranny in the country. Gee, sounds fun.

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Willy Truth — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 02:24:58 GMT

Rent is too damn high! --music video/campaign video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEitsYJnmw

Definitely worth the LULZ

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Nielsio — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:04:13 GMT

Smiling Dave:

Nielsio,

If your article is saying that Mises and Rothbard disagree about free will, Mises saying there is none, and Rothbard saying there is, that's not correct. Of course Mises assumed free will. The very concept of "action', as Mises uses the word, is impossible without it.

If one looks up all the big words as one reads Chapter 1, Section 6 [The Alter Ego], in HA, this becomes crystal clear.

That's not how it appears to me.

The problem of the study and analysis of other people's action is in no way connected with the problem of the existence of a soul or of an immortal soul. As far as the objections of empiricism, behaviorism, and positivism are directed against any variety of the soul-theory, they are of no avail for our problem. The question we have to deal with is whether it is possible to grasp human action intellectually if one refuses to comprehend it as meaningful and purposeful behavior aiming at the attainment of definite ends. Behaviorism and positivism want to apply the methods of the empirical natural sciences to the reality of human action. They interpret it as a response to stimuli. But these stimuli themselves are not open to description by the methods of the natural sciences. Every attempt to describe them must refer to the meaning which acting men attach to them.

As I said in my article, the matter of goals, planning and choices is not at odds with metaphysical causality. Mises' discussion in what you linked tries to point to the complexity of the brain that the empiricists are underestimating and modelling away.

Making arguments counter to empiricists and in favor of subjective value is not an argument in favor of free will, and it doesn't seem like Mises is doing that.

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Smiling Dave — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:04:52 GMT

Nielsio,

If your article is saying that Mises and Rothbard disagree about free will, Mises saying there is none, and Rothbard saying there is, that's not correct. Of course Mises assumed free will. The very concept of "action', as Mises uses the word, is impossible without it.

If one looks up all the big words as one reads Chapter 1, Section 6 [The Alter Ego], in HA, this becomes crystal clear.

Re: * April 2013 Low Content Thread *

Nielsio — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:49:36 GMT

The Economics of Foreign & Military Intervention | by Chris Coyne

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Re: * April 2013 Low Content Thread *

Nielsio — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:48:56 GMT

My latest article:

Mises versus Rothbard on free will

http://www.vforvoluntary.com/articles/mises-versus-rothbard-on-free-will.html

"Mises points out the way to have a chance of affecting the actions of another person: their ends, historical context, and understanding must be taken into account. If the other person gains a different understanding of the world, then the causal processes of his choices will be different as well."

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gotlucky — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:01:48 GMT

Chelsea Clinton Interviews...The GEICO Gecko?

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DanielMuff — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:12:46 GMT

The headline should be "Autodealerships gain unfair advantage by colluding to sue Carfax."

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The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy

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Chelsea Clinton Interviews...The GEICO Gecko?

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