Philosophical Criticism of Misesian Rationality in the Action Sequence as well as a critique of analytic a priori vs synthetic a priori

Aristophanes — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:34:33 GMT

I recently read some criticism of Misesian rationality in the context of 'preferences and experienced conscious states'.

The thesis:

In order for formal constraints on preference to do any work, the content of those preferences must be determined. Consistency must be applied to something systematically identifiable.

The lead in:

I begin by considering attempts to base accounts of practical reasoning on actual preferences. Such accounts, in turn divide into two groups: those that look to the preferences revealed in a person's behavior and those that emphasize the preferences expressed by her.

the footnote

A third possibility, though immediately tempting, quickly proves hopless: the view that preferences are experienced conscious states. That view, associated both with traditional empiricism and, more recently, with "Austrian Economics," was put forward by [EvBB] ... and was developed by [LvM] ... Its difficulty arises from its claim that preferences both are present to consciousness and apply to indefintiely many possible cases. For reasons made familiar by Wittgenstein, such an account works no better for preference than for rule following.

I am not familiar with Wittgenstein. Does any one know what he says on this topic? How does something (or what) being in your conscious prevent it from also being true to every situation. Davidson would seem to be basically on board with Mises on the action sequence, if we ignore Davidson's focus on linguistics.

Another criticism of Mises has to do with his use of a priori analytics. After quoting from Human Action the author says,

Mises is even clearer her that praxeology is intended to be analytic a priori. But on the other hand, the theses of decision theory allow us to interpret experience. When we observe human action, we could not comprehend what we observe with out applying it to what we know, a priori, about human action, and decision theory is nothing but a formalization of that a priori knowledge.

Later...

Economic categories are necessary for the interpretation of experience of a certain kind, and they automatically hold of the relevant sort of experiences. They are in Kant's terms, Pure Concepts of Understanding. Mises is plainly wrong, then, when he says that "A prioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgements."

He then quotes another person saying

Austrian economics seems to be like other a priori disciplines in that it involves a multiplicity of concepts connected together not hierarchically but rather in a dense holistic network of mutual connections whose order is not capable of being antecedently established, ... in Mises, we are dealing with a family of a priori categories and categorical structures which are - in contradistinction to Mises's self-interpretation but still in concordance with his actual practice in econbomics - not analytic but synthetic.

Doesn't this in turn strengthen the Austrian position?

And also doesn't this put Mises in league with the logical positivists? and not Kant? If a priori reasoning is true because it is true, then we have Kant and a Pure Concept of Understanding. If it is only true because the world interacts in a particular manner (laws of motion if you will), that makes economic deduction true, then aren't we into logical positivism again?

It would seem this is trying to vindicate Mises, but discredit the Kantian influence in favor of logical positivism, at least that is what I am reaing into it thus far.

A.K.A. "It's true, but it is synthetic and not analytic."

Thoughts?

Political Theory

Philosophical Criticism of Misesian Rationality in the Action Sequence as well as a critique of analytic a priori vs synthetic a priori