This blog post is an attempted contribution to Mises’ Praxeology, because the questions I’m going to ask in the next blog post, lead to observations which seem to contradict those of Austrian ‘free market’ economics.
Praxeology
Praxeology is the study of what the ‘Austrian’ form of economics considers to be those aspects of human action that can be grasped a priori, or which seem immediately obvious without any further testing or exploration. The idea is that anything we deduce, or derive, from these axioms has as much truth as the original axioms. As we have assumed the original axioms are obviously true then the derivations must also be true.
However, if the axioms are incorrect or incomplete, then propositions which have been derived from them, will (at best) be misleading.
I am extremely dubious that we can simply take apparently obvious axioms about human nature as true, without investigating them. Anthropology repeatedly shows that different societies have different ideas of what is normal human behaviour, so it is probable that what seems normal and obvious to a person is most likely a cultural phenomena, reinforced by their society and not necessarily true for all (culture can be mistaken, biased or limiting). However, to Mises, historical and anthropological research are irrelevant to understanding human dynamics and functioning. He argues that Praxeology’s axioms:
are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. They are both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts.
Mises 1998 (original 1949) Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Mises Institute p 32
I’m not quite sure how any person’s axioms about human nature, can be ‘temporarily antecedent’ to their knowledge and experience. The simple fact would seem to be, that by the time we get to thinking we can deduce everything important about a subject from obvious axioms correctly without error in the deduction process, we have done a lot of learning, and had a lot of enculturation.
That these axioms are not falsifiable, or verifiable, is of course handy for producing dogma, but not as handy for finding truth. Heading towards even relatively accurate understanding takes work and testing. The beginning point of Mises Praxeology simply seems lazy. It is at least likely our learnt knowledge of history and our cultural expectations, lead us to consider some propositions about human nature as being obvious when they are not.
The point seems to be that Austrian economics should not ever be tested, unlike a normal science, where you change the theory if the evidence shows it is not correct. As Austrian Economics is based on a priori truths, then no amount of evidence can ever show it is wrong. It is essentially a dogma. We should probably be skeptical of his assumptions.
We may need to know what histories we are taking as true, to understand what axioms we might take as true.
A theory should be logical or derivable and systematic but, if we want accuracy or truth, we should be able to abandon the theory, if the evidence does not support it, otherwise we are just heading for a beautiful delusion.
He implies that the assumptions of mathematics are a priori as well, independent of our experience of the world. I’m skeptical about that proposition as well. However, we do know that you can get quite interesting results by challenging the apparently obvious axioms of mathematics, and that some of the new mathematics that has resulted is useful for analysing real world situations which were previously resistant to mathematical description. Non obvious, non a priori formulations, such as irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, non-Euclidian geometry and so on, should have been familiar to Mises. Non-obvious multi-valued Logics were being explored in the 1920s and 30s. We can assume he was not inevitably going to be familiar with these, but that does not mean they do not exist, and do not contradict his point. What seems to be obvious can be wrong, or just a special case. We would hope no one would make a similar mistake today, but who knows? It can be easier to make that mistake, or there can be other incentives to make it, because we have already decided what our ‘science’ is aimed at.
Mises states Praxeology‘s:
scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts.
Mises 1998 (original 1949) Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Mises Institute p 32
For me, one of the problems with this form of immediately obvious human action, is that it appears to deny interaction, when that seems basic to human action. That is, human action almost automatically involves interaction with something else. I wonder if human action can be extracted from all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances? Surely we act, at least in part, because we are reacting to circumstances and the properties of the environment we find ourselves within? We are nearly always reacting to, or with, other people for one. For instance, in reading Mises, we are reacting to Mises – that is one relevant circumstance. In an economy we are reacting to what is happening elsewhere. It could be argued that we develop our sense of self, or our ego, through our interaction with the world (including people), and through learning the ways the world resists us and the ways it supports us.
Mises proposition takes advantage of the historical Western neglect of environment and interaction. This would seem not to be an a priori truth, but a historical/cultural assumption. Other people do not have to make that assumption.
Mises justifies his approach by what he calls “methodological individualism”.
Praxeology deals with the actions of individual men. It is only in the further course of its inquiries that cognition of human cooperation is attained and social action is treated as a special case of the more universal category of human action as such.
Mises 1998 (original 1949) Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Mises Institute p 42.
He recognises there are problems with this, but simply brushes them to one side.
As a thinking and acting being[,] man emerges from his prehuman existence already as a social being. The evolution of reason, language, and cooperation is the outcome of the same process; they were inseparably and necessarily linked together. But this process took place in individuals. It consisted in changes in the behavior of individuals. There is no other substance in which it occurred than the individuals. There is no substratum of society other than the actions of individuals.
Mises 1998 (original 1949) Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Mises Institute p 43.
This is an odd conclusion from the obvious recognition that humans emerge from “prehuman existence already as a social being.” If this is correct, which seems to be the case, then methodological individualism seems to be a distortion of reality. It could be an acceptable distortion if it leads to testable results, but it is certainly not a priori not matter how convenient it is.
Evolution does not seem to take place in individuals, but in reproduction, which requires at least two people. Evolution and human action, almost always occur in interactions; with other people, with other animals, with plants, with soils, with water, with climate, with weather, with microbes etc. The child learns from its parents, others and its conditions of life. If its genes and experience give it an advantage, it may flourish and reproduce. If its genes and do not give it an advantage or harm it, then it may not flourish and reproduce. It could be an evolutionary dead end, without some other factor. Perhaps it has helped its group flourish and reproduce, by discovering useful things, and thus its genes may get passed on indirectly. In which case again, evolution is not individual.
It would seem that humans are social and interactive beings, and this is not secondary, or to be dismissed out of hand.
This interactivity, leads to the apparent fact that societies and groups do not have firm boundaries, and that people can belong to intersecting and different groups. This is a probable difficulty, but it is a difficulty which has to be faced, rather than avoided. This issue is, as Mises implies before dismissing the problem, normal for humans. It is as obvious as it gets.
He also asserts that the meaning of a crowd “is always the meaning of individuals” (Human Action p 43). But it is not. A collection of interacting humans may not always have the effects each individual member has attributed to the gathering. Social action, or interaction, often has effects unintended by any of the participants. That is also observable and important to human life. Human action may be absolutely involved with attempts to reduce, or take advantage of, the ongoing production of unintended consequences.
Let us note that people who classify themselves as being similar, often co-operate to advance their individual and group interests, and that this has a potentially large economic effect, and is a normal part of human life.
In other words, despite Mises’ claims, we almost never have isolated individuals. We have functional human individuals who exist because of their previous interactions with, co-operations with, conflicts with, and learning from other people and the world. No one is normally a blank slate of desires and instincts, completely free to act through their own uninfluenced reflection. Indeed, it seems an immediately obvious proposition that humans are social, and learning creatures, and would not survive childhood on their own. There are other axioms which seem equally immediately obvious to me, and worthy of research.
As it is popular, we might instance the South African Zulu or Xhosa phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”, usually abridged as ‘ubuntu’. This is also apparently ‘obvious’. It means something like ‘a person is a person through other people’, or ‘I am a person through other people’ or ‘I am who I am because of who we all are’. Archbishop Desmond Tutu glosses it as “none of us came into the world on our own.” Even if we were abandoned, we came into a social world. He also points out that being alone is a terrible burden for most humans, they ‘shrivel’, and that a lone child will not develop as well as they might.
For many southern African intellectuals, communion or harmony consists of identifying with and exhibiting solidarity towards others, in other words, enjoying a sense of togetherness, cooperating and helping people – out of sympathy and for their own sake.
Tutu sums up his understanding of how to exhibit ubuntu as:
Thaddeus Metz What Archbishop Tutu’s ubuntu credo teaches the world about justice and harmony. The Conversation 4 October 2017
We can accept the proposition that people emerge within a web of other people, as an a priori, and even as a realisation which may build virtue and contentment, but also (at the same time) recognise that humans often tend to be conflictual and selfish – we are both co-operative and competitive. In other words the morality could be up to us, but the recognition of interdependence is not up to us, it just is. Like the Buddhist idea that everything in existence exists because other beings exist, and individual being cannot be extracted from those other existence(s). Everything is interconnected, and everything affects everyone, and this is fundamental.
So let us be clear Mises is starting with the axiom that humans are isolated individuals, not necessarily because it is obvious, or a priori, but perhaps because it appears easy and it seems to be a convenient proposition from which to make the arguments he wants to make.
Given this methodological individualism involves an axiom, or procedure, which could seem a priori incorrect or incomplete, then we could expect that statements derived from it will also be incorrect or incomplete.
So this contribution to Praxeology just begins with questions to Austrians, or free market supporters – because I don’t know the answers. The questions are in the next blog post, to make this a bit shorter than usual.
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