The reader of this, the second volume of Rothbard’s last great work, will at once face a puzzle: how was one person able to unify so vast a mass of material into a tightly organized narrative? I cannot pretend to provide a full answer, but one part of the solution lies in the fact that Rothbard follows a few main themes with iron consistency. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/10696/rothbards-last-triumph-part-2/
Rothbard’s Last Triumph, Part 2
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I can’t agree with the last part of this.
Reason, in fact, did evolve to serve instinct. Instincts are, under the hood, the fundamental source of all motivation. Civilization is, of course, a testament to the power of human reason, but even it cannot escape its purpose: to satisfy human needs, as dictated by instinct.
But I don’t think this view is incompatible with Rothbard’s analysis; I just think he did not have enough understanding of sociobiology to appreciate that there are a lot of very complex instincts. Productivity and accomplishment serve both the population as a whole by helping to meet its basic needs, and the individual’s own genes via sexual selection (particularly if the “doer” is male). Ambition is merely instinct coupled with strength (and therefore confidence).
So there is plenty of room for productive, cooperative life, despite the fact that under the hood we are all, and always will be, animals governed by instincts. Even if free will is basically an illusion, it is a very important and inescapable illusion, and when rogue intellect causes us to ignore it and subject ourselves to the whimsy of fate, the result is very destructive. I cannot imagine any ultimate outcome of this except slavery. Presence of mind and the exercise of will are perhaps the most important basic lifestyle choices a person can make, and the only way a person can be free.
If anybody’s in need of some interesting reading material, related to human motivations and instincts and evolution, try http://myrsky.net/faust3/danimal-archive . It’ll keep you busy for several hours, but since it consists of isolated bits of wisdom, there is no real reader commitment required. Think of it as “fun reading”. The guy definitely draws some wrong conclusions at times, but he is a truly independent thinker. I think he could be an Austrian if only he would stumble upon this site.
Having commented on how much I enjoyed and appreciated Vol I, I cannot neglect saying that Vol II, although not quite as appealing to me as a history buff, was more interesting to the left side of my brain, which loves economics, for MR’s elaboration of some of the finer points of the science while determining and crediting those who were initially responsible for grasping and elucidated them. I only wish MR had lived a little longer so that he could have given us “the stuff of another volume” he alluded to in the last sentence of Vol. II. It is clear to me that Austrian economics in the praxeological. a prioristic tradition of Say, Menger, Mises and Rothbard is the only truly scientific economics, whereas the methodology of, for example, so-called Keynesian “economics” is best exemplified and picturesquely portrayed in the comment above by MR. UPYOURS.
Mike said: I can’t agree with the last part of this.
Reason, in fact, did evolve to serve instinct. Instincts are, under the hood, the fundamental source of all motivation. Civilization is, of course, a testament to the power of human reason, but even it cannot escape its purpose: to satisfy human needs, as dictated by instinct.
But I don’t think this view is incompatible with Rothbard’s analysis; I just think he did not have enough understanding of sociobiology to appreciate that there are a lot of very complex instincts.’
It should be pointed out here that Austrian economics ( or, I suppose, Misesian Praxeology) explicitly treats the motivations of individuals as a black box. It simply accepts that any individual’s choices are what they are, and only concerns itself with the behavioural outcome following any choice made.
To be sure, there has been much work in the multidisciplinary fields crossing neurobiology/behavuioural economics/psychology which is uncovering the mechanisms and drivers of how people make decisions, and some elements of that are really exciting , often surprising. But these insights into how people are wired to make choices do not yield any definitive predictions ( beyond some degree of probability) as to how any particular individual will choose to act in any given context, and they underscore rather than invalidate the central Austrian axiom: that values, and hence choices – however they may emerge from the interaction between emotion and reason – are inherently subjective at an individual level.
Mike:
Fastening on “instinct” as explanatory with respect to human action isn’t liable to lead anywhere. Mises himself treats such effort shortly (but thoroughly) in HUMAN ACTION. (You might review relevant commentary in the online material available on-site, in case you weren’t already acquainted with what he had to say on the subject.
There are men who “hide behind their womens’ skirts,” men (some conscriptees and some volunteers) who desert their units (and comrades) in the face of the enemy, some who avoid, in one or another fashion, being eligible for the armed conflict while there are others who rush to the defense of their families, of their comrades, and even of their less-than-well-defined “country.” Are all of these behaviors the result of the same or differing instincts? The word, itself, can have hardly any meaning when used to explain such disparate behavior.
Other than the applicable fractions resulting from a specific study, there is nothing that economists (and most particularly Austrian economists) can learn from “behavioral” studies; there is, however, a very great deal that the behaviorists (and other mathematically and “experimentally” inclined economists can learn through study of Austrian theory.
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