Uninformed critics of Austrian economics sometimes dismiss it as “religion, not analysis.” Perhaps they should heed statistician Andrew Gelman’s advice “to retire use of the term ‘religion’ to mean ‘uncritical belief in something I disagree with.’” Right on! I mean, how often have you been chided for your “belief” in “free-market fundamentalism”? Gag. (Although I guess I’m guilty of treating Keynesians in the same manner.) Anyway, Gelman notes that in statistics, Bayesian methods are often dismissed this way. Some funny examples:
[W]hen I started doing statistics, people often referred to Bayesianism as a religion. . . . One of my Berkeley colleagues who studied probability — really, a brilliant guy — commented once that “of course” he was a Bayesian, but he was puzzled by how Bayesian inference worked in an example he’d seen. My feeling was: Bayes is a method, not a religion! Can’t we evaluate it based on how it works?
And, a few years ago, someone from the computer science department came over and gave a lecture in the stat dept at Columbia. His talk was fascinating, bu the irritated me by saying how his method gave all the benefits of Bayesian inference “without having to believe in it.” I don’t believe in logistic regression either, but it sure is useful!
I’ve had similar experiences. Thank goodness for that twelve-step program!
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“I mean, how often have you been chided for your “belief” in “free-market fundamentalism”?”
Great point. I was discussing this a few weeks back with a friend when I was “accused” of believing in “Adam Smith and all that…”. I replied, that yeah, I believe in Adam Smith’s ideas the same way I do Newton’s!! As Smith did not invent the invisible hand nor the benefits of division of labor, neither did Newton invent gravitational pull.
Both simply acknowledged absolute truths.
Interesting. The Wikipedia entry on Bayes did little for me, except maybe whet my appetite for more. Is there an online summary of Bayes Theorem that is accessible to an average man?
HL, maybe some of the links here will be helpful?
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2009/09/03/bayes-of-our-lives/
Well they can dish it, but they sure can’t take it. Their faith in various forms of socialism is amazing, considering how often it has failed. Their religious belief in the state seems to have no bounds.
Ken Binmore, in his “Game Theory and the Social Contract”, has a little section where he contrasts Bayesian analysis with the activities of a group he calls “Bayesianismists”. Bayesian analysis is a method, useful (Binmore says) given certain constraints and conditions. He remarks that he makes extensive use of Bayes’s theorem, and does not shy from applying the label “Bayesian” to himself. But Bayesianismists, he continues, have a metaphysical doctrine motivating their use of Bayesian analysis. He likens them to Pythagoreans, who think the world is made of numbers; Bayesianismists, Binmore says, believe the world is made of priors.
The “religion” slur is a dirty handed method for shifting the burden of proof — while putting your foot on the scales of evidence.
Imagine telling someone that they had “religious faith” in the existence of the external world, or in their belief that the sun will rise in the East, etc.
Imagine telling someone they had “religious faith” in the expectation that the green stuff in their pocket was money and could reliably be used to buy stuff tomorrow at the store.
When we get to “background understanding” we get to the hinge upon which all else turns — and most of economics is simply systematic thinking about the causal interrelations of out of elements within our most basic background understanding.
It looks to me like the “faith” and “religion” slur against economics and “Austrian” economics in particular was started by John Hicks, who played this dirty game all the time.
Am I right about that?
Read Wittgenstein, _On Certainty_ or Kuhn’s _The Essential Tension_ for some sense of why the “religion” and “faith” slur is pure garbage when spewed about in discussions of science and epistemology.
@HL
When applying this theorem to Human systems, it is worthy to note that the ƒΘ is not random, but is instead an approximation of systemic will and intent.
Randomness is essentially a substitute for will and intent in statistical studies involving conscious behaviour.
Your mileage may vary.
I’ve always thought of Austrians as the “atheists” of economic thought, as theirs is the only system that includes nothing of mysticism, but rests firmly on reason and reality.
Keynes, on the other hand, believed he could call down mana from heaven.
A couple of quick points that caught my eye:
1. On Bayes, look up Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “An Introduction to Bayesian Reasoning” (I think I have the title right).
2. If you have access to the December 2009 issue of “Economic Affairs,” you might be interested in my piece with Mike Hammock in which we ask whether economists are “market fundamentalists” with too much “faith” in markets in light of the Biblical definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Accusing people of ‘religious’ adherence to something as a dirty term usually mean they haven’t sufficiently bought into their own first principles enough to have it be life altering.
If the basic tenants of libertarianism or Austrian Economics are true, then there are specific, logical conclusions that flow from these first principles. And if those are in fact valid conclusions, then they ought to be followed, regardless of how popular or ridiculed they may be.
I just think too many people are not really committed to their own schools of thought, so they lash out at people who are.
But as the earlier poster said, its not like Newton invented gravity, but rather he just stated the truth about it. It’s not like Mises invented money and credit, but this theories (first principles, premises and conclusions) seem to make the most sense of human experience. Therefore, we would be fools if we did not adhere to it.
But, people will still utilize ad hominem attacks when their arguments run short. And in our politically charged atmosphere, the loudest mouth usually triumphs over sound wisdom. *tear
Since Keynes said we’re all dead in the long run as a response to a question about the long-term consequences of his advocacy, I think calling Keynesianism a religion is justifiable.
Calling an idea “religious” is generally meant as an insult to the idea and to religion in general. It defines religion as irrational and opposed to science. It’s another way of calling someone unscientific. It’s so common that I have seen religious people use “religious” as an insult.
Of course, by some definitions of “science” Austrian econ is unscientific. That would be the math definition of science. If physics and only physics is science, and physics is science because it reduces everything to equations, then Austrian econ by definition is unscientific because of its reliance on observation and reasoning. But if Mises’s definition of science is correct and use of the techniques of physics in economics is not legit, then Austrian econ is science.
At the same time one could conclude that some religions are science, too. After all, Mises and Hayek tend to use a definition of science that was popular in the 19th century when theology was considered the queen of sciences. And Christian theology uses a priori reasoning and observation to derive principles of theology.
Is Praxeology Or Austrian Economics A Religion?
How else could an empiricist describe praxeology?
To an empiricist praxeology must seem like pure mysticism!
Now let’s try to get the empiricist to accept subjectivism as a scientific method. We are trying to get these materialists to ‘believe’ in methodological individualism! Don’t confuse them with the facts – if that means that the facts are in a deductive, logical, or theoretical form.
If the subjective methodology is beyond the comprehension of the empiricists and then labeled by them as a religion or unfathomable then it would probably be a good analogy, in return, to compare empiricism to physicalism if not depravity.
Speaking of praxeology, has anyone written on that subject alone. I just finished Human Action, and one thing that disappointed me about it was that Mises constantly would talk about what praxeology “tells us” without elaborating further. Is there any book somewhere for dummies like me that contains all the most important praxelogical syllogisms spelled out in the formal language of logic? You know, something that I could show my socialist friends and say “Q.E.D., bitches”.
Is there any book somewhere for dummies like me that contains all the most important praxelogical syllogisms spelled out in the formal language of logic?
There is no such thing. Because there are no such deductions.
Is there any book somewhere for dummies like me that contains all the most important praxelogical syllogisms spelled out in the formal language of logic?
There is no such thing. Because there are no such deductions.
You know the religion accusation is all about apriorism. However I never saw the need for that extra philosophical twist. Austrian economics easily fits into pan-critical rationalist methodology.
I’ve found the stressing of apriorism unfortunate, and in fact I don’t think that is even how Mises proceeded, although he believed he did.
I don’t think he could have been told “man acts” , sat in a room with no exposure to the real events of historical fractional reserve banking, and then deduced Austrian business cycle theory. I think you need to see the problem happening to even consider coming up with an explanation.
Hoppe has written a nice summary of the method; for some nice extrapolations/deductions/applications, pick up any of his articles or books.
If you want cold, hard logic via symbols, check out this piece by Van Dun.
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