There is nothing magical or mysterious about the a priori foundations of economics, or at least nothing any more magical or mysterious than there is about our ability to comprehend any other aspect of reality. All of our knowledge ultimately is grounded on our intuitive recognition of the truth when we see it. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/4667/what-is-a-priori-science-and-why-does-economics-qualify-as-one/
What Is A Priori Science, and Why Does Economics Qualify As One?
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Gene,
Semantics and syntaxis could be equivalent. Every course on theory of languages teachs that.
I’m affraid you’re wrong. Euclidean geometry is both consistent and complete and is expressed in a formal language.
Being complete or/and inconsistent are not necessary attributes of formal langauages.
“This statement is not provable in Praxeology”
Suppose that statement is provable. Then it is true. Hence it is not provable. So, it is not
provable. But then it is clearly true, and hence its negation is not provable.
Then Praxeology IS incomplete or inconsistent.
Why do you think Austrian economics have been OUT of the mainstream for so many years?
Better stated:
Let A=”This statement is not provable in Praxeology”
Suppose A is provable, then what it says of itself, that it is not provable, is not true. But this conclusion is contrary to our supposition, so our supposition that A is provable must be false. Suppose the contrary that A is not provable, then what it says of itself is true, although we cannot prove it. Therefore, there is no proof that A is provable, and there is also no proof that its negation is provable (i.e., there is no proof that it is also unprovable). Whence, Praxeology is incomplete because it cannot prove all truths, namely, (A) and its negation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox
Fernando,
“I’m affraid you’re wrong. Euclidean geometry is both consistent and complete and is expressed in a formal language.”
This is not some nutty little idea I just thought up. It’s called Godel’s Theorem, and has been universally acknowledged as proven true since the early 1930s. If a formalization of Euclidean is not complex enough to be able to formulate a Godel statement, then it is not a counter-example. (By the way, I believe the original development of Euclidean geometry was done in Ancient Greek, which is not, as far as I know, a formal language.)
Being devoid of meaning is part of the definition of being a formal system!
“This statement is not provable in Praxeology”
This whole section is silly, and shows you have not understood what Godel did — he expressed the Godel statement in the formal system, so that although informal reasoning could see its truth, the system itself cannot demonstrate it. The statement you made is not a part of praxeology at all, since the subject is not about the truth of English sentences, and all you have shown is that you can generate paradoxes in English.
“Why do you think Austrian economics have been OUT of the mainstream for so many years?”
Why do you think Copernicus was OUT of the mainstream for so many years?
And what’s with all the white space in your posts?
Regards,
Gene Callahan
From
One of the mystery – sci-fi plot lines involves hypnotizing someone to think his friend is a bear or some other dangerous animal such that he shoots his friend.
Within the system of the compromised data, the act of shooting a dangerous animal attacking you is perfectly rational.
The problem is that you are actually shooting your friend.
“Irrationality” falls in and out of these categories. It sounds like what Catholics mean when they say you must inform your conscience – you can’t go off willy-nilly deciding on what is good or evil yourself, there is a body of rational natural law, and others have gone down the roads to determine what should be done.
Reason is subject to the will. Anyone can use it to justify their actions, but it works best as an independent counsellor, not a toady (consider the Intel services as they have become politicized).
And we wouldn’t accuse the master thief or the mad scientist of being without reason – they must possess and use their rational faculties more than the average person. But they use it for evil and not for good.
And in that the market is still the product of rational beings. It cannot prevent itself from being used for evil. It is of great power, but in the same sense as nuclear energy – either as an efficient source to help us, or as a bomb to destroy us. Neither heavy nucleii nor the market has a conscience of its own.
Well, in fact, market functioning does not require rationality, neither does it require presense of consciousness of participants.
The value of free market as a distributed algorithm for optimizing resource allocation and productivity of the population of actiors was demonstrated by Eric Baum (author of “the Hayek machine”) which have shown how previoulsy intractable (due to the size of search space) evolutionary problems are reduced by the use of market to the search of much smaller modules which can together achieve what simple Darwinian evolution cannot. In his work, the market participants were simple strings of computer code, which couldn’t have anything resembling thought process of any kind (rational or irrational).
He has also demonstrated that the efficiency of market algorithm is seriously reduced if property rights are violated. In fact, none of “compromised” market variants he tried were able to find the solution to the model problem.
Actually, molecular biology has a market of its own, with its own hard currency – the energy bound in the chemical links within and between molecules. This hidden market allows biological evolution to work at the level of individual genes instead of the whole genome.
i don’t know for inconsistent but it seems obvious that praxeology is badly incomplete as a theory, half the story at the very best…
would Mises say that action = reaction is a valid indentity? i am asking because i do not believe it is… to keep this short, reaction belongs more to a darwinian view of the world, therefore it itself could form the basis for a SEPARATE axiom to Mises’ ‘homo agens’ postulate.
nothing wrong here, if mathematics and logic are any guide, it is possible to construct as many separate axiomatic-based theories as one wishes. and then, possible to find applications for some (perhaps all) of those theories to help acquiring an ever-better understanding of ‘the real world’.
however unless someone proves or even postulates the afore-suggested action = reaction identity, or suggests, better, proves that ‘homo reactens’ is a false premise, isn’t the whole theory of praxeology missing a big chunk of the… action?
how about a new theory recognizing that action differs from reaction in profound ways, and having both ‘homo agens’ and ‘homo reactens’ as axioms… a yin yang type framework if you will?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_yang
fabio,
You got a couple of responses to this here:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/004878.asp#comments
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