Have you ever heard of Stephen Jay Gould or Niles Eldredge?

No? I don’t think you’re alone. I am guessing very few have and fewer yet have heard the news: Darwin was mistaken.

Who says bad new travels fast?

Until we come to terms with Darwin all philosphical interjections are moot.

Any economic system and political system is operating in the much larger domain of Darwinian evolution.

Perhaps this is why religionism fears any discussion of scientism. Blabber all you want about a utopian ideals. At the end of the day we will all have back aches.

I could see how mathematical modeling might be of some limited use in economics, but not for its predictive ability.

Just think a bit. If it’s determinism, then each is going to believe what’s predetermined–no ifs, ands, or buts. And it’s only determinism that’s forcing you to go to bat for it (and I guess you just can’t help it). But, at the same time, you’ll need to explain those who believe otherwise as being compelled to those conclusions by the same deterministic forces until finally “seeing the light” as the result of your own brilliant presentation (and what’s brilliant about whatever it is you’re compelled to like a robot?). And, if perchance the free-will variant of reality is the “correct” one, of what use is it to promote it through argument–when your own belief is that people choose of their own volition? And, how do you account for your opinion? Do you trace it back through some irrefutable logical chain until, finally, you’ve arrived at its premise (its cause, so to speak) which is, likewise, unquestionable? Just asking.

We ridicule some ancients for arguing about “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” These discusssions are merely an updated version.

Why don’t you grow up and try your hand(s) at something interesting for a change? Like “can we know everything?” Or, “If we can’t know everything, how can we ever even be sure that we don’t know everything already?” Or, to make it just a bit more complex, “If we can’t know everything, mustn’t it be true that there is knowledge denied us which we can’t even know exists without opening up that realm of knowledge and knowing something of it?” And, if, indeed, there is some knowledge of which we are denied any knowledge, including knowledge of its existence, won’t our condition, when “up against
the limits of knowledge,” be precisely that we already know everything? And won’t that be our tipoff that we really don’t–and there’s a whole new realm “out there” awaiting discovery?

You seem to have entirely missed the point. We can’t determine the truth or falsehood of every claim using the scientific method, as it is only valid for the natural sciences, and not for the social sciences. Axiomatic truths — such as man has free will, the denial of which is self-contradictory — are just as true as clearly-proven as scientific facts (such as Newton’s laws).

Regarding Libet experiments, it is silly to try to reduce consciousness to various brain-states. To say that A is the same as B, A must have the same properties of B. Thus, to say that consciousness and free will can be reduced to side-effects of neural causes and correlates, we would need to be able to say that the properties of consciousness are the same as the properties of neural correlates and alleged causes. The properties of consciousness are nothing at all like the properties of the aforementioned neurochemical phenomena:

in short, the [neuronal] causes and correlates of conscious experience should not be confused with their ontology [...] the only evidence about what conscious experiences are like comes from first-person sources, which consistently suggest consciousness to be something other than or additional to neuronal activity” (Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness, Routledge, London, 2000: 35-37

PS: Had you bothered to do the smallest bit of research and reading, you would have seen the following:

[Reprinted from Scientism and Values, Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, eds. (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand), 1960].

The wikipedia entry on Benjamin Libet says he did his experiments on consciousness in the 1970s — not the 1960s. So, it is rather silly and ignorant to criticize Rothbard for not discus1sing experiments which hadn’t even been done yet.

If so I must have missed it. No mention of the Libet experiments, blind sight , or synthesia or any scientific introspections what so ever.

Translation of Murry Rothbard:

“I believe in an objective reality. Can’t you see the world is flat?”

If so I must have missed it. No mention of the Libet experiments, blind sight , or synthesia or any scientific introspections what so ever.

Translation of Murry Rothbard:

“I believe in an objective reality. Can’t you see the world is flat?”

The statement such as this,

“For example, a cut in interest rates may, cet. par., generate an increase in investment activity… but the likelihood that a 0.25% cut will stimulate investment by 50%, is small enough to be assigned a probability of zero. Properly deployed, modelling is just the use of shorthand.”

suggests there is merit in doing such calculations in the first place. However, one of the Austrian observations is that here the cart has been put before the horse. The question first to ask is: can any artificial, coercive, state imposed cut in the interest rate result in anything other than a distortion in the market, malinvestments, economic waste, and a fraudulent redistribution of and overall diminution of wealth resulting ultimately in the need for recessionary corrections and liquidations? The answer is no it can not. So why do the numbers on something we already know a priori should not be done in the first place? The problem with this math is that it is a distraction and diversion from the crucial questions that an economist must ask and answer.

(When I was part of a ‘think tank’ whose output centred on a highly comnplex economic model, we referred to anyone who couldn’t ‘do sums’ as an ‘essay writer’… they are usually the most strident anti-modellers [and before anyone leaps to his defence, I know full well that Rothbard was no sluggard at 'sums']).

Nobody who builds models (except the idiots) dares to suggest that the behaviour they attempt to APPROXIMATE, is deterministic.

In fact decent model builders will declare quite stridently that propensities and elasticities – and technical change parameters – are all dynamic variables. (Note here that I exclude the dolts who think that the models in Romer & Salah-i-Martin represent the higest form of the art).

To get any sort of quantitative ‘handle’ on the ramifications ofa policy proposal, you at least need to have some stab at assigning both a sign and a magnitude to these ‘quasi-parameters’. Otherwise you’re just left with hand-waving: a tax cut will stimulate growth or it will not, depending on your ideological bias, and you can weave an apparently-consistent story for each version of the outcome if all you’re doing is telling the story.

But once you are forced to write down each of your intermediate assumptions (and codify them, as in a model), you have no hand-waving ‘wiggle room’. if you say something that results in something violating a sensible state of nature (i.e., one which is consistent with the world as observed to date), the model will tell you so before your graduate seminar has gotten through disentangling the garbage you just spouted.

The functional forms of the relationships which are modelled attempt, likewise, to capture the ‘core’ features of the theory – for example consumption functions that represent preferences that ‘make sense’ (e.g., more preferred to less at given prices, transversality of preferences wherein if one prefers A for B and B for C, A is a fortiori preferred to C). But nobody pretends that Lewbel’s consumption demand system was handed down on Mount Sinai, nor that A will always be preferred to C, or that A will be preferred to C by everyone.

As one who has gone through the crucible of the modelling paradigm (and come out the other side bloodied but unbowed… I never finished my PhD), it annoys me to see otherwise sennsible men decrying modelling as if modellers are all some form of mathematical-economic fundamentalist – a Calculus Taliban.

The good modellers – folks like my mentor (Professor Peter B Dixon of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia) – are fully aware of the shortcomings of the modelling paradigm, and only ever speak in terms of directions and orders of magnitude. When ‘Dicko’ was asked about the results of a tax mix change on the Australian economy – where the ‘forecast’ outcome was GDP 1.3% higher by yr 5 – his answer was “I would be unhappy if the modelling said that the outcome was not positive, but it’s likely to be bugger-all”… or words to that effect (‘Dicko’ is a colourful character).

Finally, there is also the sense that humans get to choose (i.e., exercise their free will) but they do so subject to some very binding constraints. At the very least, that means that some model results (and ‘thought experiment’ results) are inadmissible (for example, you can’t have an economy where everybody violates a lifetime budget constraint… but you could think your way through an exercise without realising that you had done that).

Think of ‘good’ economic modellers as trying to ‘get the accounting right’ in a budget in which all variables are floating in ranges of relatively-fixed dimensions. For example, a cut in interest rates may, cet. par., generate an increase in investment activity… but the likelihood that a 0.25% cut will stimulate investment by 50%, is small enough to be assigned a probability of zero. Properly deployed, modelling is just the use of shorthand.

And one thing about which Rothbard is almost certainly wrong is the idea that ONLY humans havfe will. If you can look into the eyes of a gorilla and fail to see that they are ‘like’ us, you are guilty of forcing yourself to think that humans are special. Anthropomorphism is only misplaced when people refuse to acknowledge it: if something done by a cat looks purposive, who the hell are we to declare that it’s not?

Cheerio,

GT.

PS excuse my spelling… I am in an internet cafe in Paris, and am using an AZERTY keyboard… it’s a cauchemar

It is obvious that you’ve never read anything significant in or of Austrian economics.

The disagreement you find is entirely centered on the meanings of “rational” and “irrational.” You understand them in a different (albeit common)
sense as, respectively, “clear-thinking” and “not clear-thinking–erroneous.” To Austrians, the terms are more technical, closer to their actual meaning (as connected to reason) and, in a sense, somewhat akin to the jargon found in most areas of specialization. Neither use of the terms is
more “correct” than the other in any linguistic sense–but the Austrian use is far more helpful in identifying the source of action in the choices–the preferring and the setting aside–made by the actors themselves. Insofar as action is concerned and the market data generated by some of those actions, it matters not at all whether or not some of those actions resulted from erroneous assumptions or faulty reasoning on the part of the actors: the result, the actions taken, are every bit as “rational” as those made on the basis of correct assumptions and flawless reasoning.

Even though quantum physics does include random functionality, those random events are within observable, repeatable parameters. Human beings can and do act in completely irrational ways, going outside the limits of their prior behavior. While there are often warning signs, some individuals will “go postal” where another will not.

But that’s at the extreme. Within the “normal” boundaries, like “what shall I have for dinner”, there can be no way to know if the person will stick to their routine or try eating hot Thai curry. Or in my case, since I like hot Thai curry, there’s no way to say that I won’t do something else. Even I do not know all the time what I am going to do until I reach the decision point of doing it, and sometimes that includes not having dinner at all.

But as Frank Z so eloquently concludes, What am I saying here?

The discussion on the blog is interesting too.

I think a more definitive definition of man and consciousness is necessary to an understanding.

Mr. Simon in his “chicken liver” presentation argues he is without choice and subject to the “vagaries of his taste buds”.
In one instance that could be true, and that is under the condition that they are two things inseperable. Basically, an integral, whole entity. If you assume that true then it could only be true that choices are determined by the body and its senses through consciousness.

If the body and the consciousness are entirely seperate things then we can have the senses of the body determining certain things but that can be entirely overridden by the consciousness or vice versa.

It is our a priori determinations and choices then that make the argument. It can be assumed from his stated position that Mr. Simon has an inclination to think of a man and consciousness existing as a single indivisible unit along the lines of scientism.

If you agree that no one has yet determined that consciousness survives the body and is indeed seperate, spiritually or in whatever concept, then choice is ultimately within the realm of consciousness and it could also be a choice to allow a proxy in decisionmaking. I could assign choice to my brain and if I agreed with scientism I would. I could assign it to Baal.

But what am I saying here?

One may “like” something for reasons other than
the will-independent physical sensations that
thing induces in us. Certainly, such will-
independent sensations exist, and do indeed play
an important role in whether we favor one thing
over another. However, it does not follow that
there are *no* will-dependent factors concerning
like vs. dislike. So, whether we like or dislike
something is not wholly deterministic but depends
at least in part on choice (or “free-will”, I
suppose you could say).

Dan

You cannot make rational decisions for another person; you can only assume your understanding is more rational than another’s. An individual is the only person who can act rationally for himself.

– Dewaine

Austrian economists don’t need to pretend that useful economic theory can be derived from self-evident axioms. Such theory has already been derived.

WTF? Where does that imperative (the ”must” part) come from? And what if we must but the assumption is just not true? (and, btw, it is not true. This is like assuming the world is flat.) Do we still must?