I love how you expand the empiricist camp to include just about everyone with “I mean empirical in a broad, not positivistic, sense. Introspection, even knowledge of what we mean when we say something, is empirical.”

But you are wrong. Actually, the only way of knowing anything is the rationalist way. I mean rationalist in a broad, not Cartesian sense. Observation, even accumulation of raw data when reflected light hits our visual organs sending electrical impulses to our brains, is rationalist.

Cheers!

- Roderick Long of the Mises Institute has work on a Wittgenstein-ian interpretation of the a priori. It is qualitatively distinct from Mises, though. (I don’t it’s a translation but rather that it has an unique element to it.) If you are familliar with Wittgenstein, then you might think better of Long’s work than you do of Mises’s original remarks.

- An Austrian will tell you that the actions of a Buddhist will not escape the logic of action (i.e. the descriptive aspects of austrianism), but if they prefer less to more and later consumption to present consumption then they are not the kind of agents we have in mind when dealing with entire social systems.
Using the Austrian logic of action you draw the conclusion that fully lived-out buddhism will result in poverty, starvation and eventually death. That’s certain. What value and desirability that has, it is not of any concern for the Austrian.

- Most Buddhist don’t (and maybe can’t) live-out their religion. You see them eating, going to work, etc. If they were to fully enact their vision then we can expect for them to be clinically dead in a matter of days. This is one of those cases in which evolution takes care of it so we don’t have to bother thinking about it

- I don’t think that Mises thought that what made us human was acting human. Humans can act in many ways, some of which are characteric or accessible only to them. What does or doesn’t follow from this is open to debate.

- The Austrian theory is based on a certain kind of agent. The degree to which actual people, like you and I, are such agents is something really interesting. I have my doubts regarding the complete overlap. Regardless, the agent of neo-classical economics is far worse.

- Compare Mises’s quote with Ayn Rand discussion of what’s “rational” for a cosmic, undestructible, eternal space robot. If an entity’s behavior’s don’t eventually envisage consumption or time-related issues, then we can hardly refer to it as behavior.

- Conjectures and Refutations ( http://conjecturesandrefutations.net/weblog/ ) had 2 posts attacking Austrianism from a Popperian perspective. Some of my comments there no longer reflect my current idea, but the discussion might eb interesting, re: falsification and all.

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER
by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

I hope you get to Gabriel’s comments. I have to echo his encouragement for you to take a look at Roderick Long’s book. There’s an early draft available over at http://www.praxeology.net. It’s got most of the basic ideas fairly well formulated.

Also, I’d be interested in hearing why you think that naturalism and a priorism are at odds. Oh, and be sure to say what you take naturalism and a priorism to be. I’d be interested to hear your take on that too.

My understanding is almost exactly that of my first advisor at Maryland, Michael Devitt (now at CUNY):

Try his “Naturalism and the A Priori”:

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Philosophy/devitt/NATURA2.pdf

And “There is No A Priori”:

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Philosophy/Devitt/noaprior.pdf

I have a few small differences with Devitt, but thet are trivial.

In other words, we know things a priori in economics because people are the kind of agents which prefer more to less, present consumption to future consumption, etc. This does not give us the ability to forecast prices to the cent, but it does keep Austrians busy.

I hardly see how you could apply a radical naturalist approach to money, for example. All empirical facts about those little pieces of metal are at best secondary, or completly irrelevant to our use of the notion. Money is what we use as money. Money is the kind of social institution which can’t be understood by quantitative methods alone. You need the logic of this practice.

What’s wrong with robust regularities observed in one’s own and others behavior.

One of the worst things about Kant’s influence is that Kantians like to take whatever it is they really care about and try to show how the structure of Reason itself demands whatever it is they like. Kantian welfare-statists seem to want to show that paying taxes is a command of Reason itself. Kantian libertarian economists seem to want to show that bad economics isn’t just bad theory, but a violation of the transcendental conditions of the very possibility for practical rationality. Anyway, it’s a silly game.

Suppose that one is presented with patently absurd argument argument X in Mises or Hayek, and that it is obvious that Y is in fact the correct alternative argument. One has several options.

Two of these are:

1) Admit that argument X is absurd, then provide argument Y as a superior argument

2) Argue that Mises or Hayek obviously meant Y when they said X, because of differences in style of argumentation at the time, and that the correct reading of X in Mises or Hayek is in fact Y (even when Mises or Hayek quite explicitly state that view Y is totally absurd, & that they themselves wholeheartedly believe in view X). Then argue it absurd to think that they actually meant X when they wrote X and unfair to consider them as having believed X when clearly (when one has the proper understanding of context, hermeneutics, and Quine) they meant Y.

Boettke usually picks #2.

Will, maybe we have different uses of ‘naturalism’, but I view it as quite compatible with a form of a prior knowledge. Naturalism, in tying itself completely to empiricism, must accept certain facts about the basis of human nature. Namely, we are biological creatures. Defining the ‘mind’ is a tricky , I admit. But if one embraces empiricism (and thereby rejects non-naturalistic explanations), then however you define it must ultimately be tied to the physical structure of the brain. This does constrain what we know and the form in which we know it. If you start with these assumptions and sprinkle them with Quine I can easily see constraints and preferences for aquisition and building of belief structures that appear quite a priori.

Dogen, a historical and famous Zen Master, said that the non-doing evil was basically the same as enlightenment. The beginning of the Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha, says, “Mind is the forerunner of all conditions [...] Speak or act with an evil mind, and suffering follows you [...] Speak or act with a pure mind, and happiness follows you.” Far from fatalistic, world-denying and ascetic. Far from believing non-action is the source of all good.

In fact, purposeful human effort though the noble eightfold path, meditation, and practicing virtue and generosity to reach the end of suffering is exactly the point of the doctrine and discipline of Buddhism. Buddhist renunciation is meant to tread the middle way between being an animal and a vegetable: “In whom there exists no provocation, and for whom becoming and non-becoming are overcome, he is one — beyond fear, blissful, without grief [...]“

As I understand Mises’s characterization of Buddhism (no clue whether it’s accurate or not), he claims that Buddhists aspire to lives of total inaction and lack of desire. But obviously, if you aspire to a life of inaction, you have desires and are probably taking action to reach the point where you can eschew action. The “Buddhists aren’t people and don’t act” claim would only apply to those who had reached enlightenment and actually reached the point where they had no desires and took no actions. Once they reach that point, they’re gonna die in, what is it, three days without water?

As long as you’re still acting to keep yourself alive, you have preferences and are taking actions, and Mises’s theory should include you. Only once you stop wanting anything would you ’stop being human.’ And I think I’d have to agree: anyone who has no desires, no values, takes no action to reach any sort of desired state seems totally inhuman to me.

To speak of “regularities observed in one’s own and others behavior” means you take for granted a non-problematic mechanism for following rules and recognizing meaning. Just consider the differences in meaning given by a communist and a libertarian to economic actions. They both have access to the same observations. Meaning doesn’t follow.

I’m unsure how you propose for a child to pick up the notion of “interest rate” by silently observing clerks at work, for example. The meaning of the numbers they write on paper is far more complicated than the act itself. (The same challenge can be made about “and”, for example)

The relationship between language (and therefore meaning) and reality is much more complicated than a 1:1 connection or an issue of induction. I see the process more like us living in our own language-bubble and ocassionally bumping into reality because of the physical implications of our acts (This is how socialism fails… it goes against nature, not necessarily against our social practices.)

Regarding radical empirism, I have yet to see a radical empirist express himself in anything but natural language, and regarding the meaning of the symbols of natural language (how any symbol comes to have meaning) I hold that there is no empirical grounds for one meaning over another… not directly, at least.

(1) that we should study how humans gain knowledge empricically (which may reveal “constraints and preferences for aquisition and building of belief structures that appear quite a priori [where a priori means 'well understood in terms of the structures of the brain']“)

and saying,

(2) that all knowledge come from the senses.

(And I think that (1) is a more common meaning for ‘naturalism’ than is (2).)

But Mises is not endorsing (1) and he IS denying (2). So Seamus’ point is of no “help” to Misesians who want to pretend he can tip a hat to Quine.

Furthermore, nobody’s argued (as far as I know) that “constraints and preferences for aquisition and building of belief structures that appear quite a priori [where a priori means 'well understood in terms of the structures of the brain']” (or the discovery of them) would amount to anything like the A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE of which some used to speak.