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Tue Dec 26 09:30:55 2006 |
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Samuel Bostaph wrote:
> Unfortunately for his argument, Alan Isaac's substitution
> assumes what he sets out to show--that social entities
> are akin to biological organisms and thus meaning can be
> extracted from such a substitution of biological terms
> into Mises's explanation of one task of M.I.
I am afraid you missed my point.
What my playful substitution reveals is the structure of
Mises's "argument". (I.e., in this particular case, there
is none.) It is merely a metaphysical stance presented in
the disguise of a methodological exposition.
My final comment was ironic. (Email is notoriously a tricky
medium for the communication of irony.) I was not in any way
suggesting the superiority (i.e., greater usefulness) of
a strategy of cellular (or for that matter atomic or
subatomic) analysis of either individual behavior or social
evolution.
Of course in the early 21st century we tend to view anyone
who denies that there is in "some sense" a possible
reduction to such a level to oddly deviate from naturalism
and drift into mysticism. But as Donald Davidson has
explained at length this has nothing to do with determining
the appropriate (i.e., useful) level of analysis, which may
be in in terms of individuals or for that matter may be in
terms of organizations and institutional structures.
But my point, as you inadvertently expose in your comment,
was only that Mises does not prove anything about the
appropriate level of analysis. He merely assumes it and then
recapitulates implications of his assumption.
Cheers,
Alan Isaac
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