Samuel Bostaph wrote:

>   Psychologists attempt to explain all the 
> aspects of our thinking or not  thinking. They 
> attempt to identify principles of thought.

Then we would seem to agree that "principles of 
thought" come from psychology, not economics. 
Economists must accept the conclusions of the 
higher sciences in this regard. When they attempt 
to displace the higher sciences, economics becomes not science, but ideology.

>
>   Those of us who choose to think rationally

Is there someone on the planet who claims to 
think non-rationally? I suspect that the term 
"rational" in that sentence is a code-word for a 
particular system of rationalizations.

>  attempt understanding so  that whatever goals 
> we set for ourselves have a decent prospect 
> of  achievement, given that we think we know 
> what principles of action to  apply in our 
> attempt to achieve them.Think about the meaning 
> of the  word "choice. Why would anyone ever 
> state that "men always make choices  based on 
> maximum utility to oneself." I haven't the 
> slightest idea what  that means or why you made 
> that statement as if it was implied 
> in  anything I said or Mise wrote. Mises simply 
> said that individuals have  ends that they seek to achieve.

I attributed the statement neither to you nor to 
Mises. I merely offered it as a possible 
"principle of thought" to show that it must be 
judged by psychologists, not economists. And in 
the real world, this is what actually happens; in 
attempting to motivate people, through 
advertising for example, we call upon psychology, not economics.

But since you bring up the question of Mises, 
Mises was claiming a lot more then that people 
act for ends (which is a mere tautology, since 
"ends" are a part of the definition of action), 
but that he knew, in each and every case, just 
what those ends are. And he makes this claim over and over again. For example:

"In this sense every action is to be qualified as 
selfish. The man who gives alms to hungry 
children does it, either because he values his 
own satisfaction expected from this gift higher 
than any other satisfaction he could buy by 
spending this amount of money, or because he 
hopes to be rewarded in the beyond." (HA 735)

  "What a man does is always aimed at an 
improvement of his own state of satisfaction. In 
this sense ?and in no other ?we are free to use the 
term selfishness and to emphasize that action is 
necessarily always selfish." (HA 242)

Mises is so sure of this principle, that he can 
assert that it excludes any other possible principle of action:

"Social cooperation has nothing to do with 
personal love or with a general commandment to 
love one another
 [People] cooperate because this 
best serves their own interests. Neither love nor 
charity nor any other sympathetic sentiment but 
rightly understood selfishness is what originally 
impelled man to adjust himself to the 
requirements of society
and to substitute 
peaceful collaboration to enmity and conflict." (HA 168-9)

Now, Mises may be right in all of this, but he is 
methodologically wrong. He does not offer this as 
a conclusion of the science of psychology, but as 
a "self-evident" principle. And even that would 
not have been so bad had he offered some 
discussion of what determines a "self-evident" 
axiom. But he does not. He offers on his own 
authority only. This is not science, but the 
essence of ideology. For in ideology, the 
controlling "idea" is elevated to a position 
beyond any questioning and everything that 
conflicts with the "idea" is ruled out a priori. 
The question is rarely whether or not the "idea" 
is "true"; it generally is. The question is 
whether the "truth" has displaced all other 
truths. People certainly act for self-interest, 
but is it impossible for them to act in any other 
way? And this further begs the question of what 
constitutes either "self" or "interest," and 
without being specific about these, it is 
difficult to give any scientific meaning to the 
proposition. Human motivations are dense and 
complex, and normally obscure, even to the actor. 
To believe that they can be resolved to a simple, 
"self-evident" principle is problematic at best, unscientific at worst.


John C. M?daille