John C. M?daille wrote:
But since you bring up the question of Mises, Mises was claiming a lotmore 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, ineach and every case, just what those ends are. And he makes this claimover and over again. For example:  

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

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

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

"Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with ageneral commandment to love one another? [People] cooperate becausethis best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor anyother sympathetic sentiment but rightly understood selfishness is whatoriginally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements ofsociety?and to substitute peaceful collaboration to enmity andconflict." (HA 168-9)  

Now, Mises may be right in all of this, but he is methodologicallywrong. He does not offer this as a conclusion of the science ofpsychology, but as a "self-evident" principle. And even that would nothave been so bad had he offered some discussion of what determines a"self-evident" axiom. But he does not. He offers on his own authorityonly. This is not science, but the essence of ideology. For inideology, the controlling "idea" is elevated to a position beyond anyquestioning and everything that conflicts with the "idea" is ruled outa priori. The question is rarely whether or not the "idea" is "true";it generally is. The question is whether the "truth" has displaced allother truths. People certainly act for self-interest, but is itimpossible for them to act in any other way? And this further begs thequestion of what constitutes either "self" or "interest," and withoutbeing specific about these, it is difficult to give any scientificmeaning to the proposition. Human motivations are dense and complex,and normally obscure, even to the actor. To believe that they can beresolved to a simple, "self-evident" principle is problematic at best,unscientific at worst.  


John C. M?daille
While I think that Sam used some rather loose language, there is nopoint in retorting with comparably loose language. I take it that wewould agree that to be "methodologically wrong" impllies that one isusing the wrong method. Since methods are used to achieve goals,  theunstated part of John's message concerns the goal or goals. John doesnot tell us the goal that Mises was trying to achieve or the goal thathe believes ought to be achieved or sought after.

Mises's goal was to provide a framework for dealing with phenomena thathad previously not been clearly identified as distinct from otherphenomena. That phenomena is interaction among distinctly human actors.To even define this phenomena, it is necessary to define what it meansto be distinctly human and what it means to be an actor. Once thedefinitions are made, one can decide for himself whether these areindeed previously unidentified phenomena. It is in this sense thatMises asserted or assumed a priori that praxeology (the study of humanaction) is a distinct science of which economics (the study of humanaction under market economy conditions) is the most highly advancedbranch. If one does not accept that these phenomena are real ordeserving of study, then what Mises assumes is self-evident is clearlynot evident. One is free to reject it.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mises, it seems to me thatpsychologists do not study these phenomena. As I recall from my readingmany years ago, the client-centered therapy of Carl Rogers wasconcerned with improving choice-making, which implied identifyingdeficiencies in the ability to make choices. I don't believe that thisever expanded into a science, let alone a social science. Morerecently, cognitive development or cognitive science has addressedchoice in some measure. But it also has not expanded sufficiently toenable an economist who regards economics as a theory of choice andaction to gain much from studying it.

Finally, let me point out that John again seems to be attacking whatmost people regard as economics, rather than a particular version, suchas Misesian or Austrian economics. Economic models have practicallyalways assumed self-interested choice on the parts of the dominantparties. That the economists who built such models have not closelyexamined their a priori assumptions is no reason to attack a particulareconomist. John's attack should be directed against the economist role,not a particular economist. And, of course, it should be defended, if one thinks this as worth the effort, byanyone who regards herself as an economist, in the usual sense.

Pat Gunning