Fred Foldvary quoted Mises: 
>    Human action is necessarily always rational. The term 
>    "rational action" is therefore pleonastic and must be 
>    rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of 
>    action, the terms rational and irrational are 
>    inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of 
>    action is always the satisfaction of some desires of 
>    the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to 
>    substitute his own value judgments for those of the 
>    acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other 
>    people's aims and volitions.[end quote] 

Of course Mises is free to define rationality however he 
wishes, as are you.

        When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather 
        a scornful tone, "it means what I choose it to mean, 
        neither more nor less."

On the HES list, however, it would seem rather odd to ignore 
for example the long debate over ends-rationality and the 
entire field of ethics.

There is of course also the small matter of a deep 
contradiction.  If "it is vain to pass judgment on other 
people's aims and volitions" then surely we would not find 
rational actors engaging in such vain pursuits.  Experience 
can vary of course, but I have yet to meet someone who did 
not make such judgements...

As for whether economists must treat goals and ends as 
"merely data", I guess not since we have economists working 
on the endogeneity of tastes, the evolution of culture, the  
emergence of addiction, and other efforts to explain goals.

Finally, as has been well understood by many economists as 
well as philosophers of social science, insisting that human 
action be understood as the rational pursuit of goals---if 
*only* we social "scientists" could get our hands on those 
goals!---is an almost empty move.  As Alexander Rosenberg 
has cogently observed, this is largely just an acceptance of 
folk psychology.  The content is in the unobserved (!) goals
and in human imperfections.

Alan Isaac