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
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