On 6/10/2011 1:55 AM, Alan Freeman wrote:
> My question is, therefore, does the concept 'polylogism' help us understand
> the world any better than 'bigendianism'? Does it permit us to make any
> useful categorization of the different ways people think, so that we can on
> the one side place the polylogists, on the other side the antipolylogists
> (monologists?) and deduce other behavioural or intellectual traits from this
> division - for example, that side A are more likely to be racist, or side B
> are more likely to be wrong.
>
> I haven't seen any argument to this effect, so far. I suspect this may be
> part of the reason that the discussion has not got as far as it otherwise
> might have.

Alan, your question is interesting. The key to the answer is to 
understand the economics that Mises was defending. Consider the 
following six propositions, which Mises regarded as scientific theorems 
or laws.

1. Cantillon's idea that newly created money has effects on the 
distribution of wealth and therefore the pattern of consumer demand.

2. Smith's invisible hand.

3. Ricardo's theory of gains from trade and specialization and more 
generally the theory of the gains from the higher productivity of labor 
due to specialization and the division of labor in a society world 
people are free to exchange, specialize, and divide labor.

4. Neoclassical consumer sovereignty.

5. Mises and Hayek's ideas that market interaction entails the use of 
specialized, largely individualized particular knowledge of specific 
ways to increase the productivity of labor. This knowledge can be 
roughly communicated and accounted for through a system of markets and 
prices not highly influenced by government or other employers of 
coercion. A maker of pencils, for example, can roughly account for 
technological improvements in lumbering and in electronic communication. 
But such vast specialized and particularized knowledge can hardly be 
accounted for at all by a central planner or government agency. It 
follows that one who wants to live in a world that contains a highly 
developed division of labor and, therefore, highly productive labor must 
take heed of the communication properties of the system of markets and 
prices and of the assistance given by a medium of exchange in helping 
people to make calculations.

6. Mises's idea that a change money supply practically always induces 
errors in economic calculation. This idea is based on (a) the Cantillon 
effect (#1) and (b) the theory of communication through markets and 
prices (#5). The change in money supply interferes with the system of 
markets and prices, leading people to send a larger proportion than 
otherwise of signals regarding their knowledge of particular 
circumstances, including their knowledge of the pattern of consumer 
demand, that later turn out to be false. It therefore, retards the 
growth of labor productivity.


If you believe that one or more of these theorems helps you understand 
the world, then it follows that being able to classify the tactics and 
reasoning used by the critics of this economics helps you understand the 
world. It follows, in turn, that the concept of polylogism may help you 
understand the world. The concepts designated by the terms Marxist 
polylogism and racist polylogism can be defended on similar grounds.

If you believe that these theorems do not help you understand the world, 
then the Swiftian analogy seems applicable.


-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm