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