also- in terms of charisma

chavez and obama have to be at the very top of the rankings

This is why the Austrians argue from axiom rather than effect. Anyone, looking at the actual distribution of wealth could arrive at a configuration more in line with their prejudices. Give the poor some. Buy some missiles. The rich didn't actually earn that money, we need it more than they do. If you allow even one instance of wealth redistribution, you are philosophically in for the whole lot. You simply can't make accurate utilitarian judgements on this scale.

I'm still in the larval stage of my understanding of all this but praxeology is the only method of doing economics as a real science that makes any sense to me. Mainstream economics by comparison is like doing mathematics by counting apples whenever you want to know what 5+4 is. Without axiomatic foundation, all you have is preference.

Except that praxeology isn't "real science" since science is based entirely on the idea of fitting models to observed facts, and praxeology is entirely based on deductions from axioms irrespective of empirical data.

What you are really saying is that economics and politics are too complex to be modeled using current scientific tools, which I think is arguably true, but reverting to 19th century philosophy for a solution is the wrong direction to solve that problem, in my opinion.

Also, there's certainly a difference between analyzing economic plans in terms of efficiency and in terms of moral equity. Scientific tools should be able to bear some insight as to the former, but neither deductive logic or scientific analysis will have too much to say about resolving the value conflicts that characterize the other.

i think also making economics a 'science,' whatever that really means, requires decoupling it from politics. And I think that is something that, whilst economists might think they can and do do, is impossible and probably not desirable.

So it's not a science in the same way as mathematics and logic aren't. I can live with that.

I would also be genuinely interested in thoughtful commentary on why the axioms of praxeology are wrong.

Switch,

I have probably not read the last 20-30 posts so I may have missed this. If so, I apologize.

Serious question. What is the difference to you between upper middle class and rich? Feel free to answer that however you wish.

There is some conceptual confusion in this statement, or so it seems to me.

First, mathematics, as a pure field apart from application, is logic, essentially. The foundations of logic in general are in axioms about the kinds of relationships abstract objects might bear to each other, there being certain kinds of relation that we take to be self-evident, like identity, difference, distance, etc. etc.

Logic or mathematics, when applied in the form of models that are supposed to accurately represent and predict the behavior of observed entities in the world, is the primary tool of modern scientific investigation. It is certainly possible to do science without using advanced mathematical or logical systems to build models, but the progress of the last 100 years has shown the great value of formalizing rules of inference in science using those tools.

Praxeology is also an attempt to apply logical methods towards understanding real-world phenomena, namely the behavior of economic systems. It is on a different level than mathematics or logic as pure fields of study. Accuracy in prediction and explanatory power are the two primary ways to evaluate the usefulness of such an application, these things don't come into play when studying mathematics or logic as things in themselves, nor does the principle of falsifiability.

So, to the extent that praxeology makes predictions about outcomes of testable events in the real world, and to the extent that you are committed to actually testing them, and iteratively modifying the model, it can be called a science properly using Popper's criteria. But it seems like most austrian economics enthusiasts want to take the output of the system as being beyond reproach as a consequence of the the fact that it is "logical". This is my problem.

So much complexity is hidden in the axiom choices, and so much fuzziness exists in the semantics of the "objects" being treated as atomic in the this very informal logical system, that I do not find it reasonable to take the deductions as being solid to the point of beyond impeachment. I think I described it before as being more akin to a system of heuristics. There is a decent chance that some conclusions will prove to be generally true, but I expect there to be plenty of areas in the "phase space" of rules that can be derived from praxeology that prove to not map very well to the real world, because of the amount of complexity that is oversimplified in the logic being used.

In my opinion, proponents of praxeology are wrong in assuming that merely taking on the form of a logical system is enough to guarantee the reliability of the deductions produced from the system. If the validity of the system did not depend on the accuracy of its representation of the actual world, than this would be of no concern, just as it is of no concern to pure mathematicians or pure logicians. They are only concerned with consistency and completeness. But economists should obviously also be concerned with real world accuracy.

Is there a place where I can see an example of some question being answered with praxeology? As in, here's the question, here's what we start with, here's the steps we take and the result we get. Preferably on the web as I'm not really going to go buy a book at this stage, but I'd like to see it in action before commenting on it at all.

I think most non-Austrians have more problems with the deductions than the axioms themselves.

I only know the one axiom - "human action is guided by purpose". I think that's a fair representation but I'm open to being corrected. It's not so much that I would say it's plainly wrong as that I think it's not the kind of thing that is self-evident as an absolute. As a generality I would have less of a problem with it, although I would still think it's at least a small mistake, and possibly a large one, to attribute this kind of rationality to humans.

WN, well said. I actually don't expect any formal logical system to describe reality (if there is one), much less an informal one. Neither do I accept on faith the conclusions of such a system. I'm also totally unqualified enough to make value judgments on the epistemological validity of such systems. I like the Austrians because their conclusions line up with my own. I didn't arrive at a loathing of the state through the careful application of axioms leading me irrevocably to this conclusion, I came to praxeology because I already agreed with the results and I was interested in how Mises & Rothbard et al got there. I also think this is how the bulk of philosophy is actually done, working backwards from a preferred conclusion to a logical structure which supports it.

The first 30 or so pages of ME&S goes from "humans act" to deriving the law of marginal utility. I would be fascinated to see this deconstructed by more facile minds than mine. Or at least those with more formal training.

I think a better statement of the axiom is "There exist actions undertaken by (some, mentally normal) humans, which are intended to achieve ends." There are things that would colloquially be called "actions" that aren't intended as prax. actions.

Thanks Bob, the qualifier certainly addresses some of my criticism. The next criticism might be that in order for the more qualified statement to be useful as an axion we need to make assumptions about the weight of these praxeology-analyzable actions in determining future outcomes being sufficient to overwhelm the input of the irrational actions. In other words, it's not enough for such actions to exist, they must be dispositive.

It occurs to me that you have set yourself up as the arbiter of normality here. There are human actions not defined as praxeologic, reflex and so on. Just because the actions of Weird Harold seem nonsensical to you, if he is a rational being, he is making some kind of value judgments and acting accordingly. A nonrational human would be approached no differently than a chair in terms of praxeology.

ibid

Wat?
Science theory begs to differ. Economics is the queen of the sciences.

How can it get more accurate than being provably correct?

Which science theory would that be? The usual standard is Popper's. I referred to it in my previous post, and I said that praxeology could be used scientifically. However, the way in which you have advocated using it (in saying it was a priori true, or in saying that you didn't care about testing or empirical evidence) is decidedly non-scientific by any standard that I am aware of.

Agree. This is the point I was trying to get across with my parenthetical. Rational is a better word than mentally normal.

Something about these statements continues to strike me as not even wrong, i.e. a bit like an ill-posed problem, but i can;t put my finger on it. I'm going on holiday for a week, so maybe i'll mull it over a bit, and maybe you'll still be talking about it when i get back, who knows. I just don't see how economics can be maths. Or logic. Thermodynamics maybe.

Eh Popper and more importantly Lakatos is one field of science theory but Critical Rationalism et al. is hardly the only accepted basis for discovery of knowledge. In fact I'd like to know how knowledge can be derived under a Popper-style epistemology.
I'm still not convinced that anything that cannot be proven to be correct is knowledge and not just guesswork.
To call something a theory because it is principally falsifiable doesn't cut it for me. In fact how is Popper's epistemological model falsifiable?

I just realized when Clown said "Economics is the queen of the sciences" I read "Praxeology is the queen of the sciences". Yeah.

Economics is a phenomena. Some particular economic theory is either scientific or not, but economics as a whole, unless in using the term you are referring to a particular theory, is not a science.

Clowntable, to make this clear: I don't think science is the only mode of aquiring knowledge. You are confusing the argument a bit. Falsificationism isn't scientific, it's philosophical, it comes under the heading of philosophy of science.

Almost nothing can be proven to be correct given sufficiently stringent definitions of the word proof. This is a more or less open problem in epistemology generally. In scientific philosophy, proof and certainty in the philosophical sense are not even really striven for.

Elaborate, I don't get this.

Well maybe I misphrased that but feel free to suggest a stringent definition of proof that can crack this:
Every human being acts rationally. (short version due to lazyness)

To disprove this a human being would have to act rationally and thus it is in fact not possible to disprove the statement.

I mean I think I can see a way by using the finity of existance but that would just lead to a result that knowledge can in fact not exist, nor can definitions.

Thankfully there's a book on epistemology on the way that should arrive tomorrow so maybe then I can make a clearer case (I am a little rusty on Lakatos etc.)