Hoppe: causality is an “action-produced phenomenon”???

In note #37 of In Defense of Extreme Rationalism, Hoppe refers to “the preceding conclusion regarding the characteristic of causality as an action-produced phenomenon …”

Revisiting the discussion that precedes note #37, I cannot find quite this conclusion. I find the conclusions that the category of action implies causality, that an historical act demonstrates causality, and that successful action demonstrates that causality, though an a priori concept, says something meaningful about the real world. I find the conclusion that language is action-produced and that its use presupposes and demonstrates the existence of time-invariant causal relationships. But I do not see where Hoppe asserts that causality is action-produced.

 Am I missing something important?

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 In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics

I haven't read the work in question, but it seems like the relevant question would be what Hoppe is referring to with the word "causality". 

On one hand, he could mean that actual cause and effect relationships in physical reality are necessarily produced by actions.  But that's not likely, since it would be obviously wrong.  An action involves the weighing of means and the choice and execution of an alternative in the pursuit of some end.  It seems uncontroversial to suggest that rain falls as the result of a causal relationship, right?  But rain doesn't fall as the result of an action; the rain doesn't choose to fall, nor could it prevent itself from falling.  It just falls.  I suppose he could be trying to redefine what sorts of things qualify as causal relationships, but I think it's far more likely that he means something completely different in the note you referred to.

A possibility that comes to mind immediately is that he's referring to the recognition of causal relationships by human minds.  That is, it's only by conceptually atomizing the universe and abstracting separate "forces" and "objects" that we come to the idea that there's something like "causality" in the universe.  The idea here would be that we have to actively acknowledge causality in a set of phenomena in order for us to perceive there to be causality involved.  That is, the recognition of causality would have to be voluntaristic.  I'm not sure if this is right either (and by that I mean that I firmly believe it to be false), but it's a reasonably plausible candidate for what he could be referring to here.  Thinking about this sort of thing really starts with David Hume, so I'd recommend you check out An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (or more reasonably, a summary of it or Hume's metaphysical and epistemological views).

All this has been under the impression that you have no idea what Hoppe's referring to; if you could clarify or provide some context for Hoppe's point, I might be able to get a little closer to what's being argued.

Donny with an A:

A possibility that comes to mind immediately is that he's referring to the recognition of causal relationships by human minds.

A slightly simpler possibility is that, but in the sense that it is through action that we empirically observe validate causality to ourselves.  Still, that's a stretch, too, and it come off as a bizarre formulation as it stands quoted here.  I'm not that familiar with Hoppe - he's still alive, isn't he?  Anybody have his email or contact info?  We could just ask him.

Hoppe is a Kantian impositionist, for whom the mind structures reality. One "sees" reality through metaphorical goggles, the transcendental categories, such as causality, in order to make sense of it. This is what Danny essentially pointed out in his second paragraph. I don't agree with this view either, but it's popular, especially amongst Kantians.

-Jon

Jon Irenicus:

Kantian impositionist, for whom the mind structures reality.... it's popular, especially amongst Kantians.

LOL

What is funny? Kantians are not the only impositionists out there.

-Jon

Donny,

I was hoping for a reply from someone who had read the text cited and examined the context for himself. I provided a link to it:

In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics

. Note #37 apprears 16 pages in, so the context and the conclusion he refers to is in these 16 pages.

I recommend this article to anyone interested in epistemology. How about having a go at it?

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Donny,

I know that Hoppe considers the concept of causality to be a priori, implied in the apriori concept of action. I believe that he considers action to be the thing that establishes the link between apriori propositions (and the conclusions we deduce from them) to the real world and allows us to say that apriori propositions say something meaningful about reality. I do not believe he thinks that action produces causality, and so I would not expect him to use the term action-produced to describe it. I could dismiss it as a poor choice, but I would like to be sure I'm not missing some important point of Hoppe's.

Hoppe is presumed alive and scheduled to lecture on praxeology at the Mises University on July 28. Llew Rockwell, in the preface to Hoppe's Praxeology and Economic Science, called him "the outstanding praxeologist living today". I am engaged in a project to read everything he has written.

You are right, I could ask him. But I want to make my best effort to understand what he has written before approaching him.

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My impression is that Hoppe believes that there is an objective reality of which man must take account in order to act successfully and, in fact, in order to act at all. Causality is an apriori category, and we could not make sense of reality without it, but it is, itself, an objective reality. Have I missread him?

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histhasthai,

My apologies. I addressed you as Donny in my reply to you. I'm still getting used to the layout of this forum.

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Jon Irenicus:

What is funny? Kantians are not the only impositionists out there.

I think there was a bit of an ironic twist there.  After all, Kant held that impositionism is correct, and when looking out at the world, Kantians notice that impositionism is true, and so they hold impositionist views.  Of course, nature doesn't carry its own rules, and they're imposing impositionism on it...

For what it's worth, I'd point out that Hoppe is not a straight-forward Kantian, at least if that means "the group of philosophers identified as Kantians today."  Instead, he holds that the mainstream misinterprets Kant, and that Kant was actually a realist.

Odd parallel that might be of interest here:  Rabbi Solovetchik (sp) was Rosh Yeshiva (head of the school) at Yeshiva University in New York.  He was considered the leader of the Modern Orthodox, which essentially meant Jews who practiced as Orthodox and believed in supremacy of the Torah, but also held that the study of science, philosophy, and so on were not just allowable, but part of study of God and the Torah.  The phrase is also taken to mean "Orthodox but not so strict in practice" but that isn't what he meant by it.  So, anyway, he has this book Halachik Man where he is taking a tack similar to that of Hoppe in reading Kant as a realist, but rather than economics, he applies the train of thought to Jewish law. 

On impositionism, I tend to favor Dr. Long's denial of the dichotomy between impositionism and reflectionism.

Mises argued for the categories' connection to reality on the ground that minds that are attuned to reality in such a way survived the process of natural selection; i.e. they are the minds best equipped to deal with the real world. I wonder if Hoppe holds a similar view. He sees action as directly tied to reality. There is a problem in Mises's (and any Kantian who adopts a similar line) view though, in that this is question begging. One thing about causality, is that denying it is self-contradictory. 

JAlankatz, I think Hoppe is influenced sufficiently enough by Kant to be called a Kantian, although I agree that he does not fit in with most modern Kantians.

Jpg, I've read the article, but it packs in so many arguments I'd have to re-read it to locate that particular one. It is available online. Bring it up, search it and I'll see if I can help you interpret it.

-Jon

jpg:

“the preceding conclusion regarding the characteristic of causality as an action-produced phenomenon …”

Could it be that he reached a conclusion (some other conclusion not implicity in the sentence you quoted) about those types of causality that come about as a result of actions? So he made a conclusion about some specific types of causal relationships (i.e. only those that involve human action)... Possible?

Jon Irenicus:

Mises argued for the categories' connection to reality on the ground that minds that are attuned to reality in such a way survived the process of natural selection; i.e. they are the minds best equipped to deal with the real world. I wonder if Hoppe holds a similar view. He sees action as directly tied to reality. There is a problem in Mises's (and any Kantian who adopts a similar line) view though, in that this is question begging. One thing about causality, is that denying it is self-contradictory. 

JAlankatz, I think Hoppe is influenced sufficiently enough by Kant to be called a Kantian, although I agree that he does not fit in with most modern Kantians.

 I have not seen evolutionary arguments in Hoppe.  But Mises seems to have had the standard idealist reading of Kant, and I think only on an idealist reading would the problems arise that the evolutionary argument is supposed to address.

I think there are two senses in which one can be a Kantian.  One could be a Kantian in the sense you use it above - strongly influenced by Kant.  But one can also use the term to refer to membership in a philosophical school, so to speak.  In the latter sense, I'd argue that Hoppe is not a Kantian since he doesn't share the reading of Kant held by members of that school.  In the first sense, of course, he is a Kantian.

Jon Irenicus:

Mises argued for the categories' connection to reality on the ground that minds that are attuned to reality in such a way survived the process of natural selection; i.e. they are the minds best equipped to deal with the real world. I wonder if Hoppe holds a similar view. He sees action as directly tied to reality. There is a problem in Mises's (and any Kantian who adopts a similar line) view though, in that this is question begging. One thing about causality, is that denying it is self-contradictory. 

I figure Mises offered natural selection as a  metaphysical proposition -- reasonable, but by no means can it be established: "We are not prevented from assuming", etc. (Ultimate Foundation p15). But the existence of the categories must simply be accepted as an ultimate given.

Regarding the connection between a priori categories and the real world:

Although logic,mathematics, and praxeology are not derived from experience,
they are not arbitrarily made, but imposed upon us by the world
in which we live and act and which we want to study.

 They are not empty, not meaningless, and not merely verbal. They are
—for man—the most general laws of the universe, and without
them no knowledge would be accessible to man.
The a priori categories are the endowment that enables man
to attain all that is specifically human and distinguishes him
from all other beings. Their analysis is analysis of the human
condition, the role man plays in the universe. They are the force
that enables man to create and to produce all that is called
human civilization. (Ultimate Foundation, p14)

For Mises, reality is defined by action:

5. The Reality of the External World
From the praxeological point of view it is not possible to
question the real existence of matter, of physical objects and of
the external world. Their reality is revealed by the fact that
man is not omnipotent. There is in the world something that
offers resistance to the realization of his wishes and desires. Any
attempt to remove by a mere fiat what annoys him and to
substitute a state of affairs that suits him better for a state of
affairs that suits him less is vain. If he wants to succeed, he must
proceed according to methods that are adjusted to the structure of
something about which perception provides him with some
information. We may define the external world as the totality of
all those things and events that determine the feasibility or
unfeasibility, the success of failure, of human action. (Ultimate Foundation, p6)

http://mises.org/books/ultimate.pdf

As for Hoppe, I have not caught him speculating on the origin of the categories. Off hand, it doesn't seem like something he woud do. In Defense, where he argues against hermeneutics, he concludes with this about the connection between action-as-language and reality:

Language, then, is not some ethereal medium disconnected from reality,
but is itself a form of action. It is an offshoot of practical cooperation and
as such, via action, is inseparably connected with an objective world. Talk,
whether fact or fiction, is inevitably a form of cooperation and thus presup-
poses a common ground of objectively defined and applied terms.Not in the
sense that one would always have to agree on the content of what was said
or that one would even have to understand everything said. But rather, in the
sense that as long as one claimed to express anything meaningful at all, one
would have to assume the existence of some common standards, if only to be
able to agree on whether or not and in what respect one was in fact in agree-
ment with others, and whether or not and to what extent one in fact understood
what had been said. And these common standards would have to be assumed
to be objective in that they would involve the application of terms within reality.
To say, then, that no common ground exists is contradictory. The very fact
that this statement can claim to convey meaning implies that there is such com-
mon ground. It implies that terms can be objectively applied and grounded
in a common reality of action as the practical presupposition of language.(Defense p183 RAE3_1)

http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE3_1_16.pdf

Hoppe does not pass up any performative contradictions.

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Jon, and all who have responded on this thread,

I believe that I have found the answer to my puzzle. It lies in the meaning of the word "produce". I have been thinking of it as "cause" or "create", but Websters Online Dictionary gives its first listed meaning as  "to offer to view or notice". This definition fits very well with what I understand Hoppe's position to be.

Thank you all,

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