Question About Human Action

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mikachusetts replied on Sat, Feb 11 2012 9:14 AM

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I like your avatar, it brings me back.

Think of your question in terms of geometry.  The area of a triangle is 1/2(Height*Length).  This is true for every triangle.  While I can plug in the heights and lengths of various triangles to see that the formula does work out, I don't really need to know the height or length of ANY triangle to make that formula.

In praxeology we have a similar situation.  I can say that both parties in an exchange place higher value on the good they are receieving then the one they are giving up -- and I can say this without knowing what the goods are and why they are valued.  We can go back and observe this and say "Okay, Alice gave Bob her apple for his chocolate because she wanted to give Charlie chocolate for Valentines Day, and Bob took the apple because he had to feed his horse."  Thats fine, and it might be of interest to a praxeologist for other reasons, but it isn't useful in helping us understand how ALL exchanges work.

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Neodoxy replied on Sat, Feb 11 2012 10:38 AM

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I think that the scope of praxeology could drastically increased if it were combined with, or applied to other social sciences, because this would dramatically increase the size of the worldview that one would have and the number of judgments that could be made expand infinitely. To expand upon Mike's analogy, geometry could tell you a lot about the dimensions a house would have to be to fit a particular size, but only physics could tell you if it would stay up, so one combining them would be in a much better position. 

With this being said praxeology is still its own science, you cold be totally ignorant of psychology and you could still be great at praxeology because, as the study guide says, psychology deals with what culminates in individual action, what forms preference and perspective, but what does this have to do with the action which ultimately takes place? You can't tell unless you take the outcome of the physical action itself, and the abstract which the actor MUST have been pursuing (AKA the most highly valued end), but wait, this is praxeology, so we've come full circle and we can tell that praxeology has a different place than psychology, but this does not mean that they cannot be combined, especially with sociology and psychology upon a historical basis.