Praxeology

Recorded at Mises University 2003.

The role of the intellectual is a perennial question. Why do they act the way they do? Why are they hostile to the free market? Is the state really virtuous and the market really vicious? Mises thought the anti-capitalist mentality was rooted in envy. He also thought our entire culture was soaked in contempt for money-making.

Laurent Carnis describes Rothbard on the Economics of Crime at the 2003 Austrian Scholars Conference.

Recorded at the Reassessing the Presidency seminar; March 2004. (44:14)

Mises was quite clear on the dividing line between psychology and praxeology:  Psychology deals with theories to explain why people choose certain ends, or how people will act in certain settings.  Praxeology, on the other hand, deals with the logical implications of the fact that people have ends and the fact that they act to achieve them. Robert Murphy explains.

When we really study the action axiom, writes Robert Murphy, we see that it summarizes an incredibly complicated, and tremendously important, fact about the world. In order to succeed in the present environment, it is simply indispensable for each of us to attribute intentions and reason to other beings. To put it simply, if you want to get anywhere in life, you have to assume that other humans act.

Economics explains how society works. In place of clear reasoning in English, however, mainstream economics tends to use equations and calculus with dubious assumptions that made what they are doing seem to not have much relevance to the real world. Mainstream economists also seem to spend much of their time trying to find exceptions to the clear teachings of economics.

The quest for greater realism in the social sciences: this is the core mission of Misesian scholarship in our times. At its heart this is a quest for the full truth, and even though we cannot expect to ever gain a full picture of anything here on earth, we should attempt to do so. If Misesians remain faithful to their mission, it will not fail to yield a rich harvest.

As every reader of Human Action knows, Ludwig von Mises devoted much attention to methodology. Many people interested in Austrian economics turn from his discussions of the a priori and verstehen in bafflement and boredom.

Several times recently, Gene Callahan has found himself engaged, directly or indirectly, in discussions about exactly what implications follow from the existence of human action, the foundation of economic science. The effort to draw out those implications is called praxeology.