Consider these four sentences:
1) My rumbling stomach caused me to head to the kitchen for a snack.
2) My friend’s logic caused me to change my mind.
3) The gunman’s threat to kill me caused me to surrender my wallet.
4) The car’s sudden stop caused me to hit the dashboard.
If we fail to distinguish the first three uses of the word caused (which really refer to reasons) from the last, we are bound for trouble. The modern scientific (better, scientistic) attitude sees them as the same. Thus, in this view, everything a person apparently does is really a happening produced by an infinite chain of preceding happenings. Human action, à la Mises, is an illusion. Intention is an illusion. Preference is an illusion. Responsibility is an illusion. Freedom is an illusion. Praxeology and psychology are reduced to physics and neurophysics. Economics is reduced to neuroeconomics. Man is abolished .
