 I have a very low voice. If anyone can't hear me, please put up your hand. Anyone who put up his hand is lying. You know, I remember there was a story about my friend Robert Nozick once said in a lecture, can people in the back hear me and someone yelled out, we can't hear you in the front. So he said, well, go in the back where you can hear me. And what I'm going to be talking about today is praxeology. Some of the material will be similar to what was covered by Professor Herbner in his lecture this past period, although I will stress more the philosophical aspects rather than the technical economics. I wonder why it is after Professor Herbner's lectures, the students crowd around him asking questions. After my lectures, they run away. Wondered about that. All right, praxeology is, as you know, the science of human action. Sometimes it's a bit of an ambiguity. Sometimes people use the word to mean the distinctive method, the deductive method used in the study of human action. But as Mises introduced the term, it was to refer to the science, the discipline of studying of human action rather than the method. And praxeology is the science of human action. Economics is the best developed branch of praxeology. There have sometimes been suggestions that maybe there could be other branches of praxeology at all, for example, a study of armed conflict. But nothing ever comes of these. The discussion seems to be, well, people will say possibly there are other branches of praxeology, and that's it. Some people like to come up with classification schemes. I don't see there's much point to doing that, but if you want to waste your time on that, it's quite all right with me. So economics would be defined as consisting of economics of one person, crucio-economics, and also, catalactics, the study of exchange, principally monetary exchange. And most of the Mises' human action and also Rothbard's man economy and state is devoted to catalactics. Now, as you know, the method used in praxeology differs from the method common among mainstream economists. In what way is this? Well, Austrian economics doesn't use formal models where you have set it out in mathematical form and doesn't depend on testing the results of the model. In the mainstream economics, you would first develop a formal model and then subject it to testing. In Austrian economics, we don't do that. Because of these feature, Austrian economics has been criticized, especially by positivists and also followers of Karl Popper. Some people with some reason classify Popper as himself a positivist. But he said, no, no, he's definitely not a positivist. And the logical positivists agreed with him on this. They said, no, no, you're not a positivist. So at least they agreed on that. But if you think he was a positivist, you could reply they're both wrong about it. In fact, there was one story that one of the leading logical positivists, Hans Reichenbach, who was actually connected with a Berlin group that was close to positivists, refused to shake hands with Popper to indicate how strongly he opposed Popper's views. So in this talk, we'll be looking at some of the criticisms that these groups have raised against the Austrian distinctive method and how Austrians would respond to them. So before I do that, we want to go over, when we say praxeology is the science of human action, what is an action? Action is purposeful behavior. You want something so you use means to get it. For example, you want to learn Austrian economics, so you come to lectures, you read books, and so on. You have some goal in mind, and then you pursue means to get it. So in an action, the goal or end serves to explain why you're behaving a certain way. Now, to understand this, it's good to contrast this. What would it be to deny this to say that there aren't any actions to deny that there are actions? Well, then we would say, well, there is behavior there. You can see bodies moving in certain ways. People are doing things, but their purpose or goal doesn't have anything to do with explaining what they're doing. They're just behaviorists take this point of view. They say what we're trying to do is to just look at people's behavior externally. We see there are certain movements that people are making, and then we try to come up with laws about how they're moving, but we don't make any reference to people's ends or goals. So when we talk about action, we're talking about usually movements of people's bodies. We can sometimes talk about action in the sense of thinking about a problem, for example, but that isn't the primary sense of action. The action is movements of people's bodies. As I say, we can have exceptions. For example, suppose I said everyone who agrees with me on this point, please signify by remaining seated. So you've all remained seated, and so you're acting. You're agreeing with me. When I tried this, I mentioned this point at the Rothbard Graduate seminar, Peter Klein did me the dirty trick of standing up, disagreeing with me, and this threw me off my stride completely, but I see no one has done that in this group. So this is in that respect a much better group. I appreciate that. So as I say, actions are for the most part out there in the world. So it's obvious that if we try to think of it, it seems obvious that there are actions that are just there. We will be discussing various criticisms of that, but some people say, well, the way to show their actions is suppose you deny that there are actions, then you yourself would be acting because you're saying there aren't any actions, but you're saying that in order to show there aren't any actions. So you yourself, by saying there aren't any actions, they're showing that there are actions, so they place great stress on this argument. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that argument's perfectly all right, but it doesn't show all that much. Suppose we say, OK, that's a good argument if someone says there aren't any actions. He himself is acting. OK, so there's one action. So what is supposed to be the big deal about showing that there is one action? We're concerned with actions out there in the world just saying there is one action doesn't seem to be all that much. Although I suppose one could say it's a start, but it's really not that significant, at least. If you believe me, some other people might have other views on the matter. So praxeology begins either from the concept of action, according to Mises, are the axiom that man acts. This is the way Rothbard phrased it. And from this, together with some supplementary postulates, the rest of praxeology is deduced. This is, I think, a key point. The deduction used is what we would call material, rather than formal. It doesn't operate mechanically, say, if you've taken a logic course, have people taken courses in logic here, or mathematical logic. How many have taken courses in mathematical logic? Oh, good, quite a few. So I'll have to be very careful what I say not to make any mistakes about the subject. If people haven't taken the, if you don't know the subject, then you can just make it up as you go along. But people can catch you out, then you're in big trouble. So in mathematical logic, once you've set up a proof and you know what you want to symbolize, you can carry out the deduction mechanically. You just follow certain rules that you've learned, and then you can carry out your proof. But in praxeology, it doesn't operate this way. You have to understand the meaning of each step as you go along. It was a very different process. And here are a few examples of what follows from the concept of an action. And again, Professor Herbner went over some of the, every action uses a means to achieve an end. Again, you want something, so you say this is a means of getting it. And so that will enable you to get your end. Sometimes we can have cases where it's hard to separate the means and the end, but we can, if we think about it, we'll be able to do that. And every action is a choice between alternatives. You think, well, why did I do this? Why did you come to this lecture rather than going somewhere else? You would have a choice. You could have done something else. So you came here, and you came here because at least at the time, that was your highest value alternative. You wanted to do that more than other things. Perhaps some of you are regretting having made that choice, but it's really too late. Now, one point that's very important about means is a means is whatever an actor thinks will help him realize his goal. So it doesn't matter if, in fact, the means won't help. If you're trying to explain somebody's action, what counts are the person's ideas about what the means are. For example, supposing I thought I could make someone I don't like disappear just by concentrating on an image of him and hope willing him to disappear, that would be a very poor choice of means to attain that, and it wouldn't work. I hope it wouldn't work because then I would have long since vanished. But if you did that, you'd still be using a means to attain an end. In Mises, I'll give you a quotation from Mises. He says, in dealing with prices, economics does not ask what things are in the eyes of other people, but only what they are in the meaning of those intent on getting them. So from point of view of economics, it doesn't matter if, say, supposing somebody thought that smoking three packs a day of cigarettes was a great way of making sure you didn't get cancer. That would still be the person's means to getting that end, even though he would be wrong. I'm reminded that. Example reminds me of the story of the man who read so much about how bad smoking is for your health that he gave up reading. So again, if we're trying to explain an action, what's important is what the actor prefers. Praxeology is not a normative discipline that tells us what we should choose in some sense. It just says that we're dealing with what actions people do choose. Now, some people make the mistake here. They think, well, according to praxeology, since all values are subjective, this is a statement about ethics that says, there aren't any such things as values that you ought to choose in the sense you're wrong about them if you don't choose them in some kind of absolute sense. Suppose somebody held you ought to be kind to other people. Some people would say that's something you ought to do whether you want to or not. So some people say, well, praxeology shows that all values are subjective. But that isn't a praxeology is not making a claim about ethics. It isn't saying there's no such thing as an objective ought. It's just saying that if we want to explain people's action, we're interested in the values that they themselves have, not ones that they should choose. Even in fact, there are things people should choose in some absolute sense. Praxeology is uncommitted on this point. Now, we can, in one way, evaluate means as suitable or unsuitable to attain an end. But ultimate ends can't be evaluated. We could say, if you chose such and such, you won't be successful. That would be a statement we might make. For example, suppose Mises and Rothbard make the statement, if you want to end unemployment, minimum wage laws will not be a good means to enable you to do that. That's an objective statement. We can make this within praxeology. If you want this, then this will or won't be a good way of getting it. But it can't say, if you get to some goal and you just say, this is what I want, I don't have anything further on why I want that, then the praxeologists couldn't say anything more. Now, I should say, again, make sure we understand the point. We can say in praxeology people can have bad means to attain a certain end that the means they select won't help them attain that end. But if we're trying to explain people's particular actions, what's important are the actions that they, in fact, are the means they themselves have, are their subjective views about it. So even if they think they're bad, even if they are wrong about it, that still explains what they're doing. In praxeology, we're not talking about particular actions that people do say, if you say you're coming here to listen to this lecture, that wouldn't be part of praxeology. What we're considering in praxeology is what you could call the form of an action, meaning what are the criteria for something being an action? What does an action have to have to be an action? What are the general truths about action? So another point that's important is that praxeology doesn't make quantitative claims about action. For example, suppose we say lowering the price of a good will other things be equal result in an increase in the quantity demanded. We can't deduce how much an increase in the quantity demanded will be, because we're not making quantitative, we don't have quantitative judgments in praxeology, we're just these aren't deducible from the concept of action. Now, one key principle of praxeology is that only individuals act. Very important not to misunderstand this view. The view isn't that only individuals exist, but only individuals act. For example, it isn't part of praxeology that there is no such thing as the United States, or there is no such thing as the species of all gorillas, or there's no such thing as the world population. It's not a judgment about whether nations or classes exist, but they only act through individuals. For example, suppose we say the United States declared war on Japan December 8, 1941. That statement would be analyzed by saying that after a speech by President Roosevelt to Congress, Congress voted a declaration of war, and as a result of that, various relations between people, things happen resulting in war. Now, there are people who've denied that. There are people who say that there are classes act, and nations act. And this is a, perhaps you might think that's an absurd view. How could anybody think that, say, a group could act apart from the people in it, but people have held that view. And at the time, Mises was writing Human Action. Remember, the English edition came out in 1949 based on an earlier German edition, came out in 1940. That was a much more popular view than it is now. For example, one of the professors at the University of Vienna was Otmar Schban, who was a very strong opponent of Mises. They really hated each other. And he said, no, no, it isn't the individual whose first, first you have the group, and individuals develop only out of the group. So that would be an example of someone who denied methodological individualism. And again, suppose we say, well, how do we know methodological individualism is true? How do we know Schban was wrong? The idea in Praxeology is what we just think about what's involved in action. And then we grasp that this is true, that we see that only individuals act if we say that a nation acts. It has to be cashed out in terms of what the individuals are doing. Now, as I mentioned at the start, now we're going to turn to the criticisms of the Austrian economics. Most economists today follow methods that's like that used in the physical sciences. And what happens in the physical sciences is the scientists will construct theories that make quantitative predictions. And then after the theory is constructed, according to a formal model, and then it's tested. Now, the supporters of the mainstream method say that the method they use is the way science has progressed since the scientific revolution. What they will say is, well, in the bad old days, say under the Middle Ages, people thought they could figure out what was going on in the world just by looking at books or studying what Aristotle had said. In various ancient writings. But that didn't get anywhere since the scientific revolution with Galileo and Kepler and Newton. We realized the way to advance is to have, we set up a theory and then we try to test it out and see the consequences. And they say, well, look, hasn't science been tremendously successful? Look at all the wonderful technology we have to show science works. So this is what we should be doing in economics. So the Austrian response to this is that economics isn't like the physical sciences. We're not limited to observations of external objects because we say, if, say, I'm looking, imagine a stone being thrown across the room, hopefully, one hopes not directed at me. It wouldn't make sense, or maybe it wouldn't make sense, but it would probably not be a good idea to think, well, what did the stone have in mind while it's proceeding toward its target? All we would be able to do is look at the stone's movements and try to formulate some hypothesis about this. But action isn't like that. We know action from the inside, as it were. You know you have certain choices and goals in mind. You have preferences, and this results in your action. You know this just because we do act. We do this all the time. So now supposing the supporters of the physical science models say that their method is the only way to gain knowledge about the world, they say, well, these Praxeologists have all this nonsense about a priori method. Paul Samuelson, who was one of the great 20th century economists and very strong positivist, although he was a positivist in a somewhat older, different sense from that of the logical positive. He said about the deductive Mises. He said something like, when I read Mises, I tremble from my science. This is obviously absurd. So supposing that the supporters of the physical science model say their method is the only way to gain knowledge about the world, this leads them into trouble. How is that? Well, that claim, the claim that their method is the only one that works, is a philosophical claim. It's a claim about this is the only way of attaining knowledge. But it itself isn't the result of modeling and testing. That isn't just a philosophical claim about the world. So the question would come up, how is it that we can know this claim about the world if the claim is true? The claim says that the only way you can have knowledge about the world is by coming up with a formal model and then testing it. But that statement isn't part of a formal model. It isn't one that has been tested. So it would seem like people who say that are in trouble. Now, we now come to the key question is, how do we know the principles of praxeology are true? This question has led to much confusion. But I think the answer is simple is that the action axiom is obviously true. It doesn't require support from anything else. It's just obvious or evident to us that we act. We do this all the time. We're always doing something or other. How could this be questioned? How could one say, oh, well, there really aren't any actions and just seems evident or obvious that they are? There are many other examples of obviously true statements. For example, I have a body or other people exist or the earth is larger than I am. And there was a great British philosopher early 20th century philosopher, G. Moore, who wrote about this sort of obvious true. And we could call these Murray and facts after this philosopher. One story about him, he gave a famous talk on a proof of the external world where he said something like, well, I'm holding up one hand and holding up another hand. So there are at least two objects. There are two things that exist. It's obvious that there is an external world. So what he was saying is there are some truths that aren't open to doubt. They're just obvious. They're not deniable. If someone says, oh, well, science has proved that there are no such thing as physical objects, that really wouldn't make sense. We could show by science that physical objects don't have the inner structures that you might think they do. But that wouldn't be showing there aren't any physical objects. That would seem to be a very odd claim to make. So these obvious truths, I would say, are known to be true. And they won't be overthrown by future observation. For example, supposing I say, I exist, meaning I exist at this time, no future observation will show that it's false. If we take this as meaning I exist at this particular time, I mean, of course, unfortunately for me, it will be the case that the statement I exist will one day be false. I hope not for a while. I mean, I give myself at least another three or four weeks. I'm an optimist about these things. I wouldn't say as you get older, you tend to think about this. I wouldn't say just to give you some indication of how old I am, probably some of you have seen the I Love Lucy program on television. I remember when this wasn't a rerun where people were talking about it when it was just getting started. In any event, so if I say I exist now, no future observation will show, oh, this was a mistake. He really didn't exist given it's not subject to overthrow. And this is one way of defining an a priori truth. It's perhaps not one that you might have encountered before. One way defining a priori truth is one that's not subject to further testing. Once you have it, that's it. There's nothing more. Now, some philosophers, the great W. V. L. Quine, the great Harvard philosopher, said there aren't any a priori truths, but it's not clear why should we think that, why should we think we don't know anything that's immune from further testing. It just seems there are such truth. Now, how do we discover these obvious truths that are immune to overthrow by future observations? Supposing in some cases we can do acting this way. Suppose I say I don't exist. I can say this only if I do exist. So the fact that I've made the statement that I don't exist shows that my statement is false. This type of statement is called a performative contradiction that the attempt to deny the statement shows that the statement is true. For example, another example, suppose I said in English, I have never in my life spoken an English sentence. Well, that statement is an English sentence. So my saying that shows a statement is false. Now, should be kept in mind, this is not true of all a priori truths in the sense of ones that are known to be true just by thinking about them. But it would seem to be an a priori truth that 2 plus 2 equals 4. If I don't know that well, then I'm really in pretty big trouble. But suppose I say 2 plus 2 equals 5, my making this statement doesn't show that 2 plus 2 equals 4. Just saying 2 plus 2 equals 5 isn't a performative contradiction. Now, when I make this point, somebody invariably will say, oh, but aren't all the important truths ones that you know to be true just by performative contradiction? But I would suggest if someone says that, it is enough to say, well, so and so says this, so that's what it is. You have to test them out. Now, what I would say is that true of important a priori truths, I think you'll find it isn't. But unless, of course, you define a priori truth, important a priori truth is just ones for which that method worked. But that wouldn't get you very far. Now, isn't the claim that there are these obvious truths vulnerable to objection? How many of you have taken a philosophy course where you do metaphysics or theory of knowledge, epistemology? Oh, good, good. So you probably in these classes come up with examples like this. What if I'm really a brain and a vat, but I'm manipulated by scientists to think I have a body? Wouldn't I have exactly the same experiences I do now? So how could the claim say that I have a body be immune to being overthrown by further observation given that I'd be having exactly the same experiences if I didn't have a body as if I did? So now, here again, I think is a key point that praxeology is not an attempt to answer the problem of external world skepticism. It's not, although Mises and Rothbard were both very interested in philosophy and knew a lot about it, they aren't trying to answer this philosophical question, how do we know there's an external world? In this respect, praxeology is like the other sciences science takes for granted that the world exists. For example, in economics, suppose we had someone saying what is the cause of the recession of 2008, it would be a very odd response if somebody said, oh, well, we can't talk about that, we haven't even shown there's an external world yet, how could we start talking about the cause of the depression? This isn't, we're taking in the sciences, we're taking existence of the world as obvious. And it's not, again, it's not an attempt to solve the problem of other minds. It's not about what goes on in my mind or with my actions, it's about the concept of action. Somebody, again, I know this from many years of experience, somebody will usually come up and say, oh, well, even if I know that I act, how do I know this applies to anybody else? Well, again, you're not just talking about your own actions, you're talking about what is true of action. As such, now, the point I've made is in conflict with Carl Popper's famous falsifiability criteria and for scientific statements, because according to Popper, every scientific statement must be capable of being shown false by future observation. So if there are these a priori truths that can't be shown false by future observation, then they wouldn't be scientific according to Popper. Well, I'm about running out of time, so I'll just truncate my remarks and say, by saying the problem with what Popper is saying and Mises pointed this out is that Popper is just restricted science arbitrarily saying, well, there aren't a priori statements, ones we just know to be true and aren't subject to overthrow by observation, because he's given this, he says, this is what a scientific statement is. But Mises says, well, if you're going to talk about science, you need to talk about what the sciences actually are and then you'll find if you do that, there is praxeology, there is economics, where there are such statements that are known to be true. And I'll just close by a story about Mises and Popper. Popper had great respect for Mises. If you look at, there's a volume of Popper's correspondence where he shows by what he says, he thought very highly of Mises, he respected him as an outstanding thinker, but it's clear that Mises didn't trust Popper at all and I think we can see, at least methodologically, he had very good reasons not to do so. Okay, so thanks very much.