 It's my pleasure this morning to introduce a Douglas Rasmussen for our FA Hayek Memorial Lecture. And this lecture is sponsored by Greg and Joy Moran, who are here with us this morning, so thank you very much for your kind sponsorship. Doug Rasmussen was a professor of philosophy at St. John's University in New York City for almost 30 years, and he now holds emeritus status at St. John's. He's a senior affiliated scholar with the Institute for Economic Inquiry at Creighton University, and a senior scholar for the Institute of Economic Studies in Europe. He's an extremely well-known philosopher in the Thomist tradition. He's authored a number of books, mostly with his longtime colleague Doug Denial. So Doug and Doug, this will be part of the Doug and Doug show. Those books include Liberty in Nature, An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order, Norms of Liberty, A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics, The Perfectionist Turn, and The Realist Turn. He's also co-edited with Tibor McCann, an important book on libertarian theory called Liberty for the 21st Century Contemporary Libertarian Thought. He's authored over 100 articles in anthologies and in journals such as The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, The American Philosophical Quarterly, International Philosophical Quarterly, The Journal of Social Philosophy, The New Scholasticism, The Personalist Public Affairs Quarterly, and many, many other publications. He has served on the Steering Committee for the Ein Rand Society and is a member of the Executive Council for the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He's a co-editor with Doug Denial of The Philosophic Thought of Ein Rand, a very important book published in 1984 that was designed to introduce Ein Rand's thought to professional academic philosophers. His research areas, his areas of interest include epistemology, ontology, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as the moral foundations of capitalism. A very important topic for us here. He's currently contributing an essay to a Fechschrift that he is editing, and he's assisting in developing a center for natural law and natural rights at the University of Bucharest in Romania. He's a contributor to law and liberty and a member of the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He also knew Murray Rothbard quite well, and like others, I'm sure has interesting stories to tell about those, about his interactions with Murray. So Doug, thank you very much for coming to Auburn, and we look forward to your remarks. Thank you so much. I'm both pleased and honored to be here. I have admired the work done by the Mises Institute for many years. As you can see, my topic is Rothbard's account of the axiom of human action, a neo-Aristotelian defense. This is a topic I have been thinking about for some time. The screen display will provide an outline of my talk, which also includes some important quotations. As F.A. Hayek noted, nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist. And I'm even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance, if not a positive danger. Murray Rothbard understood this truth, and he followed its admonition. He examined questions that pertain to the ultimate ground for economic thinking, and was not afraid to note their philosophical dimensions. Murray was fearless. In this regard, Rothbard has famously stated, whether we consider the action axiom a priori or empirical depends on our ultimate philosophical position. My own epistemological position rests on Aristotle and St. Thomas rather than Kant. And hence, I would interpret the proposition differently. I would consider the axiom a law of reality rather than a law of thought and hence empirical rather than a priori. I seek in this lecture to provide a framework for a research agenda for a neo-aristitian to mystic explanation and defense of the axiom of human action. Oh, by the way, the terms action axiom and axiom of human action will be used interchangeably in this presentation. The action axiom holds that human action is purposeful behavior. Why is a neo-aristitian to mystic explanation and defense of the axiom of human action necessary? Why does it matter? There are at least two reasons. First, it can be seen as a response to the challenge to economic reasoning presented by Amartya Sen in his seminal essay, Rational Fools. This challenge involves an economic point and an ethical point. Second, defending Rothbard's account of the axiom of human action was something that Rothbard told me he wanted to see developed. I can, if asked, discuss Rothbard's request after this presentation. But for now, I will concentrate on Sen's challenge, at least part of it. Amartya Sen argues in Rational Fools that one cannot base an account of human action on the assumption that all human action is self-interested and that appealing to revealed preferences is tautological and of little or no use for understanding human action. So limiting one's understanding of human action to consistency in choice behavior is insufficient to explain human action or ground economic theorizing. This is the economic method point. The ethical point is that such a so-called purely economic view of human action makes a human being a bit of a fool and close indeed to a social moron. There is more to human life than utility maximization. Rothbard's response would be, it is not necessary to assume that all human conduct is self-interested. Further, he would endorse Sen's observation, quote, if you are consistent then, no matter whether you are a single-minded egoist or a raving altruist or a class conscious militant, you will appear to be maximizing your own utility in this enchanted world of definitions, unquote. To say the least, nominal definitions will not work. They simply avoid or evade the problem. Rather, what is necessary to ground economic explanations is the recognition of the purposeful character of human action. The purposeful character of human action results from the very nature of human beings. This approach does not consider what might be the motives for taking an action or whether the end of an action is choice worthy. Rather, it simply focuses on the formal relations between ends and means. The notion of Homo agents as developed in Austrian economics should replace Homo economicus as the foundation for economic theorizing. Rothbard's response to Sen's ethical point would be as follows. Rothbard would indeed agree with Sen that limiting one's understanding of human action to consistency and choice behavior makes a human being a bit of a fool and a social moron. Rothbard's understanding of the action axiom does not entail non-cognitivism in ethics or political philosophy. Not to consider whether one's ends are choice worthy is not equivalent to claiming that there is no basis for determining whether one's ends are choice worthy. Further, since Rothbard was an advocate of natural moral law and natural rights, he would argue that Homo agents and Homo moralists are complementary, not antagonistic accounts of human nature. In this regard, it is worth noting that for Aquinas, the first principle of practical reasoning is good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided. This principle does not itself determine the basic goods and virtues of the self-perfecting life, but it does express the end-oriented character of human action. However, since Douglas Denial and I have developed a version of natural moral law and a basis for natural rights elsewhere, I leave a discussion of the complementarity of Rothbard's account of the axiom of human action with natural law and natural rights for another occasion. I will instead concentrate on what would be Rothbard's response to Sen's economic method point. For Rothbard, the claim that human action is purposeful, which he regards as the foundation for economic reasoning, is neither merely an empirical generalization, nor simply a tautology. So for Rothbard's view of the action axiom to work, it must be possible for a proposition, in this case the action axiom, to be both a necessary truth and about reality. The neo-Aristotelian to a mystic tradition is noteworthy in this regard because it upholds and defends the claim that there can be necessary truths that pertain to reality. That human action is purposeful, is for Rothbard an axiomatic, self-evident necessary truth. One, it is a self-evident primordial fact that individuals engage in conscious actions toward chosen goals. Two, the action axiom is defended, not proved, via negative demonstration, a dialectical argument in a manner similar to what Aristotle used in defending the principle of non-contradiction. It is used against any would-be denier of the action axiom. Three, this defense shows the self-refuting character of the attempt to deny the action axiom. However, what this argument does not show is, A, what grounds the necessary truth of the action axiom. That is, what makes it a necessary truth, and B, why this type of action is necessary to being human. In response, Rothbard states, All human beings act by virtue of their existence and their nature as human beings. We could not conceive of human beings who do not act purposefully, who have no ends in view that they desire and attempt to attain. Things that did not act, that did not behave purposefully, would no longer be classified as human. So, what is it that makes the action axiom a necessary truth and purposive behavior necessary to being human? Answer, the action axiom is a necessary truth because acting purposively is an essential expression of human nature. Purposeful action is necessary to being human, but now we need to consider more deeply what is involved in this answer. Rothbard is an empiricist about the source of knowledge. Yet a rationalist about the justification for knowledge in some cases. He does not think that consulting sense experience precludes grasping what is necessary and universal. Accordingly, he is a direct perceptual realist who holds that what is presented in sense perception is not necessarily recognized by sense perception. And it is thus possible for our senses to carry a message that they themselves cannot interpret. This requires the human intellect to uncover what sense perception presents. So that there is no bifurcation of human knowledge into two kinds, empirical sensory and rational conceptual. Rather, human cognition is empirical and rational, sensory and conceptual. As Rothbard states, I would deny as an Aristotelian and neo-Thomist any such alleged laws of logical structure that the human mind necessarily imposes on the chaotic structure of reality. Instead, I would call all such laws laws of reality, which the mind apprehends from investigating and collating the facts of the real world. My view is that the fundamental axiom and subsidiary axioms are derived from the experience of reality and are therefore in the broadest sense empirical. I would agree with the Aristotelian realist that its doctrine is radically empirical, far more so than the post-humian empiricism which is dominant in modern philosophy. Rothbard's account of the action axiom is dependent not only on a view of sense perception, but also on a view of conception and thus abstraction developed by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. However, there are objections to this view of conception. Locke says abstractions provide only a partial conception of the nature of something. Barkley denies that we can have abstract ideas. Kant says they cannot be based on sense perception, but only imposed by the human mind. Geach and Sellers have in the 20th century made similar charges against abstraction. So, how does Rothbard's Aristotelian-Thomistic view fare against the charge that abstraction falsifies or provides only a partial conception of the nature of things? The classic reply to this charge is that abstraction does not require either falsification or subtraction. It holds that even though our thought must answer to reality if we are to find truth, there is nonetheless a difference between thinking something is thus and so and it's being thus and so. Our knowledge must be of reality, but that does not mean that our knowledge is reality. Yet, if the way that things exist in thought is different from the way that things exist apart from their being thought about, then how can we ever avoid falsehood? The answer, of course, depends on the manner in which thought is different from the things that are thought about. But how are we to understand this? Anthony Kinney notes, to think a thing to be otherwise than it is is certainly to think falsely. But if all that is meant by thinking a thing other than it is is that the way it is with our thinking is different from the way it is with the thing that we are thinking about in its own existence, then there need be no falsehood involved. To think that Henry VIII had no weight is to think a false thought. But there is no falsehood in thinking of Henry VIII without thinking of his weight. Henry VIII could never exist without having some weight or other. But a thought of Henry VIII can certainly exist without any thought at all about his weight. Moreover, there is, then, one, a type of thinking that involves considering the form or character of something in an indeterminate manner so that its individual differences are not specified but are nonetheless regarded as requiring specific determination. For example, the concept human being. And this type of thinking can be contrasted with, too, a type of thinking that separates or excludes specific determinations from the form or character of something. For example, the concept humanity. The first type of thinking is, this comes from our medieval sources, abstraction without precision. And the second is abstraction with precision. In the case of precision, the form or character is considered as not related to its specific determination. For example, humanity. And for abstraction without precision, the form or character is not considered as related to its specific determination. For example, human being. As Aquinas notes, it is clear then that the essence of man is signified by two terms, man and humanity, but in different ways. The term man expresses it as a whole because it does not presend from the designation of matter but contains it implicitly and indistinctly. This is why the term man can be predicated of individuals. But the term humanity signifies the essence as a part because it includes only what belongs to man as man, presending from all designation of matter. As a result, it cannot be predicated of individual man. Thus, we can abstractly consider the form or character that is the attributes of individual human beings. Say Barack Obama, Donald Trump and George Bush without precision. When we do so, we are considering their form or character indeterminately as a conceptual unit or universal. But we know nonetheless that their form or character must have some determination to abstract in this sense then is not to subtract. That is, it is not to reduce one's awareness to part of a being but to grasp it as a whole. We can say of each of these individuals, they are human beings. But we cannot say of each that they are humanity. To abstract without precision then is neither to falsify nor to lessen our apprehension of what is encountered through sense perception. For as said, the form or character, when so considered, is not excluded or cut off from its individual differences, which are treated as implicit. Indeed, this manner of abstraction enhances our apprehension and allows us to discover what human beings essentially are. Rothbard's view of the action axiom depends on abstraction without precision. It does not positively exclude individual differences of individual human beings, but instead treats these differences as implicit. These differences only become explicit when each instance of what is signified by the concept human being is considered. For example, Obama, Trump or Bush. What is common to these individuals must be expressed determinately in their concrete forms or characters of these individuals. We thus can say what is common to human beings and thus speak of human nature without either turning human nature into a universal part of individual human beings or treating abstraction as a process of subtraction. It is from our conceptual grasp of human nature that the axiom of human action is justified. One does not need to consult future experience to justify this claim because one is speaking of a certain kind of being and how it acts. One is not making an inference from some to all, but moving from a conceptual awareness of the nature of one thing to other instances of that same nature. Whatever pertains to a human being according to his or her nature will also be true of every individual with that same nature. There is then no principal difficulty in the action axiom being empirically known and being necessarily true. Because the process of abstraction without precision allows the natures of the things to determine what a concept signifies. What a concept signifies involves both an intention which is not limited to what is only explicitly considered or what is stated in a definition and an extension that applies to all individuals that are instances of a certain kind, be they past, present, or future. The basic principle here is that all natures are individualized and all individuals are natured. This approach rejects the view that the axiom of human action and the principles that result from it are merely empirical generalizations. This approach offers a basic alternative to contemporary accounts of this axiom. It provides the basis for applying economic principles to human actions we observe so as to understand what is happening and why. Or to put it in a slightly different manner, and as will be noted towards the end of these remarks, this approach provides a way for the economist not to get lost in the so-called empirical data. Rothbard holds that the axiom of human action is not only empirical and a priori, but also a self-evident necessary truth. What is crucial to Graspier is that the self-contradictory character of denying that human action is purposeful is based not on an appeal to what one can or cannot imagine or conceive, all of some criterion in one's mind, but instead on what is known about human beings and their conduct. One does not know what is true, or even necessarily true, or possible, or impossible via some process of inspectiomentus, but rather by the apprehension of a reality that exists and is what it is apart from our cognition. Most importantly in this regard, Rothbard's account of the axiom of human action depends on the Aristotelian-Thomistic rejection of the central epistemological assumption of so much modern empiricist and rationalist thought, namely rejecting that percepts and concepts are the immediate and direct objects of cognition, and holding instead that they are only that by which we know. Rothbard's account of the axiom is based on the insight that the basic tools of human cognition, from percepts to concepts to propositions to arguments to theories, have an inherently relational or intentional character. Their nature is not merely explained by reference to something else, their nature is a reference, a respect, an ordination to something else. Hence, the tools of human cognition cannot be known first and for themselves, without their first being at least a logically prior cognition of something other than themselves. It is thus not possible to hold that all awareness is at the very beginning and to the very end enclosed within itself, as if it were one's private picture show or language. The so-called way of ideas is a non-starter. Sometimes, it is argued that to claim that we can know necessary truths requires that we hold that human beings are infallible, but this is not the case. Three observations are important in this regard. First, being aware that you may be mistaken doesn't mean that you are aware that you are a fallible human being. It means that you have a concrete reason to suppose that you may be mistaken in this case. Second, fallibilism and necessity are perfectly compatible. Fallibilism is a thesis about our liability to err, not a thesis about the modal status possible falsity of what we believe. Third, it is indeed odd to what extent it is generally supposed that any recognition of essences in things, coupled as it is with the logic of what statements and necessary truths about the world, must inevitably bring in its train and extreme dogmatism claiming an absolute certainty for its pronouncements on what is necessarily the case. However, neither essentialism in philosophy nor the what logic that is associated with it necessarily involves any such pretensions to infallibility and knowledge. So, one need not claim infallibility to hold an or to or to hold an extreme dogmatism in order to hold that the axiom of human action is a necessary truth. Also, there is no need to interpret fallibilism so strongly that it conflicts with holding that the axiom is a necessary truth. Rothbard claims that the axiom of human action is grounded in human nature. How does this work? Let us begin by considering the real definition. The real definition of human being states in brief what is signified by the natural kind term human being. It notes the overall limits of human nature and it is like a title on a file folder that directs and sorts one's investigations, though it does not state all the characteristics of human nature. The real definition per genus set differentium of a human being is rational animal. This defines the nature of a human being. The genus of the real definition is animal and so everything that is true of being an animal is also true of a human being. So, a human being is also living, sentient, individual and intentative. Moreover, what is true of each of these considerations is true as well of a human being. For example, being intentative involves space and time. Differentium, rationality is determined not only by reference to what differentiates a human being from other animals, but by what does so most fundamentally. That is, it is the feature upon which the other necessary features are dependent. A human being is rational. This means human beings have a distinctive faculty of awareness. Humans have a conceptual capacity. Such a capacity fundamentally involves the power to grasp the world in conceptual terms. That is to say, the power to form classifications, develop theories, formulate hypotheses, come to judgments, derive conclusions, reflect on various subjects be they past, present or future, make evaluations, develop purposes and plan actions. This capacity is expressed in speculative reasoning, the pursuit of truth, and practical reasoning, the pursuit of human good. It is manifested in our language as well as in our development of culture and conventions, and indeed in those practices that constitute what could be called forms of life. Rationality understood broadly as a conceptual capacity is the fundamental modality by which human beings consider and take on the issues of human life. It is the fundamental operating feature of the human life form or nature. Let us now consider three statements by Rothbard that illustrate this view of human nature. Human beings possess a rational consciousness. Stones, molecules, planets cannot choose their courses. Their behavior is strictly and mechanically determined for them. Only human beings possess free will and consciousness, for they are conscious and they can and indeed must choose their course of action. To ignore this primordial fact about the nature of man, to ignore his volition, his free will is to misconstrue the facts of reality and therefore to be profoundly and radically unscientific. The fundamental axiom then for the study of man is the existence of individual consciousness. Not being omniscient, a man must learn. He must ever adopt ideas and act upon them, choosing ends and the means to attain these ends. The true science of man bases itself upon the existence of individual human beings, upon individual life and consciousness. The true science of man concentrates on the individual as of central, epistemological, and ethical importance. In these passages Rothbard is appealing to an array of facts that pertain to the natures of human beings. This knowledge is based on sense perception, but it is not the result of any special experience or experiment. Instead, it is based on general experience that nearly everyone possesses. Rothbard is also following Aquinas in linking free will and rational consciousness. For as Aquinas states, man is master of his actions through his reason and will, whence to the free will is defined as the faculty and will of reason. Self-direction and the exercise of reason are not separate acts of two isolated capacities, but distinct aspects of the same conscious act. Human reason is, in its very essence, a self-directed activity. Rothbard is thus endorsing the idea of agent causation. The character of the explanation and defense of the axiom of human action offered here is not merely a case of a rationalistic unpacking of the meaning of the concept human being, as if it were some private internal repository of knowledge or an isolated atom of meaning, nor is it trying to deduce the axiom of human action from the definition of a human being. Strictly speaking, concepts and indeed definitions do not have meanings. Rather, they are meanings. Their proper and ultimate nature consists in being of or about something other than themselves. So it is always to reality that we must look first in understanding what Rothbard is saying about the action axiom. Finally, and most importantly, Rothbard requires, excuse me, Rothbard's account requires recognizing that as living things, human beings are teleological beings that cannot be understood for what they are, apart from the fact that their human reason and volition, and thus human action, are end-oriented. Humans have no choice either about being end-oriented or about the need to choose ends, nor indeed do they have any choice about what their reason is to be employed to attain worthwhile lives. Humans must direct their reason to both understand the world and achieve various ends or goals they think worthy of pursuit. Fundamentally, humans have no choice about what they essentially are, and it is upon that fact that the axiom of human action rests, as Rothbard states, man's necessity to choose means that at any given time he is acting to bring about some end in the immediate or distant future. That is, that he has purposes. The steps he takes to achieve his ends are his means. Man is born with no innate knowledge of what ends to choose or how to use which means to achieve them. Having no inborn knowledge of how to survive and prosper, he must learn what ends and means to adopt. And he's liable to make errors along the way. But only his reasoning mind can show him his goals and how to attain them. This is what the action axiom involves, and it is the starting point for economic theory. The importance of the action axiom in providing the foundation for a theoretical approach to economics, particularly to price theory, was brought home in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Professor Alex Salter of Texas Tech University, who said, The a-theoretical approach of contemporary economists makes them particularly susceptible to the technocratic pretensions of the center left. If, contrary to the claims of price theory, there are no enduring laws of economics, then there is no reason to stop the technocrats from tinkering. Many of these economists don't realize that they are being politically compromised. They see it as just the facts, ma'am, pragmatism. In reality, it is ideology sneaking in through the back door. Regardless of how the justification of the rest of the propositions of praxeology and economic theorizing might be fair, regardless of how we go on and try to consider the application of economic principles to particular situations. Rothbard's account of the axiom of human action, when explained and defended in neo-aristitian-tomistic terms, provides a viable and powerful alternative to positivist, constructivist, and neo-pragmatist accounts. It allows for the possibility that there are economic laws, not merely empirical generalizations, and that these laws are necessary truths reflective of reality and are thus not merely tautologies or human constructs. It is an account that economic theory desperately needs. And as I think of it, it is an account that philosophy desperately needs. No, as I think of it, it is an account our culture desperately needs. And here are some references. Thanks so much.