Vom Funkturm / From the Radio Tower

I just handed in a paper for a class on philosophy of action that I attended last semester. The class was given by Anton Leist, who recently edited Action in Context.

In my paper I demonstrate how praxeology, as defined and explored by Mises and Rothbard in Nationalökonomie, Human Action and Man, Economy, and State, bears many similarities to analytic philosopher Donald Davidson’s views on action, which he discussed in his paradicmatic paper “Actions, Reasons, and Causes” and subsequent papers.

A close reading of Mises and Rothbard, and particularly of Human Action, suggests that both praxeology and Davidson’s philosophy of action share the view that all actions are caused by teleological reasons and that those reasons are constituted by certain beliefs and desires concerning the action in question. This belief/desire model is widely discussed by contemporary writers on philosophy of action and is accepted by many, among others by Michael Smith in “The Possibility of Philosophy of Action“.

Hermeneutician (at least that’s what my professor called him) Frederick Stoutland criticized this approach in his German-language paper “Reaktives Handeln und das Überzeugung/Wunsch-Modell“. When translated into English, this title would read “Reactive Action and the Belief/Desire Model”. Stoutland rejects both assumptions set forth by the belief/desire model.

First of all, says Stoutland, not all actions are caused by teleological reasons. There can also be, for example, reactive actions which we carry out simply because we have been trained to do so. Most of the time, when we see a stop sign we stop our cars not because we feel the desire to follow traffic rules and because we have the belief that by stopping our cars we can do so, but because we’ve been trained to do so. Stoutland argues such reactive actions could only be understood and described by a Wittgensteinian rule-following model.

Secondly, according to Stoutland, it isn’t even true that teleological actions are constituted by beliefs and desires. Beliefs and desires are merely necessary conditions for a certain action to take place under certain conditions. This second point of critique would require some further explanation which can’t be given here.

In any case, in my paper I come to the conclusion that Stoutland’s criticism of the belief/desire model also applies to Misesian and Rothbardian praxeology. Unfortunately, the prescribed maximum lenght of 12 pages didn’t allow me to analyze what this means for praxeology. Because I’m contemplating expanding my paper (and maybe trying to get it published somewhere) I will quickly outline the conclusions I’ve reached on this so far.

I think Stoutland’s second point of criticism doesn’t harm praxeology that much. The conclusions Mises and Rothbard draw from their views on action concerning the subjectivity of value still hold true even if it should turn out that beliefs and desires don’t constitute teleological reasons but are merely necessary conditions for purposeful action (a concept which in Stoutland’s eyes and contra Mises and Rothbard wouldn’t necessarily be pleonastic). I’m also convinced by Roderick Long’s paper “Anti-Psychologism in Economics: Wittgenstein and Mises” that the praxeological conclusions reached about purposeful action are of a universal, a priori nature.

However, I think the consequences for the praxeological project would be devastating if Stoutland were correct in asserting the existence of reactive actions (among other, non-purposeful, actions). Mises and Rothbard, who claim that there are only two categories of behavior, (purposeful) action and involuntary reflexes, would be impelled to assert that a car driver’s stopping her car means that she places more value on stopping her car than on not stopping it. This might be true, but if her stopping the car is a reactive action, there is, according to Mises’s and Rothbard’s considerations on value, no way for us to know. Thus, think of the almost infinite amount of actions that we carry out each day which seem to be of a similar reactive character as stopping one’s car at the sight of a stop sign. While reflexes and similar non-purposeful behavior can in all likelihood be neglected, I think a comprehensive economic analysis would need to take these reactive actions into account. However, this would also imply that apodictic economic analysis is impossible since a Wittgensteinian analysis of specific reactive actions would require an analysis of the specific social context in which these actions takes place.

Anyway, my question to anyone who might read these scattered thoughts is, are there any critiques of praxeology which take a similar line to the one I outlined above? It seems to me that the popular Objectivist and hermeneutical critiques of praxeology mainly focus on the supposedly Kantian/neo-Aristotelian form of praxeology and not its content. (However, I must admit that I’m not at all well-read in the hermeneutical tradition within the Austrian School.) Or more broadly asked, is there any literature on praxeology which takes into consideration the contemporary debates within the “mainstream” of philosophy of action? The only thing that comes close to what I’m looking for is this lecture given by Roderick Long on G. E. M. Anscombe.

Update (February 5, 2008, 8:47 pm): There’s further discussion on this subject at The Austrian Network.