THE CANONS OF THEORY (reposted for archival purposes) If you understand (a) the

THE CANONS OF THEORY

(reposted for archival purposes)

If you understand (a) the scientific method, and (b) Critical Rationalism AND (c) economic epistemology and (d) a bit of cognitive science we can extend the ‘science of theories” as placing the following constraints on us:

1) Explanatory Power (it survives as a general rule in a multitude of examples – theory means ‘general rule’) +

2) Testable : Verifiability + Falsifiability (we can think of multiple examples where we can verify it, and it further survives contradiction by a multitude of examples) +

3) Compactness (it is insulated from obscurantism and error) +

4) Parsimony (it is insulated from obscurantism an error by a minimum of dependencies) +

5) Empirical (observable, perceptible – even if only through instrumentation, such as tools or prices.) +

6) Constructable (can be stated as a sequence of observable human actions – ie: it’s possible or ‘real’) +

7) Rational (incentives – once reduced to statements of construction it each of which is open to sympathetic testing, we can directly perceive the rationality of any incentive.) This is the meaning of Praxeology that Mises mistook for the a-priori.

In the case of Human Action the Empirical (observable) requirement, places the constraint on any theory that at all states of a sequence of actions, the incentives of the actors are rational.

This definition of THEORY is the modification to the scientific method that I’ve added to Propertarianism.

Cheers