(INTRODUCTORY READING 6) RATIONALISTS JUST HAVE IT BACKWARDS – JUSTIFICATION RAT

(INTRODUCTORY READING 6)

RATIONALISTS JUST HAVE IT BACKWARDS – JUSTIFICATION RATHER THAN CRITICISM.

“The Silver Rule Wins over The Golden Rule Too – for the same reason.”

Macro economic phenomenon are emergent and non-deducible even if they are explainable. As such economics is no different from any other constructed upon laws : theories of arbitrary precision open to constant reformation. For economic theories to be testified as true, we must demonstrate that they are open to construction by sympathetic tests.

As such, just as the golden rule is backwards, and the silver rule is correct, Mises just has praxeology backwards, it’s that we can’t claim something is true unless we can explain it as rational actions, but that does not mean we cannot rely upon observations and instrumentation to help us observe and criticize emergent phenomenon. Empiricists claim that other than some intrinsic simple intuitions (grammar, intention, status signal, and empathy etc), all knowledge is gained from sense experience, and this includes all deductions (cognitive science agrees with this hypothesis). This is obvious to people educated after 1980, when cognitive science began to replace psychology, and accelerated after 2000, when pinker restated cognition.

Instrumentalists argue, correctly, that phenomenon must be reduced to stimuli open to human sense experience and comparison. This is also obvious.

But then how do we test our hypothesies? We cannot subjectively test physical phenomenon, nor can we reason with the first principles of the universe – we don’t know them.

So for physical phenomenon we must create experiments to test our hypothesis, where in human phenomenon the same test results are obtained by introspection: if subject to the same stimuli would a reasonable person come to the same conclusion? We could not judge intent or trust others if we did not have this ability so we are marginally indifferent in our ability to judge intentions if possessed of similar (symmetric) knowledge. (This is why informational symmetry is so important.)

So in matters of human action where we know the first principles, all phenomenon, whether deducible or emergent, must be explainable as a sequence of rational human actions each of which is subject to subjective testing by means of information and sympathy – or it cannot be true. Just as all measurements (observations) of physical tests must be possible to perform in order for the claims of the test to be true. (Bridgman). Just as all mathematical proofs must be open to construction via basic mathematical operations for them to be true. Just as any propertarian law must be constructed from productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers free of negative externality.

So all scientific disciplines are identical in dependence upon empirical (sense experience) instrumental (reduction to sense experience) operational (existentially possible) constraints.

THE COUNTER-PROPOSITION

No one disagrees that if economic phenomenon are not explainable in rational terms that the theory cannot be true.

The question of economic science is how we can take advantage of emergent phenomenon to bring forward productivity and consumption (wealth) as a means of improving the commons. This is the purpose of credit and interest. But this principle can be applied in hundreds of permutations throughout the economy.

The moral (German Austrian) implication, is that this study must eschew immoral manipulation (thefts) and work only to improve the institutional means of moral cooperation without the conduct of thefts.

The immoral (anglo empirical) implication is that this study should seek Pareto optimums (Rawlsian ethics) by reframing ‘harm’ by discounting loss of choice by some to redistribute choice to others.

I agree with the German thesis, and expressly disagree with the anglo universalist fallacy which has gotten us to this state entirely because anglos were able to seduce the germans into the world war.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev Ukraine