THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE AUSTRIAN METHOD Science is useful in tw

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE AUSTRIAN METHOD

Science is useful in two dimensions: X) It allows us to sense what we cannot sense – by making the unobservable, observable by reducing those phenomenon to some form of analogy to experience. And Y) It helps us compensate for the unfortunate strength of our cognitive biases.

The Austrian method asks us to use one of the methods of science, by describing any human behavior in OPERATIONAL LANGUAGE (in terms of human actions) and to SYMPATHIZE with each of those steps, and when in sympathy, to TEST whether each step meets the test of rational incentives. If it doesn’t there are two possible answers: the first being that ‘humans won’t do that, so that can’t be true’, and the second being ‘humans might do that but this will be the external consequence of it’.

I don’t think there is any mystery to the Austrian method: it is another scientific process that allows us to test by sympathetic experiences, whether any give statement can be constructed as steps of human action, and where each step is subject to the scrutiny and test of rational incentives.

Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.

I apologize to other Austrians for using somewhat different language, but there is a method to my madness: in trying to articulate what it is that we are doing in this particular way I hope to correct praxeology as Mises stated it and Rothbard, well, ruined it – if not in theory but in practice, as those ideas have spread with common use.

Most of us in our field tend to contrast empirical evidence with tests of Austrian rationality. I think this is what separates us from other fields. We do not make deductions without bounding them by the theory of rational incentives. We are skeptical of everything. In particular, we have internalized as a scientific principle, the concept that hubris and cognitive bias are ever present challenges to our interpretations.