How to avoid errors in building a theory about reality - The case for praxeology

2022-07-21
Tuukka Pensala


THE PROBLEM IN THEORIZING

When one starts to formulate a theory about reality he may very well make incorrect assumptions without noticing them. Such mistakes in the very foundation of a theory would render the theory incorrect regardless what is later built on top of those assumptions. Is there any way one could avoid the risk of starting his theory on the wrong foot, to avoid the initial idea of being incorrect, to place his theory on a perfectly firm intellectual ground?


THE SOLUTION

In undertaking the action of constructing a theory one already presupposes some facts about reality regardless of the contents of his theory. The builder of any theory is acting; he is behaving with intention. He understands to be choosing which ideas to consider and which ideas to discard. He understands being the builder of the theory, capable of performing additions, removals and exchanges to the content of the theory.

It is thus action of which existence one can add to his empty theory of reality and still be sure that he has not yet made a mistake in the construction of that theory. After all, the existence of action -- at least the action of theorizing -- is necessary for any theory about reality to come about by human reason. Claiming that one didn't act when building a theory or when presenting it would be an absurdity, and any argument against the existence of action would in itself be a demonstration of action.


THE POWER OF APRIORISM

Fair enough, let's start by saying that action, intentional behavior, exists; let's include the action axiom as a first thing to our theory-in-progress. So what? Did we accomplish anything tangible by choosing this starting point or are we just complicating our theory for no benefit?

Turns out that the action axiom is all but inconsequential. The study of its implications, praxeology, yields a rich set of categories that are logically implied in the category of action. Above we already casually stumbled upon one of them: Choice.

If action exists, then choice must also exist. One can know this by considering acting without a choice, and by then noticing that action without choice would lose the definitional intentionality of action. To be more clear, having only a single ability already implies the binary choice of using it or not using it, and having zero abilities prevents one from doing anything -- prevents action. So when one becomes an acting being by gaining his first ability, he gets a choice with it.

It's this kind of conceptual explication and elaboration that reveals the logical structure of action. It's like finding and understanding necessarily true relations between mathematical concepts -- one does not automatically understand all of mathematics, but when one becomes aware of a true theorem, he recognizes it as a fact that no empirical experiment can falsify and no interpretation can wish away. Such facts that only wait to be discovered and that can not be undone by any means are said to be a-priori true, in contrast to being only provisionally true like empirical claims, or only plausibly true like historicist claims. This kind of exploration of a-priori conceptual relations is something that everyone does all the time in some form, for example when figuring out which composition of known steps will lead to which outcome. [For more information on the three epistemological categories: Economic Science and the Austrian Method, Hans-Hermann Hoppe]

So, by adding the action axiom to our theory of reality we have now found out that our theory implies that also choice exists. And the theory is still on perfectly firm ground, because the extension was deductive! We have found that there's a-priori content implied in the action axiom that when discovered extends our theory by pure logical necessity.

The action axiom is a potential treasure trove of apodictic (necessarily true, incontrovertible) knowledge that no-one can undo. We can continue digging the trove before including any interpretations or empirical assertions to our theory of reality, which are dangerous because they risk our theory becoming incorrect. Furthermore, the charting of categories of action restricts what empirical claims or interpretations can later be added, so the a-priori investigation also makes the theory tangibly more complete. It has now become blatantly obvious that the best way to build a correct theory of reality is to first chart the categories of action, and only after that start committing to claims based on empirical studies or based on plausibility. Only a literal loser will reject apriorism as the starting point!


THE BASIC CATEGORIES OF ACTION

What treasure does the action axiom then yield? Much work has already been done by the Austrian School economists. Ludwig von Mises in his magnum opus Human Action correctly identified some of the implications in action, such as: means, ends, exchange, uncertainty, time, causality and value. They too are real in the sense that action is real.

After spending time thinking about the interrelations of these concepts one can gain the explicit understanding on top of his intuitive understanding about how and why many of the purported categories of action are indeed deductively and verifiably implied in the notion of action. The practice of praxeology is similar to mathematics, where sometimes significant human effort is required to bring about a valuable formal result that in hindsight is obvious.


WHERE'S THE IMPACT?

A question then rises: If praxeology is so useful for theorizing about reality, why has almost no-one heard about it, let alone used it in their theory of reality? Why do almost no one understand what I have explained above, which is blatantly obvious in hindsight? Mises published Human Action in 1949. The Mises Institute is now 40 years old. Where is the real-world impact of this purportedly revolutionary idea of praxeology?

We are coming to the main reason of why I have written this text. It's simply rude and embarrassing to present Human Action as the best introduction to praxeology that we have. It was a monumental intellectual leap, but it happened over 70 years ago. We should by now have resources that are more clear, more approachable, more searchable, easier to understand, go deeper in the categories of action and correct the mistakes that have been made.

We could have systematic catalogues for the categories of action presenting for each category several deductions of why and how that is implied in action, sharpening the fuzzy outlines of words to match with the categories, and also identifying which empirical postulates with the action axiom imply what results, such as the laws of economics. We could have texts written in such a clear and concise language that even a child could understand the basic necessary truths about reality. We could have diagrams, presentations, animations and interactive media to accommodate the different predispositions of different people and make it easier for everyone to climb the hill of praxeology and then to notice that which is in hindsight obvious and incontrovertible. In addition to all of that, I claim that praxeology implies significant restrictions to ethics and philosophy, cleverly and cleanly solving or circumventing some of the perennial intellectual problems, as I have briefly explained in my other writings. It is ridiculous how much room there still is to improve the presentation of what already has been discovered by the intellectual giants and how much potential there still is to find new significant implications of the action axiom.

But as far as I know, we don't have the aforementioned impactful resources, and that is a sad and shameful state of affairs. It would take only one person who understands praxeology to make the next giant leap and possibly change the course of history. The fact that it hasn't happened speaks to the incompetence and low standards of present-day austro-libertarians, who apparently think that praxeology is somehow already "solved", meaning that no further effort is worth it in explaining the basics or in developing the explicit understanding of action further. Even if austro-libertarians already hold the brightest ideas in the history of mankind, that is demonstrably not enough to create significant real-world impact, and thus one must simply raise the bar even higher.

So, to explain praxeology to someone, instead of rudely presenting the brick of Human Action and embarrassingly cautioning "but keep in mind that A is unclear and actually means B, and that C is incorrect and the correct claim is actually D because of E", I will present this text.