The Science of Human Action - Praxeology (The Logic of Human Action) - Die wirtschaftliche Energie (1893) (“Economic Energy”) - The Third Industrial Revolution has begun (6)

'Knowledge is a tool of acting.'

- Dr. Hans-Herman Hoppe, The Science of Human Action lecture, 2011 (minute 20:50)



Praxeology - '...causal-realist economics.'

- Joseph T. Salerno (Economics - '..acts of choice.' (‘..imagination of alternatives..’))



'Ludwig von Mises created a whole new discipline based on extensive methodological deliberations which he called “the science of human action,” or “praxeology.” He may have been inspired to a significant degree by a long since forgotten, over 1,000 page work, Die wirtschaftliche Energie (1893) (“Economic Energy”), written by Hungarian-born journalist and Menger student, Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy (1858–1922).

- The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions, Chapter 20, Praxeology.., page 137 (pdf)



'..all those ideologies that were to turn the twentieth century into a bloodbath were ultimately based on Hegel’s philosophy of history..'

'It was patently clear to Mises that all those ideologies that were to turn the twentieth century into a bloodbath were ultimately based on Hegel’s philosophy of history. The philosophical counter-strategy that Mises developed—intended to debunk the dominating philosophy—was extreme sobriety. He didn’t allow himself any excessive enthusiasm: praxeology “is unable to give any answer to the question of the ‘meaning of the whole.’. . .

..

If one wanted to explore and describe human action, one would have to recognize that every action is preceded by thinking, insofar as “[t]hinking is to deliberate beforehand over future action and to reflect afterward upon past action. thinking and acting are inseparable. Every action is always based on a definite idea about causal relations. . . . Action without thinking, practice without theory are unimaginable..'

- The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions, Chapter 20, Praxeology.., page(s) 141 and 142 (pdf)



'..making things happen that otherwise would not happen..'

'In view of the recognition of the praxeological character of knowledge, these insights regarding the nature of logic, arithmetic and geometry become integrated and embedded into a system of epistemological dualism. [63] The ultimate justification for this dualist position, i.e., the claim that there are two realms of intellectual inquiry that can be understood a priori as requiring categorically distinct methods of treatment and analysis, also lies in the praxeological nature of knowledge. It explains why we must differentiate between a realm of objects which is categorized causally and a realm that is categorized teleologically instead.

I have already briefly indicated during my discussion of praxeology that causality is a category of action. The idea of causality that there are constant, time-invariantly operating causes which allow one to project past observations regarding the relation of events into the future is something (as empiricism since Hume has noticed) which has no observational basis whatsoever. One cannot observe the connecting link between observations. Even if one could, such an observation would not prove it to be a time-invariant connection. Instead, the principle of causality must be understood as implied in our understanding of action as an interference with the observational world, made with the intent of diverting the "natural" course of events in order to produce a different, prefered state of affairs, i.e., of making things happen that otherwise would not happen, and thus presupposes the notion of events which are related to each other through time-invariantly operating causes. An actor might err with respect to his particular assumptions about which earlier interference produced which later result. But successful or not, any action, changed or unchanged in light of its previous success or failure, presupposes that there are constantly connected events as such, even if no particular cause for any particular event can ever be preknown to any actor. Without such an assumption it would be impossible to ever categorize two or more observational experiences as falsifying or confirming each other rather than interpreting them as logically incommensurable events. Only because the existence of time-invariantly operating causes as such is already assumed can one ever encounter particular instances of confirming or disconfirming observational evidence, or can there ever be an actor who can learn anything from past experience by classifying his actions as successful and confirming some previous knowledge, or unsuccessful and disconfirming it. It is simply by virtue of acting and distinguishing between successes and failures that the a priori validity of the principle of causality is established; even if one tried, one could not successfully refute its validity. [64]

In so understanding causality as a necessary presupposition of action, it is also immediately implied that its range of applicability must then be delineated a priori from that of the category of teleology. Indeed, both categories are strictly exclusive and complementary. Action presupposes a causally structured observational reality, but the reality of action which we can understand as requiring such structure, is not itself causally structured. Instead, it is a reality that must be categorized teleologically, as purpose-directed, meaningful behavior. In fact, one can neither deny nor undo the view that there are two categorically different realms of phenomena, since such attempts would have to presuppose causally related events qua actions that take place within observational reality, as well as the existence of intentionally rather than causally related phenomena in order to interpret such observational events as meaning to deny something. Neither a causal, nor a teleological monism could be justified without running into an open contradiction: physically stating either position, and claiming to say something meaningful in so doing, the case is in fact made for an indisputable complementarity of both, a realm of causal and teleological phenomena. [65]</a>'

- Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, On Praxeology and The Foundation of Epistemology III (Table of Contents)



Context "Economic Energy" - <a href="[bazaarmodel.net] epistemology</a>

'..And such then is the ultimate disagreement that Austrians have with their colleagues: Their pronouncements cannot be deduced from the axiom of action or even stand in clear-cut contradiction to propositions that can be deduced from the axiom of action.'

- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Praxeology and Economic Science

The Third Industrial Revolution has begun (5) - Praxeology (the logic of human action)

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