Current:

Is there a summary or an online version of the “Constitution of Liberty”? How is this much different from Rothbard’s ethics of liberty?

My main point above was that evolution is a science that looks at millions of small details, and is able to describe, to my satisfaction, how life has come to have everything from viruses, bacteria, mitochondria, sponges, and even humans.

However, evolution cannot explain why we are having a financial crisis today. That requires a much higher level of analysis. While the origin of man can be explained by a few low level rules, luck, and a few billions of years of natural selection, nothing quite so simple can explain the outcome of the actions of these humans.

Austrian Economics begins with the actions and desires of humans and develops a logical framework to explain free exchanges in the market place, and also how force affects the patterns of these exchanges.

Austrian economic knowledge grows using logic; evolution knowledge grows from physical evidence.

Mainstream economics tries to use the ideas of science, as evolution does, but has nowhere near the amount of reliable information to look at. Evolution has been cross checked in a myriad of ways and also uses experiments to reproduce events.

Economics has but a handful of historical events that it can call its evidence. While there have been a few experiments, such as socialism and the American constitutionalism, these hardly could be seen as controlled experiments. It would be like asking evolutionists to come up with a theory of life having only seen two or three fossils.

“Nope, the “wars” are very current and ongoing. Fact is, unless you’re willing to understand Mises’s claims within his Kantian framework (or Menger’s with regard to his Aristotelian framework), you’re not going to understand him at all, so strictly speaking this is not a job for laymen. This article is perhaps testament to that fact, as are many comments here.”

That’s baloney. I’ve read him and I understand him perfectly well. I can also map Austrian Economic theory onto other philosophical theories of knowledge. Logic works the same in these systems.

Problem is that some of these philosophical systems are just plain wrong. The logical positivists are wrong.

Mises had some pretty ridiculous things to say about other sciences. I don’t recall right now but they were pretty embarrassing. Which isn’t surprising. He’s around 50 years behind the times on the philosophy of science.

For example Mises might use a good dose of Daniel Dennett.

My understanding of the Austrian objection to empiricism is that it applies to the idea that the techniques of natural science should be applied to economics.

1) The natural sciences use experimental results to develop theory because they are examining a subject they know very little about. On the other hand, economics studies people, something we know a great deal about already. We are studying ourselves.

2) Natural sciences use lab experiments in order to control variables and insure that just the variables they are studying change. Economics cannot be conducted with controlled experiments. All of history is its data and historical data is so vast and complex that peddlers of snake oil can always find some evidence for their position if they are selective enough. That’s why Mises insisted that history cannot be understood unless approached with sound theory to create order from the chaos.

3) A single experiment in the natural sciences is sometimes enough to destroy established theory. That is reasonable because physics operates the same way all of the time. Gravity has always had the same properties as far as we know. It will operate the same way in different places at different times. So it is reasonable to extrapolate from individual experiments. The subject of economics, humans, acts differently at different times and places and under different institutions. So extrapolating from small pieces of evidence, the way many mainstream economists attempt, is impossible.

4) The natural sciences uses math extensively because the coefficients of variables, such as the speed of light, never change except under extreme conditions. Attempts at using math in economics has failed miserably. The multi-equation macro models of the 1960′s are a perfect example. They were a disaster and continue to be an embarrassment to the field.

On the other hand, Austrian economics is empirical in the broad sense because it is based on observation of how humans think and act, today as well as throughout history. That’s why Mises called his masterpiece “Human Action” and not economics. For example, the Austrian Business Cycle theory came about because so many economists since Cantillon had observed that expansion of credit and money causes an increase in capital goods production more than in consumer goods production. Also, the capital goods industries have always been hurt the worst in depressions. The ABCT is an attempt to explain those phenomena which have been observed by many people over centuries.

A single episode, or several episodes in historical data are not sufficient to overthrow theory in economics. Austrians might argue that the data was misinterpreted. But if a theory in Austrian econ failed to find any data to support it at all, very few Austrian economists would stick to the theory in the way that Keynesian economists have clung to theirs in spite of decades of data that refute it.

Jörg Guido Hülsmann wrote in his “Mises: the Last Knight of Liberalism” about Menger that “His purpose was to demonstrate that the properties and laws of economic phenomena result from these empirically ascertainable “elements of the human economy” such as individual human needs, individual human knowledge, ownership and acquisition of individual quantities of goods, time, and individual error.[11] Menger’s great achievement in Principles consisted in identifying these elements for analysis and explaining how they cause more-complex market phenomena such as prices. He called this the “empirical method,” emphasizing that it was the same method that worked so well in the natural sciences.”

Nevertheless, mainstream Keynesian economics is not so disastrougly wrong as it is because it borrows techniques from the natural sciences. It’s wrong because its assumptions and reasoning are faulty. It’s not empirical enough. If it were more empirical, it would have such absurd assumptions.

I think it’s a shame that Austrians aren’t more inclined to use econometrics because with sound theory, the resulting models could be very powerful. A few Austrians have done limited work with econometrics and the results are very impressive. Just search on this site for empirical evidence.

Mises wrote all of this and more in the first chapters of “Human Action” and did a much better job. Hayek also writes about it in many of his books.

What we don’t agree with is that mutations can create the new information necessary to change one type of animal into another, such as a chimp into a human

But nobody believes chimps turn into humans.

If you can pick your nose for one second, you can pick your nose for ten seconds.

[My point, Jaycephus, is that that is actually a very good list of reasons people believe in creationism]

“That’s baloney. I’ve read him and I understand him perfectly well. I can also map Austrian Economic theory onto other philosophical theories of knowledge. Logic works the same in these systems.”

If you say so…

“Problem is that some of these philosophical systems are just plain wrong. The logical positivists are wrong.”

Indeed…

“Mises had some pretty ridiculous things to say about other sciences. I don’t recall right now but they were pretty embarrassing. Which isn’t surprising. He’s around 50 years behind the times on the philosophy of science. ”

Like?

@Inquisitor and Fundamentalist
Taking Fundamentalists last post i dont see any difference in our position, the only difference is in our understanding of what empiricism is.
“On the other hand, Austrian economics is empirical in the broad sense because it is based on observation of how humans think and act, today as well as throughout history.”
That is empiriricism, you look at something in the world(preferably controlled experiments with lots of data) and get from this to explanations about what is going on.
But the important point for actually doing science is, that the explanation predicts something about the world, that can be checked against events in the world in some way, it might be even in a very remote way.
Austrians fulfill that condition as well, e.g. Mises claimed long before the fall of socialism, that it would fail. If it had not failed and instead prospered and drawn millions of immigrants to workers paradise Mises would have been refuted and one could have been certain, that were some error in his thinking or in the axioms.
Theology has no problem with these conditions, because its not supposed to explain anything in the material world. They have their axioms somehow written in the bible and conclude things from that.

The reason why this “predicting something” is so important are invisible pink unicorns, sugar pills, healing stones, spoon bending and faith healers.
All this stuff rest on some strange axioms added a little faulty thinking and then people go aroung claiming, that they do something special and earning money with this. If they ideas are correct, there is no problem with this, but if they are wrong they are fooling themselves and others to waste resources on things which are untrue, which in case of faith healers and sugar pills might actually be life threatening.

The only solution is to require them to name conditions under which something in the world behaves differently as is expected from so far established knowledge. Thats the only way to nail them down, because even if you find a fault in their arguments, they can counter this by modifying their axioms.

And this requirement needs to be applied to all sciences or ideologies or other ideas that claim to have found some kind of truth about the material world.

Austrians fulfill this requirement, they do predict something about this world(nearly every second day some comment on mises.org claims, that Obama will make the recession more serious by his actions) and if one day conditions would fit their requirements, but the results would be different, everybody would know, that their is an error(e.g. if central banks meddling with money would stop, but the boom-bust cycle would continue in the same way as before, we would know that austrians are wrong to attribute boom bust nearly soley to money meddling.)

@fundamentalist
About evolution, we know for certain, that 5 billion years ago there were only single cell organisms on earth. Now we are here. Something must have happened since the last 5 billion years to cause that change.
Possible culprits, who have not been proven innocent , so far:
-micro evolution
-god
-spaghetti monster
-shiva
-zeus
-allah

What is wrong to assume, that it was micro evolution?

@Inquisitor and Fundamentalist
Taking Fundamentalists last post i dont see any difference in our position, the only difference is in our understanding of what empiricism is.
“On the other hand, Austrian economics is empirical in the broad sense because it is based on observation of how humans think and act, today as well as throughout history.”
That is empiriricism, you look at something in the world(preferably controlled experiments with lots of data) and get from this to explanations about what is going on.
But the important point for actually doing science is, that the explanation predicts something about the world, that can be checked against events in the world in some way, it might be even in a very remote way.
Austrians fulfill that condition as well, e.g. Mises claimed long before the fall of socialism, that it would fail. If it had not failed and instead prospered and drawn millions of immigrants to workers paradise Mises would have been refuted and one could have been certain, that were some error in his thinking or in the axioms.
Theology has no problem with these conditions, because its not supposed to explain anything in the material world. They have their axioms somehow written in the bible and conclude things from that.

The reason why this “predicting something” is so important are invisible pink unicorns, sugar pills, healing stones, spoon bending and faith healers.
All this stuff rest on some strange axioms added a little faulty thinking and then people go aroung claiming, that they do something special and earning money with this. If they ideas are correct, there is no problem with this, but if they are wrong they are fooling themselves and others to waste resources on things which are untrue, which in case of faith healers and sugar pills might actually be life threatening.

The only solution is to require them to name conditions under which something in the world behaves differently as is expected from so far established knowledge. Thats the only way to nail them down, because even if you find a fault in their arguments, they can counter this by modifying their axioms.

And this requirement needs to be applied to all sciences or ideologies or other ideas that claim to have found some kind of truth about the material world.

Austrians fulfill this requirement, they do predict something about this world(nearly every second day some comment on mises.org claims, that Obama will make the recession more serious by his actions) and if one day conditions would fit their requirements, but the results would be different, everybody would know, that their is an error(e.g. if central banks meddling with money would stop, but the boom-bust cycle would continue in the same way as before, we would know that austrians are wrong to attribute boom bust nearly soley to money meddling.)

@fundamentalist
About evolution, we know for certain, that 5 billion years ago there were only single cell organisms on earth. Now we are here. Something must have happened since the last 5 billion years to cause that change.
Possible culprits, who have not been proven innocent , so far:
-micro evolution
-god
-spaghetti monster
-shiva
-zeus
-allah

What is wrong to assume, that it was micro evolution?

One of my favorite articles I have seen posted here. But maybe that’s the physicist in me talking.

@Reason
Sorry, i can only see a technical difference, no fundamental.

Newton and others observed apples falling, planets moving and such stuff and concluded for example F=g*m1*m2/r**2 and F=m*a.

Mises and others observed human behavior and concluded certain axioms.

Both tried to deductively draw conclusions from their axioms, like the expected movement of massive bodies relative to each other or the expected effects upon a society by having socialistic or libertarian laws.

The technical difference is that, from that on physicist have a huge advantage, because they can easily check whether their deductive conclusions are in accordance with observation and thereby check whether their reasoning and their axioms are correct – and found that both have to be improved.
Economists have to be honest at that point(which keynisians arent), that a check of there axioms and an improvement of their knowledge is difficult to do, because they cannot as easily or often not at all check their conclusions against reality and thereby have a hard time to find errors in axioms or reasoning.

If economists wouldnt have this technical difficulties(meaning they have a lot of copies of earth and can manipulate politics there without the inhabitants noticing and lack any ethics), economics would be rather similar to physics in many aspects, most noticeable would be, that economist would no longer argue about most stuff, that was first thought of 200 years ago, because experiments would have settled arguments long ago.

If physicist would not be able to experiment in the same way, that economists arent able too, then physics would be as a mess as economics with a lot of different schools claiming that the others are just fools or corrupt and with little techniques applicable to real world.

This is by the way observable in frontier physics, the discussions remind often of debates between people of different religions about whose religion is the true one. As a colleague of mine said:”Whatever the result of my measurement, i can find a theorist who will say, that this result was exactly what was to be expected and that others who disagree simply didnt understand the whole stuff.”

The grounding in observation or experiment is fundamental for keeping science from turning into religion, therefore it should never be ignored. (But relying on pseudoexperiments and -observation like some ecoonomists seem to do is wrong either.)

Reason,

“Austrian theory is non-inductive as recognized in human action. This is part of the basic structure of reality- like gravity. There is no need to even hope for a discovery of positivist means for economics. It is impossible unless the laws of the universe somehow change. ”

No, the laws of the universe need not change, look at gravity. The laws of the universe didnt change, but newtons description of gravity seems to be wrong. Thats not fault of newton, but of the data he was using, which was only short range low density matter interaction. But if matter density increases or distances increases newton is more and more of.
Same is true for F=m*a in terms of higher velocity.
But both isnt newtons fault, it simple is due to the limited observation and experimental data he had access to, the error was only visible in a wider set of data.

Economics could potentially contain similar problems, since they base their axioms on observations of rather small amount of humans(compared to the numbers that ever have lived and hopefully will live) under a limited set of circumstances(either personal observation or written sources, since most of humans who lived so far were illiterate, this is a possible source of errors).

The simplest thing would be, that, that their axioms cover not all humans, but only a high percentage, this couldnt be noticed by economists. It might be possible, that under most certain circumstances this is irrelevant, so economy work as expected, but under some rare circumstances this by this humans not covered by the axioms cause a completely different result.

An example of this problem might be the dispute between anarcho-capitalism and minimal state. As some austrians tend to favor one side over the other it is obviously impossible to use deductive reasoning to decide which side is wrong.

“This reality does not make economics lesser, just different.”

No not just different, lesser in the sense of precision. Gravity constant is measured with 8 digits precision, error less than 0.00001 %, economic output and change of economic output can be measured at best with 1 digit precision, error about or even larger than 10%. And economic freedom, practically the most important idea advocated by economic science can only be measured in a very vague sense.

With physics is perfectly ok(if you use youre own money), to give some physicist a few hundred billion dollars in exchange for a trip to mars – they can deliver.
But it makes absolutely no sense to give economists a few billion dollars in exchange for saving the economy – many of them do not know how to deliver and even if, afterwards they would disagree about whether they succeeded or not.

The only thing one can get from economics is a general advise, which is more economic freedom is far superior to less, but any advise going far more into details is wrong because economics cannot achieve that precision due to the technical difficulties of acquiring data to test and refine knowledge.

“Do humans act? Is rationality (not the quality per instance) fundamental to the human makeup? Therefore, do humans act purposively?

These questions have to be answered in the affirmitive. Any attempt to negate such premises is a contradiction. ”
Why are there only yes and no as answers allowed for?

A total negation like “no human ever acts purposively.” is of course a contradiction if uttered by a human. But already “i act purposefully and the rest of mankind doesnt” isnt contradicting anything, except maybe ones experience, but you want to rule out any observation.

Asking very roughly, what about if 95% of humans act purposefully 80% of the time and the rest 5% act purposefully only 10% of the time, do you think this would be completely irrelvant to the conclusions of something derived deductively from “humans act purposefully”?

“Giving money to physicists vs. bureaucrats cannot represent an empirical test like that in the lab.”
This wasnt a suggestion for a lab experiment, but a description what i think to be sensible allocation of money. If economists say “with x billion dollars we can shorten the recession” they are at least dishonest, because they do not know when the depression began, what factors in what way determine the length and when it ends, because their data is simply to imprecise to answer these question in any reliable way, so their claim, that they can shorten the recession is empty. If physicist say “with x billion dollars we can put a man on mars”, they are at worst dishonest about x in an order of magnitude, but getting to mars they can manage, because their knowledge is precise enough due to precise enough data.

“Precision, by its nature, is suboordinated to axiomatic deduction.”
Not if the axioms are only a approximation of reality.

“Do you think that every economic proposition is merely hypothetical?”
No, because i think most humans in decisions that are relevant for economics most of the time act purposefully. And that i conclude from observation.
“Or, now are you ready to admit that there is knowledge other than that of the empirical, testable?”
But i think its wrong to conclude that the part missing between “most” and “all” will be irrelevant under all circumstances.

Eric: “Well, first off, nobody has said that they did. Rather, it is said only that chimps and humans have a common ancestor from some 10-20 million years ago.”

That’s simply not true. The standard model of evolution is that humans came from chimps. I’m astounded at how little evolutionists know about evolution. I’m constantly having to teach what evolution really is. But for the sake of argument, what kind of creature was the common ancestor if it wasn’t monkey-like?

Eric: “You also didn’t respond to the fact of existing ring species. This is one easy way to explain how different species can change from one into another.”

Why comment on mere speculation? Evolutionists are full of could’ve would’ve should’ve, but it’s not evidence. It’s pure speculation about what might have happened.

Eric: “It’s all happening in our own time.”
Then where is your evidence for the intermediate species of the past? If the theory of biological evolution is true, we should dig up bones of intermediate species everywhere. Why is the collection of such bones, many of which are in dispute, so incredibly small? Roger Lewin wrote that all of the evidence for human evolution will fit on a single table.

Florian Kren: “What is wrong to assume, that it was micro evolution?”

There is nothing wrong with assuming it. Just don’t call it science. Call it what it is–an assumption. The science of micro evolution is well established, having been begun by an opponent of Darwin, Gregor Mendel. Darwin proposed that micro evolution (such as changes in dog species) could cause macro evolution (such as a change from a dog to a horse). He predicted that fossil evidence of such change would would confirm his theory in the future and that if such evidence couldn’t be found then he was wrong. Mendel proposed that the degree of change possible through micro evolution was limited and could not produce new kinds of animals. Almost 200 years later, some evidence for macro evolution has been offered, but the amount is very disappointing even for devout evolutionists. The amount of evidence is so small, in fact, that it forced Stephen Gould to resurrect the “hopeful monster” theory of evolution to explain away the lack of evidence. Since the 1970′s a great deal of effort has gone into explaining away the lack of evidence for the theory rather than just admitting the theory is wrong.

That’s exactly how Marxists and Keynesians work. Marxists spend all of their time explaining why all attempts at implementing socialism have failed. Keynesians try to explain why their models can’t predict anything accurately.

Florian: “That is empiriricism, you look at something in the world(preferably controlled experiments with lots of data) and get from this to explanations about what is going on.”

The difference is that in natural sciences the scientists attempt to approach experiments with no preconceived theory in mind. They run their experiments and build theory from the results. They have to work that way because they are ignorant of the subject matter. The method is inductive.

Some people want economists to apply the inductive method by running thousands of econometric models without any theory and building up theory based on the results. A lot of people have tried just that approach over the past 50 years and the results are very disappointing. They’re contradictory, often trivial, and sometime just plain nonsense.

The problem is that economics cannot use controlled experiments, at least not for the really important concepts. Some trivial results have been produced with computer labs. Other than that, all data is historical data and it is vast and complex. Just choosing a small enough sample to make analysis possible requires some sort of theory to begin with.

And controlled experiments aren’t as necessary in economics as they are in natural sciences because natural science studies non-human objects and laws about which they are ignorant. In economics, we are studying ourselves. We are not ignorant about human behavior.

Austrian econ is not inductive, but deductive. It builds sound basic axioms about human behavior through introspection, reason, and observation, then uses those axioms to deduce principles of behavior in the field of economics.

The differences may be subtle, but the consequences are very serious.

Fundamentalist,
“I’m not trying to bait anyone into a discussion over evolution/creation, but I see similar problems with the scientific establishment in that debate.”

It’s clear now that this was false. You were baiting. It’s quite clear also that you have been spoon-fed these “problems” you see.

It’s also clear that you don’t understand what science is. It’s you who is assuming that “macro evolution” can’t occur. That despite all the hard core evidence that it has occurred that is quite independent from Darwin’s theory.

There is no “macro” and “micro” evolution just like there is no “macro” and “micro” economics. What you call macro evolution is a simple result of lots of micro evolution. It’s not an assumption but a deduction. A deduction that is supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence.

Just remember that you don’t learn science in church, or from creationists and you’ll be fine.

BTW, your understanding of the philosophy of science is abysmal. Science does not operate the way you think it does, at all.

There really is no point in discussing this with you since your critical thinking skills have been crippled by your “education.”

The link: “Evolution as Theory and Fact”

“Because I am sensing ignorance of how the terms are used here…”

” Mises certainly believed he was theorizing about the real world, and his theories certainly had empirical content… but he never denied this.”

Same with the Catholic Church. Every religion I am familiar with believes they are theorizing about the real world. That is not what makes them empirical or not.

Mises theories need empirical support whether he likes that or not. Rothbard spends much of his time providing empirical support for Austrian theories in his writings.

It’s just ridiculous to claim that economics isn’t empirical. Mises entire enterprise is empirical from start to end. He didn’t just deduce that bank runs would occur. He first observed (or read about) the phenomenon. He then had to use empirical methods to find out how banks operate. He didn’t just deduce it from “I think therefore I am” nor even “Men Act”. That’s a stupifying simplification of what actually was done by him.

Deduction plays a very important role in all the sciences. The difference is that some of the sciences one can easily run experiments to test ones deductions. It’s not so easy in economics and likewise biology (evolution), as in physics or chemistry. That doesn’t mean that evolutionary biology is a “non-empirical science”.

” He did deny that testing theories in the positivist fashion made no sense in the field of economics. The two claims run independently of one another…”

Look, I’ve read Mises and I don’t need you to repeat or interpret it for me. I understand how he used the term “empiricism” and what it meant in his time period. The problem is that it does not have the same meaning today and other advances in scientific philosophy like pan-critical rationalism have occurred since Mises.

Empiricism is much broader than just the positivists. Mises was correct in many of his criticisms of the positivists. At the same time he was operating under his own misunderstandings. For example he assumed that behaviorism was the correct way to work in the field of animal psychology. Which is not true. The positivist program doesn’t work there either. Behaviorism has been abandoned.

Mises’s attacks on positivism are correct. Problem is that we have moved on. Everyone recognizes that positivism is wrong and there are much better criticisms of positivism than Mises provided.

The word empiricism now means something different and much broader than what Mises understood. In fact, it had actually been in the process of moving on in Mises’s time but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was ignorant of it.

People were doing good science long before they understood the philosophical basis for the success. Likewise with Mises.

Thanks for the nice article. Having a background in physics myself I enjoyed reading the piece from a fellow physicist.

Also I subscribe to the bashing of “you cannot know anything you cannot empirically verify” fallacy, and of Keynesianism in general – the only way in which it can be tought of as science is with the many other theories that have been shown to be false too.

Yet allow me to suggest a modification to the reasoning. I find it a weak point to argue along “Economics is a science in the same sense that mathematics and logic are sciences. Its claims are based on logical deduction from indisputable axioms, and may be illustrated historically, but never verified or falsified experimentally.”

The scientific criteria as formulated by Karl Popper, hold that a theory is to be considered scientific as long as it can either be proven, or leaves itself open to falsification.

Now the “let’s prove” avenue is open to mathematics and all its branches (logic, computer science, …), which begin by constructing all the objects and tools – all the world they talk about.

The issue with the real world is that our knowledge of it is by definition too imperfect to be able to create a logical construct that could be shown to match 1:1 with reality.

So in order to address real world in a scientific manner we have to take the other path, and open our theories (hypotheses, in fact) to falsification.

Now of course Keynesians have neither done that (cf. “animal spirits” – how could one falsify that?), nor acknowledged the falsification when it was demonstrated (spending, wages, whatever). Demasking their stance as pseudoscience is well deserved.

Yet let me repeat. By positioning economics as “logical deduction from indisputable axioms, [... never to be] falsified experimentally”, we also severe it from the real world.

If we keep true to the scientific honesty principle, any outcomes from such an economics would apply only to the gedanken world it operates upon.

And in an attempt to “map” the results to the real world we’d be faced with the same challenge of opening it up to falsification, to keep our method scientific.

Hope this makes some sense.

I have watched the long digression into the creationism/evolution debate with interest, but as much as I was itching to weigh in on the micro/macroevolution red herring, and the myth of the so-called ‘species barrier’ , I resisted it, as the entire digression is rather remote from the nature of this blog.

However, I do think it is appropriate in this forum to to hear what Mises said about the question, characteristically at the exact nexus where Darwin himself was at his most coy – the question of human evolution.

“Man is descended from nonhuman ancestors who lacked this [mental} ability. These ancestors were endowed with some potentiality which in the course of ages evolution converted them into reasonable beings. This transformation was achieved by the influence of a changing cosmic environment operating on succeeding generations. Hence the empiricist concludes that the fundamental principles of reasoning are an outcome of experience and represent an adaptation of man to the conditions of his environment’.

Human action , page 33.

And again, on page 35:

‘The human mind is not a tabula rasa on which the external events write their own history. It is equipped with a set of tools for grasping reality. Man acquired these tools, i.e. the logical structure of his mind, in the course of his evolution from an amoeba (sic) to his present state. But these tools are logically prior to any experience.’.

My comment: Interestingly, his reference to the empiricist is not dismissive in this context – here he is epistemologically delineating where the empirical sciences such as biology stop, and praxeology, a necessarily a priori science, starts – and making sure that the ‘ultimate givens’ ( Mises’s term) of praxeology are not inconsistent with the knowledge of the biology of the human brain, as revealed by other scientific disciplines.

As for the amoeba reference, while technically incorrect, I’m sure we can forgive him that bit of literary license – ‘single eukaroytic cell’ hardly scans well.

SO it seems to me from these quotes that the entire body of Mises’s work stands on a foundation which explicitly acknowledges evolution and natural selection.

“The difference is that in natural sciences the scientists attempt to approach experiments with no preconceived theory in mind. They run their experiments and build theory from the results. They have to work that way because they are ignorant of the subject matter. The method is inductive.”

No.
With a lot of stuff natural scientist have a fair idea about the subject matter. And that in a literal sense, matter is made of atoms made up of inseperable gluons interacting by gravity, elektro weak and strong interaction. Its just calculating from that knowledge the behaviour of a sun is difficult.

Science uses deduction as far as possible, then uses induction to get new input and from that deduce again something.
“Austrian econ is not inductive, but deductive.”
“The differences may be subtle, but the consequences are very serious.”
No, this difference is irrelevant.
What is relevant, is to approach a problem in a way which is supported by experience.
When you have a complex system like for example the sun and want to understand how it operates you have basically 2 options. You can either measure what the properities of the sun or you can use youre knowledge of atoms to calculate the sun.

The first approach is easy to do, but has the risk that you do not see any pattern at all or miss some important subpattern due to limited data and problems to do experiments.
The second approach is hard or even impossible to do perfectly, but one knows that conclusions gained from this side are as reliable as the knowledge one has about atoms, which is very reliable.
One can separate the two only for practical purposes, but in the end they must not differ and any difference indicates something was misunderstood.
Therefore one should always apply both approaches, because one of them is a way to check the other.(This is empirical knowledge )

So in case of a complex system, the approach supported by experience is to try to look at the full system and at the same time to look at the subsystems and calculate from them the full system behavior.

If applied to economics one should look at all those BNPs and other stuff and try to understand something there and at the same time understand the system from the individual human.

So the correct empirical approach to economics includes an attempt to simulate individual human behavior and deduce from that how groups of humans and the whole society behave.

For this the best method of simulation is needed. Since human behavior is complex we need something with a high calculation power and a program, that operates on the simulation device that is designed to simulate human behavior.
Whether something is able to simulate one can determine by looking whether the simulation can predict human behavior.

We know from empirical knowledge, that the only device, that might have enough calculation power to simulate human behavior is the human brain – at least is capable of operating a human.
And also from empirical knowledge – (micro) evolution – we know that the human brain was trained for tens of thousands of years to predict correctly what the guy with the big club is going to do next.

Therefore for the task of simulating or understanding individual economic behavior and to conclude from that how groups of humans behave, a human is suited well. So the empirical approach leads to the conclusion, that to understand economics one important thing is to find an intelligent human give him pencil and paper and ask him to think about how economy functions.

Of course we could get a lot of idiotic writings that way, therefore comparison with observation is still necessary, to decide who might have simulated human behavior well(e.g. Mises, prdiction for socialism indicates this) and who didn’t succeed(e.g. Marx).

But having humans think about how humans behave economically is a sensible approach from an empiristic point of view.

What keynes and followers seem to do – completely ignoring the individual human – is wrong from an empiric point of view, because even simple systems like gases have shown behavior, that was not explainable by looking only at the whole system.
E.g. the unfreeying of degrees of freedom causing a change in specific heat capacity cannot be understood by looking at the gas alone, only with knowledge of atoms it can be explained. As human society is more complex than a simple gas, there are more such effects to be expected, which cannot be understood by only looking at the full system.