WEBVTT NOTE Whether Mises’s Use of "a priori" Is Kantian or Aristotelian 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Joke Keisen, who has been coming for many years to these conferences, sent you regards to all his friends. He is recovering from a stroke now in Guatemala. 2 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Okay, back at our university, we have been discussing whether Mises' use of a priori and categories are Kantian or Aristotelian. 3 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.000 And there seems to be reason for the assumption that one or the other, since Mises uses Kantian terminology. 4 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:41.000 But we must not forget that he is answering to the criticism of logical or empirical positivism, which uses the same language also. 5 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.000 So I thought we should look further into this matter. 6 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.000 First, we should define the terms. We find two different meanings for the term a priori. 7 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:57.000 For Aristotle, the term a priori means without antecedent. 8 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:03.000 Aristotle mentions in the categories five senses in which one thing can be said to be prior to another. 9 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:06.000 First, when one thing is older than another. 10 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:11.000 Second, one thing is said to be prior to another when the sequence of their being cannot be reversed. 11 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:19.000 For example, when one is prior to two. 12 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:26.000 The existence of two implies the existence of one, but the existence of one does not imply the existence of two. 13 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:35.000 Third, prior is used when reference to any order. For example, in a demonstration there is that which is prior and that which is posterior in order. 14 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:41.000 And fourth, that which is better and more honorable than something else is said to have a natural priority. 15 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:46.000 And fifth, I will quote from Aristotle in the categories, 16 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:56.000 For in those things the being of each of which implies that of the other, that which is in any way the cause may reasonably be said to be by nature prior to the effect. 17 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:06.000 It is plain that there are instances of this. The fact of being a man carries with it the truth that the proposition that he is and the implication is reciprocal. 18 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:13.320 For if a man is the proposition wherein we allege that he is, is true, and conversely, 19 00:02:13.320 --> 00:02:17.920 if the proposition wherein we allege that he is true, then he is. 20 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:22.680 The true proposition, however, is in no way the cause of the being of the man, but the 21 00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:27.600 fact of the man being does seem somehow to be the cause of the truth of the proposition, 22 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:32.120 for the truth of falsity of the proposition depends on the fact of the man being and not 23 00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:33.960 being. 24 00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:38.840 Another important concept for Aristotle is one of basic truth, and I will quote from 25 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.760 posterior analytics. 26 00:02:42.760 --> 00:02:46.620 A basic truth in a demonstration is an immediate proposition. 27 00:02:46.620 --> 00:02:51.740 An immediate proposition is one which has no other proposition prior to it. 28 00:02:51.740 --> 00:02:56.040 Demonstrative knowledge must rest on necessary basic truths. 29 00:02:56.040 --> 00:02:58.040 Not all knowledge is demonstrative. 30 00:02:58.040 --> 00:03:03.320 On the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. 31 00:03:03.320 --> 00:03:08.160 The necessity of this is obvious, for since we must know the prior premises from which 32 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:12.280 the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those 33 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:14.440 truths must be indemonstrable. 34 00:03:14.440 --> 00:03:19.800 Now demonstration must be based on premises prior to and better known than the conclusion, 35 00:03:19.800 --> 00:03:24.520 and the same things cannot simultaneously be both prior and posterior to one another. 36 00:03:24.520 --> 00:03:29.200 So circular demonstration is clearly not possible, in the unqualified sense of demonstration, 37 00:03:29.200 --> 00:03:34.480 But only possible if demonstration be extended to include that another method of argument 38 00:03:34.480 --> 00:03:39.440 would rest on a distinction between truths prior to us and truths without qualification 39 00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:46.000 prior, that is, the method by which induction produces knowledge. 40 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:51.120 I call the basic truths of every genus those elements in the existence of which cannot 41 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:55.440 be proved. 42 00:03:55.440 --> 00:04:00.120 But two important aspects of these basic truths are first that they are evident, that means 43 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:05.440 that evidence of their truth can be shown, and second that although they cannot be proved, 44 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:10.520 they must be assumed as true in any attempt to disproving them. 45 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:22.120 Now for Kant, a priori means that which is known independently of sense perception, and 46 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:25.000 for this reason held to be indubitable, he says. 47 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:27.480 I quote from The Critique of Pure Reason, 48 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:31.240 Experiences teach us that a thing is so and so, 49 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:33.440 but not that it cannot be otherwise. 50 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:36.480 First then, if we have a proposition which, in being thought, 51 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:40.440 is thought as necessary, it is an a priori judgment. 52 00:04:40.440 --> 00:04:43.720 Second, if the judgment is thought in such a manner 53 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:46.000 that no exception is allowed as possible, 54 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.080 it is not derived from experience, 55 00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:50.920 but is valid absolutely a priori. 56 00:04:50.920 --> 00:04:54.960 Necessity and strict universality are thus sure criteria 57 00:04:54.960 --> 00:05:06.640 Now, let's consider the concept of categories. 58 00:05:06.640 --> 00:05:12.120 The categories present the distinction in the nature of reality about which we think, 59 00:05:12.120 --> 00:05:15.680 as well as in our manner of thinking about it. 60 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:20.240 Aristotle enumerates the kinds of beings found in the different things that are, while Kant's 61 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:25.080 His interest was in the question of how there comes to be objects of our experience having 62 00:05:25.080 --> 00:05:30.400 these diverse modes of being. 63 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:35.400 He sustained that in the apprehension of them, we are not merely receptive and passive, but 64 00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:37.640 active. 65 00:05:37.640 --> 00:05:43.000 Our mind relates to one another in various ways, the elements of what is apprehended, 66 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.720 and relation exists only for a mind. 67 00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:52.340 What called this act of relating a function of synthesis? 68 00:05:52.340 --> 00:06:00.960 He wanted to establish what different functions of synthesis are exhibited in the apprehension 69 00:06:00.960 --> 00:06:04.080 and the existence of objects. 70 00:06:04.080 --> 00:06:09.440 The objects in question, he said, are not things by themselves, dinge an sich, existing 71 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:12.920 out of relation to the perceiving and thinking mind. 72 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:22.360 In other words, the mind can know of them only that they are, not what they are. The 73 00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:26.520 objects in question are objects of experience, and their being is bound up with the being 74 00:06:26.520 --> 00:06:31.840 of experience of them. The perception of an object, according to Kant, involves the relation 75 00:06:31.840 --> 00:06:36.920 of space and time, but what interested him more was the way we conceive the object, the 76 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:42.360 way we apprehend it as an object, the way we think of it in certain ways. This conception 77 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:47.920 of an object involves four peculiar relations of things, which can cause categories, and 78 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:53.720 are its having quality, which can only exist in degrees, its having quantity, its being 79 00:06:53.720 --> 00:06:59.000 a substance, having attributes, permanent through its changing and successive states, 80 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:02.760 and that its changes should be determined according to laws by its relation to other 81 00:07:02.760 --> 00:07:07.640 substances with which it stood in interaction. And last, that every such object conceived 82 00:07:07.640 --> 00:07:11.840 to exist should be conceived as connected with every other existing object in a way 83 00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:17.440 in a way that knowledge could apprehend and express in the form of necessary inference. 84 00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:21.960 This posed another epistemological problem that I'm not going to address here. 85 00:07:21.960 --> 00:07:27.360 For example, we would never think that a man push a cart in the grocery stores if he could 86 00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:32.240 not conceive a substance to have its attributes and to determine changes in another substance. 87 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:36.200 We would never have called the movement of the cart necessary if it weren't by the fact 88 00:07:36.200 --> 00:07:40.000 that we think of the different real things in the world so connected that we wouldn't 89 00:07:40.000 --> 00:08:06.160 Aristotle also noted that when we predicate a subject, we recognize it as existing, sometimes 90 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:10.360 Sometimes as subject with attributes, sometimes as attributes of various kinds, qualities, 91 00:08:10.360 --> 00:08:14.880 quantities, relations, positions in place and time of what things do or have done to 92 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:20.560 them of their states and situations. Aristotle asks what modes of being we distinguish in 93 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:25.440 what that which we recognize to be. Kant, on the other hand, asks what are the modes 94 00:08:25.440 --> 00:08:30.560 of synthetics or of synthesis, sorry, on the part of our mind through which the objects 95 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:35.920 are apprehended by us and the sort of objects they are. Kant thinks that there can be no 96 00:08:35.920 --> 00:08:44.920 There are no objects known to us except through the mind's activity in relating according to certain principles, which he calls categories, and that corresponds mainly with Aristotle's. 97 00:08:44.920 --> 00:08:56.920 Mainly to be, according to Aristotle, is not possible. What is must be in a particular way and is being thereby fall under one or other the kind of predicates or categories, which he enumerated. 98 00:08:56.920 --> 00:09:16.920 According to Kant, an object cannot be an object of experience and therefore cannot exist in the world of our experience except through being perceived and thought in the forms of perception and conception involved in every predicate through which an object is known, the forms of the sensibility, space and time, and the categories of the understanding. 99 00:09:16.920 --> 00:09:27.920 The a priori conditions of the possibility of objects of experience in general are the same time conditions of the possibility of objects of experience. 100 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:34.920 Now, I maintain that the categories above cited are nothing but the conditions of thought in a possible experience. 101 00:09:34.920 --> 00:09:38.920 Just as space and time are the conditions of intuition for the same experiences, 102 00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:46.920 There are fundamental concepts at which we think objects in general for appearances, and have therefore a priori objective validity. 103 00:09:46.920 --> 00:10:01.920 Now, Hume's position in Kantian language is that all judgments are either synthetical, a posteriori judgment about matters of fact, therefore never universal and necessary, or analytical judgments about what he called relations of ideas, therefore not related to reality. 104 00:10:01.920 --> 00:10:06.320 Kant wanted to show that there are judgments of the synthetical a priori type, 105 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:09.760 judgments that are both instructive, like synthetical a posteriori, 106 00:10:09.760 --> 00:10:13.920 matters-of-fact judgments, and universal and necessary, like analytical judgments, 107 00:10:13.920 --> 00:10:17.520 but this would imply that induction is valid. I want you to remember this. 108 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:24.640 Kant thought that Aristotle logic furnished a complete and exhaustive table of all possible 109 00:10:24.640 --> 00:10:29.600 types of judgment. From this list, he drew up a corresponding list of pure a priori concepts 110 00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:40.480 A table of categories that correspond exactly with a table of types of judgment can establish 111 00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:46.600 four classes of category, dose of quality, quantity, relation and modality. 112 00:10:46.600 --> 00:10:50.320 Now I want to draw your attention to the category of relation which covers the three relations 113 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:54.260 of substance and attribute, cause and effect and interaction. 114 00:10:54.260 --> 00:10:57.100 Now let's consider Mises' discourse. 115 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:04.040 He begins with basic truths that provide information about reality and that are necessarily true. 116 00:11:04.040 --> 00:11:08.420 Then by deduction he builds his theory, therefore the importance of establishing the validity 117 00:11:08.420 --> 00:11:10.940 of synthetic a priori propositions. 118 00:11:10.940 --> 00:11:15.980 That for Mises means a proposition that is necessarily true and not a tautology. 119 00:11:15.980 --> 00:11:22.540 I will quote from the ultimate foundation of economic science an essay on method. 120 00:11:22.540 --> 00:11:28.700 The starting point of all praxeological thinking is not arbitrarily chosen axioms, but a self-evident 121 00:11:28.700 --> 00:11:33.860 proposition, fully, clearly and necessarily present in every human mind. 122 00:11:33.860 --> 00:11:39.460 The starting point of praxeology is a self-evident truth, the cognition of the fact that there 123 00:11:39.460 --> 00:11:42.500 is such a thing as a consciously aiming at ends. 124 00:11:42.500 --> 00:11:47.700 The truth of this cognition is a self-evident and indispensable for the human mind as it 125 00:11:47.700 --> 00:11:50.660 is the distinction between A and non-A. 126 00:11:50.660 --> 00:11:55.780 And if we qualify a concept or a proposition as a priori, we want to say first that the 127 00:11:55.780 --> 00:12:01.100 negation of what it asserts is unthinkable for the human mind and appears to it as nonsense. 128 00:12:01.100 --> 00:12:05.600 Second, that it is a priori concept or proposition is necessarily implied in our mental approach 129 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:12.300 to all the problems concerned, in our thinking and acting concerning these problems. 130 00:12:12.300 --> 00:12:18.580 Their truth or validity cannot be proved or refuted as can those of posteriori propositions, 131 00:12:18.580 --> 00:12:26.080 Because they are precisely the instruments that enable us to distinguish what is true or valid from what is not. 132 00:12:26.080 --> 00:12:34.700 This is clearly Aristotle's concept of basic truth, an immediate proposition, and therefore one that has no other proposition prior to it, but it is a query. 133 00:12:34.700 --> 00:12:39.740 And it is self-evident, which, remember, means that evidence of its truth can be shown. 134 00:12:39.740 --> 00:12:44.820 And second, that although it cannot be proved, it must be assumed as true in any attempt to disprove it. 135 00:12:44.820 --> 00:12:55.820 And so it is. Because as a matter of fact, any attempt to deny the truth of the proposition that states that human action is teleological defeats itself by merely trying. 136 00:12:55.820 --> 00:12:59.820 To the attack of the logical positivist, Mises responded and I quote, 137 00:12:59.820 --> 00:13:08.820 The essence of logical positivism is to deny the cognitive value of a priori knowledge by pointing out that all a priori propositions are merely analytic. 138 00:13:08.820 --> 00:13:13.820 They do not provide any information, but are merely verbal or tautological asserting that 139 00:13:13.820 --> 00:13:17.140 has already been implied in the definition and premises. 140 00:13:17.140 --> 00:13:19.580 Only experience can lead to synthetic propositions. 141 00:13:19.580 --> 00:13:22.400 There is an obvious objection against this doctrine. 142 00:13:22.400 --> 00:13:27.140 That is, that this proposition and there are no synthetic a priori propositions is in itself, 143 00:13:27.140 --> 00:13:32.840 as the present writer thinks, false, synthetic a priori propositions, for it can manifest 144 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:35.220 not established by experience. 145 00:13:35.220 --> 00:13:36.540 And it is true. 146 00:13:36.540 --> 00:13:38.340 But there is still something else. 147 00:13:38.340 --> 00:13:42.420 What one predicates from the subject in a proposition that is conceived as a tautology 148 00:13:42.420 --> 00:13:49.300 is not about the concept, but about the material of the proposition, about the word. 149 00:13:49.300 --> 00:13:56.100 For example, in the definition man is a rational animal, when we consider it as a tautology, 150 00:13:56.100 --> 00:14:02.060 what one means is that the word man signifies or is equivalent to the word rational animal. 151 00:14:02.060 --> 00:14:06.260 It really does not say anything about the real referent of the concept, that is, of 152 00:14:06.260 --> 00:14:08.280 the real existing man. 153 00:14:08.280 --> 00:14:12.920 If the same proposition is not considered as a tautology, then it becomes in Kantian terminology 154 00:14:12.920 --> 00:14:14.920 a synthetic proposition. 155 00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:19.840 It actually states that the referent is an entity that belongs to a class of entities 156 00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:23.880 called animals, and that it can be distinguished from the other entities in the same class 157 00:14:23.880 --> 00:14:26.200 by the fact that it is rational. 158 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:30.800 The classification is ordered by the context of our knowledge, and as Aristotle remarked, 159 00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:34.040 the entity is much more than what we can predicate of it. 160 00:14:34.040 --> 00:14:38.120 The attributes chosen for the classification are not metaphysical but epistemologically 161 00:14:38.120 --> 00:14:39.120 essential. 162 00:14:39.120 --> 00:14:47.120 If, for instance, we were in the position of Gulliver and discovered the Hennons, we 163 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:59.640 would have to redefine man as the rational primate and the Hennon as the rational equine. 164 00:14:59.640 --> 00:15:05.740 Besides, the predicate and the subjects are not equivalent as in a tautology. 165 00:15:05.740 --> 00:15:10.060 The subject's distribution is universal and the predicate's is particular. 166 00:15:10.060 --> 00:15:12.420 So the conversion should be accidental, not simple. 167 00:15:12.420 --> 00:15:17.880 Man is a rational animal, can only be converted to some rational animal is man. 168 00:15:17.880 --> 00:15:22.060 To the question of an independent reality, Mises made the following observation. 169 00:15:22.060 --> 00:15:26.620 The much discussed question whether physical objects can or cannot be conceived as existing 170 00:15:26.620 --> 00:15:29.040 independently of the mind is vain. 171 00:15:29.040 --> 00:15:33.320 For thousands of years, the mind of physicians did not perceive germs and did not divine 172 00:15:33.320 --> 00:15:38.320 their existence, but the success or failure of their endeavors to preserve their patients' 173 00:15:38.320 --> 00:15:42.880 health and lives depend on the way germs influence or did not influence the functioning of the 174 00:15:42.880 --> 00:15:45.000 patient's bodily organs. 175 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.560 The germs were real because they conditioned the outcome of events either by interfering 176 00:15:49.560 --> 00:15:55.160 or not interfering, either by being present or by being absent from the field. 177 00:15:55.160 --> 00:16:02.920 Mises emphasized that the a priori categories are not innate ideas, and I will quote, 178 00:16:02.920 --> 00:16:08.260 The a priori categories are not innate ideas. What the normal healthy child inherits from 179 00:16:08.260 --> 00:16:13.600 his parents are not any categories, ideas or concepts, but a human mind that has the 180 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:19.080 capacity to learn and to conceive ideas, the capacity to make its beard behave as a human 181 00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:25.040 and Being, that is to act. This is the most anti-Cantean statement if there ever was one 182 00:16:25.040 --> 00:16:30.160 in Mises' discourse. But to be fair, in another paragraph, his statement is very Cantean. 183 00:16:30.160 --> 00:16:31.160 I quote, 184 00:16:31.160 --> 00:16:39.120 The a priori categories are the mental equipment by which man is able to think and to experience 185 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:43.680 and thus to acquire knowledge. What we know is what the nature of a structure of our senses 186 00:16:43.680 --> 00:16:54.280 We see reality not as it is and may appear to a perfect being, but only as the quality 187 00:16:54.280 --> 00:16:57.440 of our mind and of our senses enable us to see. 188 00:16:57.440 --> 00:16:59.960 I want to examine the concept of induction. 189 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:04.520 That according to Aristotle is the means to infer basic truths, and according to the logical 190 00:17:04.520 --> 00:17:06.840 positivist is impossible. 191 00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:08.120 Induction relies on causality. 192 00:17:08.120 --> 00:17:12.800 I will quote Mises again. 193 00:17:12.800 --> 00:17:17.040 The plight of empiricisms consists precisely in the failure to explain satisfactorily how 194 00:17:17.040 --> 00:17:21.600 it is possible to infer from absurd facts something concerning the facts yet unobserved. 195 00:17:21.600 --> 00:17:25.440 All human knowledge concerning the universal presupposes rests upon the regularity and 196 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:28.200 succession and concatenation of the observable events. 197 00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:31.960 It would be vain to search for a cruel if there were no regularity. 198 00:17:31.960 --> 00:17:36.080 Inductive inference is conclusion from premises that invariably include the fundamentals 199 00:17:36.080 --> 00:17:38.120 of reposition regularity. 200 00:17:38.120 --> 00:17:43.440 The very category of a concept of action comprehends the concept of means and ends, of preferring 201 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:48.280 and putting aside, of valuing, of success and failure, of profit and loss, of costs, 202 00:17:48.280 --> 00:17:52.400 and no action could be devised and ventured upon without definite ideas about the relation 203 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:59.880 of cost and effect, teleology presupposed causality. 204 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:14.520 So I will conclude now, because I ran out of time, but I was almost finished, that I think 205 00:18:14.520 --> 00:18:20.180 there is enough evidence that Mises' arguments don't depend on the Kantian system, but they 206 00:18:20.180 --> 00:18:25.480 depend on Aristotle, although he accepts some of the Kantian postulates, and we can find 207 00:18:25.480 --> 00:18:55.480 He says eminent philosophers have tried to elaborate a complete list of the a priori categories, the necessary conditions of experience and thought. One does not belittle these attempts at analysis and systematization if one realizes that any proposed solution leaves a broad margin for the individual thinker's discretion. Thank you for your attention. 208 00:18:55.480 --> 00:18:57.480 Thank you very much.