WEBVTT NOTE On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology: III 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.400 On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology 2 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:07.200 Section 3 3 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:14.400 This will suffice here as an explanation of Mises' answer regarding the quest for the foundations of economics. 4 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:24.600 I shall now turn to my second goal, the explanation of why and how praxeology also provides the foundation for epistemology. 5 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:30.360 Mises had been aware of this, and he was convinced of the great importance of this insight for 6 00:00:30.360 --> 00:00:36.280 rationalist philosophy. Yet Mises did not treat the matter in a systematic fashion. There are no more 7 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:41.720 than a few brief remarks concerning this problem interspersed throughout his massive body of 8 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:48.040 writing. Thus, in the following, I must try to break new ground. I shall begin my explanation 9 00:00:48.040 --> 00:00:55.080 by introducing a second a priori axiom and clarifying its relation to the axiom of action. 10 00:00:55.800 --> 00:01:03.400 Such an understanding is the key to solving our problem. The second axiom is the so-called a 11 00:01:03.400 --> 00:01:10.680 priori of argumentation, which states that humans are capable of argumentation and hence know the 12 00:01:10.680 --> 00:01:17.080 meaning of truth and validity. As in the case of the action axiom, this knowledge is not derived 13 00:01:17.080 --> 00:01:23.800 from observation. There is only verbal behavior to be observed, and prior reflective cognition 14 00:01:23.800 --> 00:01:30.520 is required in order to interpret such behavior as meaningful arguments. And the validity of the 15 00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:37.480 axiom, like that of the action axiom, is indisputable. It is impossible to deny that one can argue, 16 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:44.280 as the very denial would itself be an argument. In fact, one could not even silently say to oneself, 17 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:50.680 I cannot argue without thereby contradicting oneself. One cannot argue that one cannot argue, 18 00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:56.920 nor can one dispute knowing what it means to make a truth or validity claim without implicitly 19 00:01:56.920 --> 00:02:02.440 claiming the negation of this proposition to be true. It is not difficult to detect that both 20 00:02:02.440 --> 00:02:09.720 a priori axioms of action and argumentation are intimately related. On the one hand, actions are 21 00:02:09.720 --> 00:02:15.720 are more fundamental than argumentations with whose existence the idea of validity emerges, 22 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:19.200 as argumentation is only a subclass of action. 23 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:26.260 On the other hand, to recognize what has just been recognized regarding action and argumentation 24 00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:32.680 and their relation to each other requires argumentation, and so in this sense, argumentation 25 00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:35.760 must be considered more fundamental than action. 26 00:02:35.760 --> 00:02:41.080 Without argumentation, nothing could be said to be known about action. 27 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:47.440 But then, as it is an argumentation that the insight is revealed that while it might not 28 00:02:47.440 --> 00:02:53.160 be known to be so prior to any argumentation, in fact, the possibility of argumentation 29 00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:59.400 presupposes action in that validity claims can only be explicitly discussed in the course 30 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:05.600 of an argumentation if the individuals doing so already know what it means to act and to 31 00:03:05.600 --> 00:03:18.600 to have knowledge implied in action, both the meaning of action in general and argumentation in particular must be thought of as logically necessary interwoven strands of a priori knowledge. 32 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:27.600 What this insight into the interrelation between the a priori of action and the a priori of argumentation suggests is the following. 33 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:41.600 Traditionally, the task of epistemology has been conceived of as that of formulating what can be known to be true a priori and also what can be known a priori not to be the subject of a priori knowledge. 34 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:50.600 Recognizing, as we have just done, that knowledge claims are raised and decided upon in the course of argumentation, and that this is undeniably so, 35 00:03:50.600 --> 00:04:20.600 So, one can now reconstruct the task of epistemology more precisely as that of formulating those propositions which are argumentatively indisputable, in that their truth is already implied in the very fact of making one's argument, and so cannot be denied argumentatively, and to delineate the range of such a priori knowledge from the realm of propositions whose validity cannot be established in this way but require additional contingent information 36 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:29.100 for their validation, or that cannot be validated at all, and so are mere metaphysical statements in the pejorative sense of the term metaphysical. 37 00:04:29.100 --> 00:04:42.100 Yet what is implied in the very fact of arguing? It is to this question that our insight into the inextricable interconnection between the a priori of argumentation and that of action provides an answer. 38 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:53.100 On a very general level, it cannot be denied argumentatively that argumentation presupposes action, and that arguments and the knowledge embodied in them are those of actors. 39 00:04:53.100 --> 00:04:59.100 And more specifically, it cannot then be denied that knowledge itself is a category of action, 40 00:04:59.100 --> 00:05:08.100 that the structure of knowledge must be constrained by the peculiar function which knowledge fulfills within the framework of action categories, 41 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:15.100 and that the existence of such structural constraints can never be disproved by any knowledge whatsoever. 42 00:05:15.100 --> 00:05:23.100 It is in this sense that the insights contained in praxeology must be regarded as providing the foundations of epistemology. 43 00:05:23.100 --> 00:05:29.100 Knowledge is a category quite distinct from those that I have explained earlier, from ends and means. 44 00:05:29.100 --> 00:05:36.100 The ends which we strive to attain through our actions and the means which we employ in order to do so are both scarce values. 45 00:05:36.100 --> 00:05:45.100 The values attached to our goals are subject to consumption, and are exterminated and destroyed in consumption, and thus must forever be produced anew. 46 00:05:45.100 --> 00:05:54.100 And the means employed must be economized too. Not so, however, with respect to knowledge, regardless of whether one considers it a means or an end in itself. 47 00:05:54.100 --> 00:06:00.100 Of course, the acquisition of knowledge requires scarce means, at least one's body and time. 48 00:06:00.100 --> 00:06:05.700 Time. Yet once knowledge is acquired, it is no longer scarce. It can neither be consumed, 49 00:06:05.700 --> 00:06:10.700 nor are the services that it can render as a means subject to depletion. Once there, 50 00:06:10.700 --> 00:06:15.740 it is an inexhaustible resource, and incorporates an everlasting value, provided that it is 51 00:06:15.740 --> 00:06:20.060 not simply forgotten. Yet knowledge is not a free good in the same sense that air under 52 00:06:20.060 --> 00:06:26.700 normal circumstances is a free good. Instead, it is a category of action. It is not only 53 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:34.020 be a mental ingredient of each and every action, quite unlike air. But more importantly, knowledge 54 00:06:34.020 --> 00:06:39.540 and not air is subject to validation, which is to say that it must prove to fulfill a 55 00:06:39.540 --> 00:06:44.740 positive function for an actor within the invariant constraints of the categorical framework 56 00:06:44.740 --> 00:06:50.660 of actions. It is the task of epistemology to clarify what these constraints are and 57 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:54.660 and what one can thus know about the structure of knowledge as such. 58 00:06:54.660 --> 00:07:00.660 While such recognition of the praxeological constraints on the structure of knowledge 59 00:07:00.660 --> 00:07:03.660 might not immediately strike one as in itself of great significance, 60 00:07:03.660 --> 00:07:07.660 it does have some highly important implications. 61 00:07:07.660 --> 00:07:13.660 For one thing, in light of this insight, one recurring difficulty of rationalist philosophy finds an answer. 62 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:18.660 It has been a common quarrel with rationalism in the Leibniz-Kant tradition 63 00:07:18.660 --> 00:07:42.160 That it seemed to imply some sort of idealism. Realizing that a priori true propositions could not possibly be derived from observations, rationalism answered the question how a priori knowledge could then be possible by adopting the model of an active mind, as opposed to the empiricist model of a passive mirror-like mind in the tradition of Locke and Hume. 64 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:53.160 According to rationalist philosophy, a priori true propositions had their foundation in the operation of principles of thinking which one could not possibly conceive of as operating otherwise. 65 00:07:53.160 --> 00:07:56.160 They were grounded in categories of an active mind. 66 00:07:56.160 --> 00:08:09.160 Now, as empiricists were only too eager to point out, the obvious critique of such a position is that if this were indeed the case, it could not be explained why such mental categories should fit reality. 67 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:12.660 Rather, one would be forced to accept the absurd idealistic assumption 68 00:08:12.660 --> 00:08:16.160 that reality would have to be conceived of as a creation of the mind 69 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:21.760 in order to claim that a priori knowledge could incorporate any information about the structure of reality. 70 00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:24.860 And clearly, such an assertion seemed to be justified 71 00:08:24.860 --> 00:08:29.960 when faced with programmatic statements of rationalist philosophers, such as the following by Kant. 72 00:08:29.960 --> 00:08:34.460 So far, it has been assumed that our knowledge had to conform to reality. 73 00:08:34.460 --> 00:08:39.660 Instead, it should be assumed that observational reality should conform to our mind. 74 00:08:39.660 --> 00:08:45.560 Recognizing knowledge as being structurally constrained by its role in the framework of action categories 75 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:47.960 provides the solution to such a complaint. 76 00:08:47.960 --> 00:08:55.360 For as soon as this is realized, all idealistic suggestions of rationalist philosophy disappear, 77 00:08:55.360 --> 00:09:02.260 and an epistemology claiming that a priori true propositions exist becomes a realistic epistemology instead. 78 00:09:02.260 --> 00:09:08.340 Understood as constrained by action categories, the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the 79 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:14.180 mental on the one hand and the real outside physical world on the other is bridged. So constrained, 80 00:09:14.180 --> 00:09:19.380 a priori knowledge must be as much a mental thing as a reflection of the structure of reality, 81 00:09:19.380 --> 00:09:25.060 since it is only through actions that the mind comes into contact with reality, so to speak. 82 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:30.980 Acting is a cognitively guided adjustment of a physical body in physical reality, and thus, 83 00:09:30.980 --> 00:09:36.500 There can be no doubt that a priori knowledge, conceived of as an insight into the structural 84 00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:42.100 constraints imposed on knowledge qua knowledge of actors, must indeed correspond to the nature of 85 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:47.860 things. The realistic character of such knowledge would manifest itself not only in the fact that 86 00:09:47.860 --> 00:09:53.380 one could not think it to be otherwise, but in the fact that one could not undo its truth. 87 00:09:54.100 --> 00:09:58.500 Yet, there are more specific implications involved in recognizing the praxeological 88 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:03.200 and the Foundations of Epistemology, apart from the general one, that in substituting 89 00:10:03.200 --> 00:10:08.940 the model of the mind of an actor acting by means of a physical body, for the traditional 90 00:10:08.940 --> 00:10:15.460 rationalist model of an active mind a priori knowledge, immediately becomes realistic knowledge. 91 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:21.100 So realistic indeed, that it can be understood as being literally not undoable. 92 00:10:21.100 --> 00:10:26.180 More specifically, in light of this insight, decisive support is given to those deplorably 93 00:10:26.180 --> 00:10:37.180 by a few rationalist philosophers who, against the empiricist zeitgeist, stubbornly maintain on various philosophical fronts that a priori true propositions about the real world are possible. 94 00:10:37.180 --> 00:10:50.180 Moreover, in light of the recognition of praxeological constraints on the structure of knowledge, these various rationalist endeavors become systematically integrated into one unified body of rationalist philosophy. 95 00:10:50.180 --> 00:10:56.940 philosophy. Inexplicitly understanding knowledge has displayed an argumentation as a peculiar 96 00:10:56.940 --> 00:11:03.020 category of action. It becomes clear immediately why the perennial rationalist claim that the 97 00:11:03.020 --> 00:11:08.680 laws of logic, beginning here with the most fundamental ones, i.e. of propositional logic 98 00:11:08.680 --> 00:11:17.260 and of junctors, and or if then not, and quanters, there is, all, some, are a priori true propositions 99 00:11:17.260 --> 00:11:23.100 about Reality, and not mere verbal stipulations regarding the transformation rules of arbitrarily 100 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:28.620 chosen signs, as empiricist formalists would have it, is indeed correct. They are as much 101 00:11:28.620 --> 00:11:33.880 laws of thinking as of reality because they are laws that have their ultimate foundation 102 00:11:33.880 --> 00:11:40.880 in action and could not be undone by any actor. In each and every action, an actor identifies 103 00:11:40.880 --> 00:11:46.240 some specific situation and categorizes it one way rather than another in order to be 104 00:11:46.240 --> 00:12:14.240 It is this which ultimately explains the structure of even the most elementary propositions, like Socrates as a man, consisting of a proper name, or some identifying expression for the naming or identifying of something, and a predicate to assert or deny some specific property of the named or identified object, and which explains the cornerstones of logic, the laws of identity, and contradiction. 105 00:12:14.240 --> 00:12:26.740 And it is this universal feature of action, and choosing, which also explains our understanding of the categories there is, all, and by implication some, as well as and, or if then and not. 106 00:12:26.740 --> 00:12:40.740 One can say, of course, that something can be a and non-a at the same time, or that and means this rather than something else, but one cannot undo the law of contradiction, and one cannot undo the real definition of and, 107 00:12:40.740 --> 00:12:52.740 For simply by virtue of acting with a physical body in physical space, we invariably affirm the law of contradiction, and invariably display our true constructive knowledge of the meaning of and and or. 108 00:12:52.740 --> 00:13:03.740 Similarly, the ultimate reason for arithmetic's being an a priori and yet empirical discipline, as rationalists have always understood it, now also becomes discernible. 109 00:13:03.740 --> 00:13:16.740 The prevailing empiricist-formalist orthodoxy conceives of arithmetic as the manipulation of arbitrarily defined signs according to arbitrarily stipulated transformation rules, and thus is entirely void of any empirical meaning. 110 00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:26.740 For this view, which evidently makes arithmetic nothing but play however skillful it might be, the successful applicability of arithmetic in physics is an intellectual embarrassment. 111 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:32.740 Indeed, empiricist formalists would have to explain away this fact as simply being a miraculous event. 112 00:13:32.740 --> 00:13:48.740 That it is no miracle, however, becomes apparent once the praxeological, or to use here the terminology of the most notable rationalist philosopher-mathematician Paul Lorentzen and his school, the operative or constructivist character of arithmetic is understood. 113 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:50.360 should. 114 00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:55.660 Arithmetic and its character as an a priori synthetic intellectual discipline is rooted 115 00:13:55.660 --> 00:14:00.080 in our understanding of repetition, the repetition of action. 116 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:06.620 More precisely, it rests on our understanding of the meaning of do this and do this again 117 00:14:06.620 --> 00:14:08.780 starting from the present result. 118 00:14:08.780 --> 00:14:13.500 And arithmetic then deals with real things, with constructed or constructively identified 119 00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:14.860 units of something. 120 00:14:14.860 --> 00:14:19.020 It demonstrates what relations are to hold between such units because of the fact that 121 00:14:19.020 --> 00:14:22.220 they are constructed according to the rule of repetition. 122 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:27.640 As Paul Lorenzen has demonstrated in detail, not all of what presently poses as mathematics 123 00:14:27.640 --> 00:14:31.860 can be constructively founded, and those parts then should of course be recognized for what 124 00:14:31.860 --> 00:14:35.340 they are, epistemologically worthless symbolic games. 125 00:14:35.340 --> 00:14:39.080 But all of the mathematical tools that are actually employed in physics, i.e. the tools 126 00:14:39.080 --> 00:14:42.460 of classical analysis, can be constructively derived. 127 00:14:42.460 --> 00:14:47.340 They are not empirically void symbolisms, but true propositions about reality. 128 00:14:47.340 --> 00:14:52.140 They apply to everything insofar as it consists of one or more distinct units, and insofar 129 00:14:52.140 --> 00:14:58.020 as these units are constructed or identified as units by a procedure of do it again, construct 130 00:14:58.020 --> 00:15:01.100 or identify another unit by repeating the previous operation. 131 00:15:01.100 --> 00:15:06.820 Again, one can say, of course, that 2 plus 2 is sometimes 4, but sometimes 2 or 5 units, 132 00:15:06.820 --> 00:15:12.660 In an observational reality, for lions plus lambs or for rabbits this may even be true, 133 00:15:12.660 --> 00:15:18.940 but in the reality of action, in identifying or constructing those units in repetitive operations, 134 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:23.580 the truth that 2 plus 2 is never anything but 4 could not possibly be undone. 135 00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:29.540 Further, the old rationalist claims that geometry, that is Euclidean geometry, is a priori and 136 00:15:29.540 --> 00:15:34.340 yet incorporates empirical knowledge about space, becomes supported too in view of our 137 00:15:34.340 --> 00:15:38.340 are insight into the praxeological constraints on knowledge. 138 00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:42.940 Since the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, and in particular, since Einstein's relativistic 139 00:15:42.940 --> 00:15:47.580 theory of gravitation, the prevailing position regarding geometry is once again empiricist 140 00:15:47.580 --> 00:15:48.940 and formalist. 141 00:15:48.940 --> 00:15:54.380 It conceives of geometry as either being part of empirical a posteriori physics, or as being 142 00:15:54.380 --> 00:15:56.740 empirically meaningless formalisms. 143 00:15:56.740 --> 00:16:02.620 Yet the geometry is either mere play or forever subject to empirical testing seems to be irreconcilable 144 00:16:02.620 --> 00:16:12.620 with the fact that Euclidean geometry is the foundation of engineering and construction and that nobody there even thinks of such propositions as only hypothetically true. 145 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:24.620 Recognizing knowledge as praxeologically constrained explains why the empiricist-formalist view is incorrect and why the empirical success of Euclidean geometry is no mere accident. 146 00:16:24.620 --> 00:16:28.620 Spatial knowledge is also included in the meaning of action. 147 00:16:28.620 --> 00:16:32.120 Action is the employment of a physical body in space. 148 00:16:32.120 --> 00:16:36.620 Without acting, there could be no knowledge of spatial relations and no measurement. 149 00:16:36.620 --> 00:16:40.120 Measuring is relating something to a standard. 150 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:42.620 Without standards, there is no measurement, 151 00:16:42.620 --> 00:16:46.620 and there is no measurement then which could ever falsify the standard. 152 00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:53.120 Evidently, the ultimate standard must be provided by the norms underlying the construction of bodily movements in space, 153 00:16:53.120 --> 00:16:56.620 and the construction of measurement instruments by means of one's body, 154 00:16:56.620 --> 00:17:26.620 Euclidean geometry, as again Paul Lorenzen in particular has explained, is no more and no less than the reconstruction of the ideal norms underlying our construction of such homogeneous basic forms as points, lines, planes, and distances, which are in a more or less perfect but always perfectible way, incorporated or realized in even our most primitive instruments of spatial measurements, such as 155 00:17:26.620 --> 00:17:32.540 has a measuring rod. Naturally, these norms and normative implications cannot be falsified 156 00:17:32.540 --> 00:17:38.060 by the result of any empirical measurement. On the contrary, their cognitive validity 157 00:17:38.060 --> 00:17:43.500 is substantiated by the fact that it is they which make physical measurements in space 158 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:49.500 possible. Any actual measurement must already presuppose the validity of the norms leading 159 00:17:49.500 --> 00:17:54.020 to the construction of one's measurement standards. It is in this sense that geometry 160 00:17:54.020 --> 00:18:01.060 is an a priori science, and that it must simultaneously be regarded as an empirically meaningful discipline, 161 00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:06.820 because it is not only the very precondition of any empirical spatial description, it is 162 00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:11.340 also the precondition for any active orientation in space. 163 00:18:11.340 --> 00:18:16.220 In view of the recognition of the praxeological character of knowledge, these insights regarding 164 00:18:16.220 --> 00:18:21.500 the nature of logic, arithmetic and geometry become integrated and embedded into a system 165 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:23.660 of epistemological dualism. 166 00:18:23.660 --> 00:18:27.980 The ultimate justification for this dualist position, i.e. the claim that there are two 167 00:18:27.980 --> 00:18:33.560 realms of intellectual inquiry that can be understood a priori as requiring categorically 168 00:18:33.560 --> 00:18:39.180 distinct methods of treatment and analysis, also lies in the praxeological nature of knowledge. 169 00:18:39.180 --> 00:18:44.940 It explains why we must differentiate between a realm of objects which is categorized causally 170 00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:49.260 and a realm that is categorized teleologically instead. 171 00:18:49.260 --> 00:18:55.220 I have already briefly indicated during my discussion of praxeology that causality is 172 00:18:55.220 --> 00:18:57.300 a category of action. 173 00:18:57.300 --> 00:19:03.100 The idea of causality, that there are constant time invariantly operating causes which allow 174 00:19:03.100 --> 00:19:08.020 one to project past observations regarding the relations of events into the future, is 175 00:19:08.020 --> 00:19:13.540 something, as empiricism since Hume has noted, which has no observational basis whatsoever. 176 00:19:13.540 --> 00:19:16.740 One cannot observe the connecting link between observations. 177 00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:21.580 Even if one could, such an observation would not prove it to be a time-invariant connection. 178 00:19:21.580 --> 00:19:25.700 Instead, the principle of causality must be understood as implied in our understanding 179 00:19:25.700 --> 00:19:31.060 of action as an interference with the observational world, made with the intent of diverting the 180 00:19:31.060 --> 00:19:36.420 natural course of events in order to produce a different preferred state of affairs, i.e. 181 00:19:36.420 --> 00:19:41.500 of making things happen that otherwise would not happen, and thus presupposes the notion 182 00:19:41.500 --> 00:19:46.060 of events which are related to each other through time-invariantly operating causes. 183 00:19:46.060 --> 00:19:51.420 An actor might err with respect to his particular assumptions about which earlier interference 184 00:19:51.420 --> 00:19:57.100 produced which later result, but successful or not, any action, changed or unchanged in 185 00:19:57.100 --> 00:20:02.140 light of its previous success or failure, presupposes that there are constantly connected 186 00:20:02.140 --> 00:20:09.140 events as such, even if no particular cause for any particular event can ever be pre-known 187 00:20:09.140 --> 00:20:10.660 to any actor. 188 00:20:10.660 --> 00:20:17.460 Without such an assumption, it would be impossible to ever categorize two or more observational 189 00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:24.100 experiences as falsifying or confirming each other rather than interpreting them as logically 190 00:20:24.100 --> 00:20:26.620 incommensurable events. 191 00:20:26.620 --> 00:20:32.700 Only because the existence of time-invariantly operating causes as such is already assumed 192 00:20:32.700 --> 00:20:38.300 can one ever encounter particular instances of confirming or disconfirming observational 193 00:20:38.300 --> 00:20:51.300 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? 194 00:20:51.300 --> 00:21:00.300 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. 195 00:21:00.300 --> 00:21:04.300 Even if one tried, one could not successfully refute its validity. 196 00:21:04.300 --> 00:21:19.300 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. 197 00:21:19.300 --> 00:21:24.180 Indeed, both categories are strictly exclusive and complementary. 198 00:21:24.180 --> 00:21:29.600 Action presupposes a causally structured observational reality, but the reality of action, which 199 00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:34.780 we can understand as requiring such structure, is not itself causally structured. 200 00:21:34.780 --> 00:21:40.940 Instead, it is a reality that must be categorized teleologically as purpose-directed meaningful 201 00:21:40.940 --> 00:21:41.940 behavior. 202 00:21:41.940 --> 00:21:47.300 In fact, one can neither deny nor undo the view that there are two categorically different 203 00:21:47.300 --> 00:21:52.300 Realms of Phenomena, since such attempts would have to presuppose causally related events 204 00:21:52.300 --> 00:21:58.820 qua actions that take place within observational reality, as well as the existence of intentionally 205 00:21:58.820 --> 00:22:04.100 rather than causally related phenomena in order to interpret such observational events 206 00:22:04.100 --> 00:22:06.620 as meaning to deny something. 207 00:22:06.620 --> 00:22:11.760 Neither a causal nor a teleological momism could be justified without running into an 208 00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:17.120 and Open Contradiction. Physically stating either position and claiming to say something 209 00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:22.840 meaningful in so doing, the case is in fact made for an indisputable complementarity of 210 00:22:22.840 --> 00:22:29.240 both a realm of causal and teleological phenomena. Everything which is not an action must necessarily 211 00:22:29.240 --> 00:22:35.240 be categorized causally. There is nothing to be known a priori about this range of phenomena 212 00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:39.480 except that it is structured causally, and that it is structured according to the categories 213 00:22:39.480 --> 00:22:43.420 of Propositional Logic, Arithmetic and Geometry. 214 00:22:43.420 --> 00:22:47.220 Everything else there is to know about this range of phenomena must be derived from contingent 215 00:22:47.220 --> 00:22:51.340 observations and thus represents a posteriori knowledge. 216 00:22:51.340 --> 00:22:55.820 In particular, all knowledge about two or more specific observational events being causally 217 00:22:55.820 --> 00:22:59.440 related is not a posteriori knowledge. 218 00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:03.600 Obviously the range of phenomena described in this way coincides, more or less, with 219 00:23:03.600 --> 00:23:08.420 what is usually considered to be the field of the empirical natural sciences. 220 00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:14.780 In contrast, everything that is an action must be categorized teleologically. 221 00:23:14.780 --> 00:23:19.900 This realm of phenomena is constrained by the laws of logic and arithmetic, too, but 222 00:23:19.900 --> 00:23:24.840 it is not constrained by the laws of geometry as incorporated in our instruments of measuring 223 00:23:24.840 --> 00:23:31.060 spatially extending objects, because actions do not exist apart from subjective interpretations 224 00:23:31.060 --> 00:23:36.960 of observable things, and so they must be identified by reflective understanding rather 225 00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:42.120 rather than spatial measurements, nor are actions causally connected events, but events 226 00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:47.000 that are connected meaningfully within a categorical framework of means and ends. 227 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:53.400 One cannot know a priori what the specific values, choices, and costs of some actor are 228 00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:54.980 or will be. 229 00:23:54.980 --> 00:23:59.720 This would fall entirely into the province of empirical a posteriori knowledge. 230 00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:04.400 In fact, which particular action an actor is going to undertake would depend on his 231 00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:10.120 is knowledge regarding the observational reality and or the reality of other actors' actions, 232 00:24:10.120 --> 00:24:14.200 and it would be manifestly impossible to conceive of such states of knowledge as predictable 233 00:24:14.200 --> 00:24:18.800 on the basis of time invariantly operating causes. A knowing actor cannot predict his 234 00:24:18.800 --> 00:24:24.080 future knowledge before he has actually acquired it, and he demonstrates, simply by virtue 235 00:24:24.080 --> 00:24:29.600 of distinguishing between successful and unsuccessful predictions, that he must conceive of himself 236 00:24:29.600 --> 00:24:34.680 as capable of learning from unknown experiences in as yet unknown ways. 237 00:24:34.680 --> 00:24:41.800 Thus, knowledge regarding the particular course of actions is only a posteriori, and since 238 00:24:41.800 --> 00:24:46.520 such knowledge would have to include the actor's own knowledge as a necessary ingredient of 239 00:24:46.520 --> 00:24:52.040 every action whose every change can have an influence on a particular action being chosen, 240 00:24:52.040 --> 00:24:57.920 teleological knowledge must also necessarily be reconstructive or historical knowledge. 241 00:24:57.920 --> 00:25:03.300 It would only provide ex post explanations, which would have no systematic bearing on the 242 00:25:03.300 --> 00:25:07.440 prediction of future actions, because in principle future states of knowledge could never be 243 00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:11.760 predicted on the basis of constantly operating empirical causes. 244 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:16.320 Obviously, such a delineation of a branch of a posteriori and reconstructive science 245 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:22.400 of action fits the usual description of such disciplines as history and sociology. 246 00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:26.940 What is known to be true a priori regarding the field of action, and what would then have 247 00:25:26.940 --> 00:25:30.940 One way we would have to constrain any historical or sociological explanation is this. 248 00:25:30.940 --> 00:25:36.940 For one thing, any such explanation, which essentially would have to reconstruct an actor's knowledge, 249 00:25:36.940 --> 00:25:40.940 would invariably have to be a reconstruction in terms of knowledge of ends and means, 250 00:25:40.940 --> 00:25:45.940 of choices and costs, of profits and losses, and so on. 251 00:25:45.940 --> 00:25:50.940 And secondly, since these are evidently the categories of praxeology as conceived of by Mises, 252 00:25:50.940 --> 00:26:08.940 Any such explanation must also be constrained by the laws of praxeology, and since these laws are, as I have already explained, a priori laws, they must also operate as logical constraints on any future course of action. 253 00:26:08.940 --> 00:26:14.540 They are valid independent of any specific state of knowledge that an actor might have acquired, 254 00:26:14.540 --> 00:26:21.640 simply by virtue of the fact that whatever this state might be, it must be described in terms of action categories. 255 00:26:21.640 --> 00:26:27.140 And as referring to actions as such, the laws of praxeology must then be coextensive 256 00:26:27.140 --> 00:26:31.340 with all the predictive knowledge there can be in the field of the science of action. 257 00:26:31.340 --> 00:26:35.840 In fact, ignoring for the moment that the status of geometry as an a priori science 258 00:26:35.840 --> 00:26:39.200 When science was ultimately grounded in our understanding of action, 259 00:26:39.200 --> 00:26:44.480 and insofar, praxeology would have to be regarded as the more fundamental cognitive discipline, 260 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:49.360 the peculiar role of praxeology proper within the entire system of epistemology 261 00:26:49.360 --> 00:26:52.800 can be understood as somewhat analogous to that of geometry. 262 00:26:52.800 --> 00:26:55.040 Praxeology is for the field of action, 263 00:26:55.040 --> 00:26:59.120 while Euclidean geometry is for the field of observations, non-actions. 264 00:26:59.840 --> 00:27:03.600 As the geometry incorporated in our measuring instruments 265 00:27:03.600 --> 00:27:07.200 constrains the spatial structure of observational reality, 266 00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:11.200 so praxeology constrains the range of things 267 00:27:11.200 --> 00:27:15.200 that can possibly be experienced in the field of actions.