(I appear to be incompetent at embedding links. Prof. Schaeffer’s and Will Luther’s comments are available at The Perfect Substitute, while Prof. Koppl’s remarks are at ThinkMarkets. Thanks for the interest and the high quality of the comments, y’all.)

Others continue to flock to Art’s defense. In the words of a former co-worker, “We decided to whup his *** by committee.” Or, in the words (more or less) of Ron White, “I didn’t know how many of ‘em it was gonna take to throw me out of the bar, but I knew how many of ‘em they was gonna use.” Ah, well, no Southern man should ever be afraid to fight, even against long odds.

It occurs to me: Art and I know each other, but…. I’ve met Prof. Schaeffer, but I doubt she remembers me; I don’t think I’ve met Mr. Luther. I know Prof. Koppl on sight, but I very much doubt that he knows me. Folks, please permit me to buy the first round at the soonest opportunity.

More below the fold

Responding to Will Luther (at The Perfect Substitute):

In fact, I would claim that Mises is simply a classical economist in many respects.

In his descriptions of humans engaging in productive and market behavior, yes, I would agree. In what he is attempting to accomplish, no, I disagree. Very few economists will ever set out to develop a complete, logically correct theory ahead of measurement.

Here's a short reading list for folks like Noel who'd like to understand what it is that… those… Austrians are doing.

I appreciate the reading list; however, though short in number of titles, is several thousands of pages worth of reading and represents a substantial opportunity cost. Are you sure you can’t give me the Cliff notes? Plus (my bad), but Polanyi was exactly the sort of writing I had in mind when discussing my eyes glazing over. I recall one time in (probably) 1994. I attempted a weekly brown-bag discussion group on philosophy that Prof. Lavoie ran. I lasted exactly 50 minutes.

All so-called objective facts require an act of interpretation; and interpretation is necessarily subjective. …. Less than pure objectivity does not spiral into absolute relativism where one cannot know anything.

Agreed. No arguments here…. And….? A fundamental premise of the modern experimental method is that we can never prove anything. Plus, I’m so glad we agree not to subside into some morass of Derridist-style nonsense.

Human Action is not an irrefutable tract and Mises knew this.

Glad to hear it. So, how would Mises approach revising his treatise in order to improve the theory? What parts of HA would you suggest we jettison, and why?

Responding to Prof. Koppl (at ThinkMarkets):

I might whine about how unfair it is to contrast Mises’ “philosophy” with “science” and then expect a response that doesn’t get into the philosophy of science.

Well, I never promised I wouldn’t fight dirty.

Laying out the scientific sense in which socialism “doesn’t work” or the minimum wage “doesn’t work” is a scientific enterprise. It’s about society, not building an “irrefutable description of human behavior.”

Ok, but how is it scientific without exposing sufficiently narrow and sufficiently specific predictions to the data?

Noel is mistaken about what Mises was trying to do. …. No, he was more interested in results than methodology.

I cheerfully defer to superior knowledge. How much of HA would I have had to read before this was made clear to me?

For all his talk about apriorism and whatnot, Mises completely wants us to engage in that dialectic between fact and theory that we call science. Mises’ theory of the trade cycle is science not philosophy. His theorem on the impossibility of rational economic calculation under socialism is science, not philosophy. His marginal utility approach to money demand is science, not philosophy.

Excellent! Good stuff! Thanks. And all of this was in HA or was it in collateral works? How have his models stood the test of repeated comparison with experience?

Mises had some weird lingo. He worked out his position before many modern developments in methodology. …. But he was doing science all the way, albeit front-loaded with some now old-fashioned philosophy.

All right! My question is, is all this in HA? My original point was not that Mises wasn’t a scientist, but that Human Action (by itself) seemed to be a work of philosophy and it bored me stiff. If I decide to pick up HA again, where should I start reading to minimize my exposure to weird lingo and old-fashioned philosophy?

Where is the literature where economists have empirically tested Mises’ propositions? I know some literature exists wherein other Austrian-school propositions are tested. F’rinstance, I recently read an old article by Vernon Smith testing (and supporting) Hayek’s famous argument from “Use of Knowledge in Society.” HT: Ed Lopez, for that one.

Responding to Prof. Schaeffer (at The Perfect Substitute):

First, I’m loud and vociferous? I’M LOUD AND VOCIFEROUS?? Wait… yeah… you’re right. Then again, perhaps one could recast my comments as one who is asking to be convinced that I should devote the considerable effort to reading HA, after having tried and failed. Plus, how many non-Austrians, when innocently asking what it’s all about, have been frostily told to read Mises, then all would be abundantly clear?

…the way Noel is using the term theory is not at all how Mises uses the term. For Noel – and please correct me if I am wrong – theory is the same as hypothesis and conjectures.

Theory and hypothesis, yeah; conjecture, not so much. I mean, I think that the conjecture, “opening umbrellas causes rain” is pretty poor theory.

Economic reasoning is a process of moving from an unsystematic collection of beliefs (poor theory) to a (A) systematic and internally consistent general theory of human action. From here, (B) specific hypothesis or conjectures may be logically derived involving concrete and contextual relationships and (C) confront the evidence. I think Austrians would say that if the evidence (C) doesn’t line up with the conjecture (B), check that C is consistent with what B suggests we should be looking at. If so, check the move from A to B before you reconsider A.

OK, that’s typically what mainstream economists also try to do, I believe.

When developing another scientific question to examine, the relationship between B and C in t1 never forms the basis for A in t2. To be uncharacteristically (and humorously) Randian – A is A.

OK, I don’t completely buy into that, but ok; although my (A) will be extremely limited, and—on occasion—subject to testing again. Isn’t it sometimes comforting to demonstrate to yourself that demand curves do generally slope downward?

Finally, the point that Roger makes about Mises being a scientist is probably the most important. To pejoratively relegate Human Action to the realm of philosophy implicitly suggests a rather low opinion on the extent to which philosophy informs science.

Guilty, but that one of the things that so impresses me about the “standard” scientific method. Even when the entire apparatus is in the hands of intellectual Phillistines and mere technicians such as myself, we’ve made remarkable strides in improving human wellbeing with that apparatus.

Roger points out, the contributions of Mises on such grounds as the impossibility of economic calculation under collective ownership of the means of production is not philosophy – its economic science.

As above, agreed. But did Mises do this in HA or in his other works? Did it have to be buried so deep that so many people give up the attempt to learn the lesson before it even begins? I thought Hayek elegantly achieved the same result in one quick paper (Use of Knowledge in Society) that my undergraduates read and understand.

Perhaps the reason Noel’s more mainstream friends call him an Austrian is not because he read one chapter in Human Action and has a publication in the RAE, but because they too conflate the economic and philosophical arguments.

I think you’re crediting most of the orthodoxy with more interest in Austrians than actually exists. I think all they “know” is that Austrians don’t “believe” in running regressions, and their interest immediately ends. Because I happen to know more than they do, surely that makes me an Austrian.