Help with Rothbard

[bmacwilliam]

I have read some of Rothbard's material, but certainly not in it's entirety and certainly in no systematic way. So what I thought I'd do is go back and read it in a more organised way. So, upon a recommendation, I am beginning with "The Mantle of Science". Dammit, I'm stumped! I think there are errors that are serious enough that I have to stop and solicit feedback from perhaps more learned folks on this topic in order that I can have confidence that continuing is worthwhile.

Essentially, he's arguing that using standard deterministic scientific and mathematical approaches to economics is not appropriate - a position that I am admitedly skeptical of, but one I'd like to understand. Here's an example:

Rothbard: "If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist,

is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer

in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since

man’s mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come

to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try to convince Y or

anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist

must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will

choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject ideas."

The problem with this, I believe, is a textbook begging-the-question fallacy. The argument assumes that any "choice" must be a "free will choice" and so the person must have free will to change their mind and believe in determinism. This leaves out the obvious possibility that the 'choice' is simply the perception of choice and not truly free (however likely this is a different question and while relevant perhaps, is NOT relevant to the form of the argument).

The consciousness argument of this form however I believe is NOT fallacious, but I digress.

But regardless of any implications, isn't the form of his argument clearly fallacious? How am I wrong?

Bob

[sjw]

You're right, that's not a valid argument for the reason you gave. The Objectivist argument is different, in my recollection it basically says that if determinism is right, then there is no basis for objectivity, and hence all views, including determinism, have an indeterminate truth status. Hence it regards free will as axiomatic -- you have to accept it in any attempt to affirm or deny it.

Shayne

[Peter]

Help with Rothbard, Bob?

Ask George. He knows everything. Uh oh. George is busy.

Here is his ghost.

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

Reply-To: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

To: "*Atlantis" <atlantis@wetheliving.com>

Subject: ATL: Re: Buridan's ass (was "Are mind and will an illusion?")

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:33:05 -0600

Bill Dwyer quoted Murray Rothbard as follows:

"If a man were really indifferent between two alternatives, he could not make any choice between them, and therefore the choice could not be revealed in action.... Any action demonstrates choice based on preference: preference for one alternative over others." [_Man, Economy, and State_, HB, p. 65]"

Bill then concluded:

"In fact, what free will would require is precisely the kind of indifference that Rothbard rejects. For if we are not indifferent to which alternative we choose, then only one choice is possible, namely, the one that we prefer. To be sure, there are times that we can and do act against our emotional inclinations, but only because we have a reason to -- only because we perceive a greater, long-range value in choosing the alternative."

Rothbard's discussion of revealed preference is irrelevant to the issue under consideration, for the praxeological meaning of "preference" differs from its psychological meaning. Praxeology, unlike psychology, does not take into account *why* a man chooses such and such; rather, it deals "with any given ends and with the formal implications of the fact that men have ends and employ means to attain them." This is why "all explanations of the law of marginal utility on psychological or physiological grounds [e.g., the law of satiation of wants] are erroneous." (Murray Rothbard, *Man, Economy, and State,* p. 63.)

It should also be remembered that Rothbard was himself a vigorous defender of free will. As he wrote in "The Mantle of Science":

"At the very best, the application of determinism to man is just an agenda for the future. After several centuries of arrogant proclamations, no determinist has come up with anything like a theory determining all of men's actions. Surely the burden of proof must rest on the one advancing a theory, particularly when the theory contradicts man's primary impressions. Surely we can, at the very least, tell the determinists to keep quiet until they can offer their determinations -- including, of course, their advance determinations of each of our reactions to their determining theory. But there is far more that can be said. For determinism, as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will. If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist, is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since man's mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try to convince Y or anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject his ideas." (*Scientism and Values," ed. Schoeck and Wiggins, p. 161.)

Bill wrote:

"But, in order for that choice to be truly free, we must be indifferent to which alternative we choose, in which case, our choice is arbitrary -- not just seemingly arbitrary but ~really~ arbitrary, i.e., no more valuable to us than the alternative. But in that case, why did we choose it instead of the alternative? What motivated our choice? ~Nothing did~, according to the doctrine of free will."

Why must we be "indifferent" to an alternative in order for our choice to be "truly free"? This position doesn't become more cogent merely because Bill has stated it repeatedly. I have never said that free choices are unmotivated. Nor have I said they are "arbitrary" in Bill's sense of the word. What I have said is that motives and reasons do not function like mechanistic causes, that a rational mind must evaluate and assess various reasons and causes, and that in this process of decision-making there are a number of choices it can make.

Bill argues, in effect, that our preferences -- a vague catch-all word which he has never clearly defined -- somehow "determine" our choices. But he has not given any argument against the volitionist position that

our choices can play a pivotal role in deciding what those preferences are. We can choose among various preferences; and if Bill wants to say that a choice, once it manifests itself in action, exhibits (or "demonstrates") a preference for the object of our action, then this is true (in a praxeological sense) by definition. For praxeologists, such as Rothbard and Mises, *define* human action as goal-directed behavior, as the attempt to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs with one that is more satisfactory, so the goal of a given action is necessarily that for which we have a preference. Bill does not seem to understand the purely formalistic nature of the Misesian praxeology which Rothbard employed.

I wrote:

"When a normal person wishes to express the notion that he could not have acted differently than he did, he will usually say something like, 'I had no choice in the matter.' But not so the soft determinist. When he wants to say that he could not have acted differently, he will say something like, 'I had a choice in the matter, but I was determined to choose as I did'."

And Bill replied:

"We have to be careful here to specify exactly what is meant by someone's saying, "I had no choice in the matter." If a man wants to marry his fiancee more than anything in the world (and sees no reason not to), he will not say that he has "no choice in the matter", but there is a sense in which he doesn't. Given his values, he has no reason to choose otherwise. In that case, the alternative of not marrying her is not ~psychologically~ open to him."

I would never use this kind of language -- i.e., I would never say that I have "no choice" but to marry someone (unless perhaps it is literally a shotgun wedding) -- and I don't recall ever meeting someone who thinks like this. Moreover, to say that a person has "no reason to choose otherwise" in no way implies that his choice is causally determined -- unless, of course, we fail to understand the nature of "reasons" and insist on treating them like mechanistic causes.

Bill wrote:

"However, one can still say that he has "a choice in the matter", if only in the sense that no one is forcing him to marry her -- that he could choose not to marry her if he ~preferred~ not to. This is the soft determinist's sense of "having a choice in the matter".

This is an old dodge, one that goes back at least to Thomas Hobbes. And it is a perfect example of what I mean when I accuse soft determinists of engaging in word play. When the ordinary person says he chose (say) to go to a movie, he is manifestly *not* saying that his choice was not made under the threat of coercion. Rather, he means that he made a choice between that alternative and others.

The soft determinist want to substitute the *interpersonal* concept of a *voluntary,* non-coerced choice with the *intrapersonal* concept of a *free* choice. This merely bypasses the problem by cashing in on various meanings of "free." If you make a choice without a gun at your head (or some equivalent), then the determinist will say you had a "choice." Fine, but this is not the meaning of "choice" that is involved in the debate over free-will.

Lord Acton once estimated that the word "freedom" has been defined in 200 different ways. Although this rich vein of definitions may provide a good deal of wiggle room for the determinist, the practice of hopping from one definition to another doesn't solve any philosophical problems.

I wrote:

"The soft determinist may have great faith in the power of this verbal legerdemain to solve complex philosophical problems. But I don't share this interest in word magic, so I will let the matter rest here and move on to more serious issues."

And Bill replied:

"This sarcastic remark is completely unwarranted. There is no verbal legerdemain here, no word magic, only a careful analysis of the issue in terms of customary parlance and the observed facts of human psychology."

I stand by my original statement. What Bill regards as "careful analysis," I see as definition-hopping.

In the final analysis, to say that a person acts on the basis of his preferences doesn't tell us anything at all about the free-will problem -- for it doesn't say *how* those preferences are formed; and it doesn't explain how, from a welter of conflicting preferences, one is eventually chosen over others. A theory should have at least some explanatory value, but soft determinism explains nothing at all. It is an article of faith based on the erroneous assumption that "reasons" in the inner world of consciousness function exactly like "causes" in the

external world of physical objects.

As I said before, I prefer to confront the phenomena of consciousness on their own terms, rather than resort to a pseudo-explanation that, in the final analysis, explains nothing at all. When the soft determinist is able to postulate a causal law of consciousness that will enable us to predict our future thoughts and actions, then I will be impressed. Until then, I will continue to regard soft determinism as a circular method of "explanation" that derives from a inappropriate analogy with physical causation.

As it stands now, the only prediction the soft determinist can make is that a person will ultimately act on the basis of his "strongest" preference. Never mind that he cannot specify what this preference is until *after* the choice is made. Never mind that this "prediction" is foolproof, because it can only be made *after* the fact. Never mind all this -- for the soft determinist has convinced himself that he is uttering a profound truth, even though it is little more than a tautology and one which most volitionists (including myself) would not

dispute.

Ghs

[bmacwilliam]

You're right, that's not a valid argument for the reason you gave. The Objectivist argument is different, in my recollection it basically says that if determinism is right, then there is no basis for objectivity, and hence all views, including determinism, have an indeterminate truth status. Hence it regards free will as axiomatic -- you have to accept it in any attempt to affirm or deny it.

Shayne

I'm not entirely clear on your description of the Objectivist position, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, it doesn't fill me with confidence when I run up against things like this...

Bob

[bmacwilliam]

As I said before, I prefer to confront the phenomena of consciousness on their own terms, rather than resort to a pseudo-explanation that, in the final analysis, explains nothing at all. When the soft determinist is able to postulate a causal law of consciousness that will enable us to predict our future thoughts and actions, then I will be impressed. Until then, I will continue to regard soft determinism as a circular method of "explanation" that derives from a inappropriate analogy with physical causation.

Peter,

George has a legit beef with your posting style. I can't tell whose words these are.

Either way, I think this misses the point again and doesn't help.

FWIW, Bill Dwyer commits the fallacy I mentioned very readily. Ask him about tabula rasa and see how long it takes for this to appear.

Bob

[Peter]

Sorry it did not help Bob.

You wrote, "I can't tell whose words these are."

Like the above sentence, George puts quotes, in quotes. I must admit, I had to go back and look again at George's old letter, even though it sounded like a piece of his argument, to be sure. I will try to remember to put my quotes in the form of

Bob wrote:

XYZ

end quote,

unless it is Ayn I am quoting, then I will use quotation marks, with my words appearing on the same line, outside the quote marks.

I have about 400 other letters on Rothbard, many by Ghs, but I will not send any more. To be certain they would help and pertain I would need to read them first, and that would take hours.

Just counting my saved letters from George would take hours. I agree with just about everything he says except about Anarchism, even if he is only speaking to highlight the debate between the upholders of Randian limited government and Rational Anarchism.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

[Reidy]

I agree with Bob_Mac and sjw that the argument is circular (and an instance of what Rand calls a stolen concept) if you talk about persuasion, but not necessarily if you talk about belief as the more familiar version does.

A standard line in modern philosophy is that self-referential arguments such as this one (another is Plato's argument that hardcore skepticism fails because when the skeptic claims that there is no knowledge, he thereby claims a particular piece of knowledge) make some move that gets them into trouble with the theory of types, and thus they are fallacious. I don't know how the story goes, much less whether the criticism is a sound one.

The argument is a lot older than Objectivism. Most people attribute it to Kant. Blanshard presents it in The Nature of Thought (which I suspect is where the Objectivists came across it). OL's own Ted Keer found it in Epicurus.

[bmacwilliam]

Rothbard: "The Mathematical Method: Not only measurement but the use of

mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today,

is an illegitimate transfer from physics. In the first place, a mathematical

equation implies the existence of quantities that can be

equated, which in turn implies a unit of measurement for these quantities."

This is a very weak argument. It seems to me this is an under-appreciation of what type of information mathematical equations can relay. A mathematical equation describing human wants or other "free will" psychological traits may be problematic, but this is not what he asserts. He asserts much more, ie "but the use of mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today, is an illegitimate transfer". This I think is flat out wrong.

Mathematical equations may, and often do in Economics and Physics, state simple conservation laws that are indeed quite appropriately described with variables and equations.

However, even a murkier quantity as he describes can also be expressed in mathematics without committing the error he describes at all.

Rothbard: "All attempts to discover such constants (such as the strict quantity theory of money or the Keynesian “consumption function”) were inherently doomed to failure."

Ok, this makes sense to me on one level. Here is the function:

C = c0 + c1Yd

The complexity (or simplicity for that matter) of the c1 quantity is not addressed, and perhaps maybe it can't be, so in that sense, Rothbard is correct. But he clearly throws out the baby with the bathwater here.

The equation tells us this: What we consume equals what we consume independent of income plus what we consume due to some (not elaborated) relationship with income. So, again, to discover c1 may indeed be impossible (at least on an individual level), but the overall general assertion could be true and at the very least, it certainly doesn't mean that the math is a illegitimate transfer from Physics. At the highest level, it is a simple conservation law assertion.

Thoughts?

Bob

[bmacwilliam]

Another..

Rothbard:"Other metaphors bodily and misleadingly transplanted from

physics include: “equilibrium,” “elasticity,” “statics and dynamics,”

“velocity of circulation,” and “friction.”

So, it seems obvious that "elasticity" as defined in Economics is a no-no - a useless, misleading transplant from Physics.

Rothbard: "The laws of human action are

therefore qualitative, and, in fact, it should be clear that free will precludes

quantitative laws. Thus, we may set forth the absolute economic

law that an increase in the supply of a good, given the

demand, will lower its price; but if we attempted to prescribe with

similar generality how much the price would fall, given a definite

increase in supply, we would shatter against the free-will rock of

varying valuations by different individuals."

Except that we now have a precise and quantified number for the mathematically defined elasticity constant he dismisses in the first case. The number may not mean a whole lot, but it means at the very least "the ratio of quantities, of which the intricate relationship we may not understand, nevertheless evaluates to exactly this number under these conditions".

To be clear, it may be of limited utility - maybe, but outright dismissal I just don't understand. In fact, in the close proximity of the quantities in question, this determination could very well have excellent predictive value.

Bob