ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Was Mises a Conventionalist? - A Critical Analysis of Mises' and Rothbard's Defenses of Praxeology
Author: Linsbichler Alexander
Economists of the Austrian School have played an eminent role in some of the great controversies in economics. Prominent examples include the Methodenstreit, the socialist calculation debates, and the discussions on satisfactory explanations and successful cures of economic crises. The economic as well as the political positions of members of the Austrian School are grounded in specific philosophical assumptions and methodological principles. Altering the perspective in our understanding of these foundations may help to reinterpret and reevaluate Austrian positions in economic controversies. In this paper I present a rational reconstruction of the epistemology and philosophy of science of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, two main representatives of the Austrian School of Economics. According to them, the methodology of the theoretical social sciences is praxeology, which allegedly provides an a priori true and absolutely certain theory of human action. I suggest that this view regarding the epistemological status of the theoretical social sciences results from aiming at solving the problem of induction. In order to explicate and identify Mises' and Rothbard's positions, Popper's analysis of epistemological positions as reformulated by Milford is applied. It is shown that Rothbard's position may be classified as Essentialist Intuitive Universalism and that Mises - perhaps unintentionally - defends Conventionalism. Based on anti-naturalism, methodological dualism and individualism, he rejects alternative epistemological positions as unsatisfactory. The proposed classification resolves a number of interpretational problems in Mises' writings, which otherwise remain open. This is in contrast both to the received view, which interprets Mises' position as Apriorism, and to Tokumaru, who takes the Fundamental Axiom of praxeology to be a methodological rule. Also, the view held by representatives as well as by critics of the Austrian School and according to which Rothbard and Mises share similar epistemological positions is rejected. Consequently, their defenses of praxeology differ with respect to the methodological and epistemological status of economic theory, and its import for policy decisions. In addition, I suggest a problem shift regarding future discussions of praxeology: Emphasis ought to be placed on the purported deduction of praxeological theorems and not on the epistemological status of the Fundamental Axiom. The use of modern symbolic logic may help to identify gaps and hidden assumptions in the chain of reasoning from the Fundamental Axiom to, for instance, Neo-Austrian business cycle theory.
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