The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method LF Ed. [1962]

7/29/2019 The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method LF Ed. [1962]

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the ultimate foundation ofeconomic science An Essay on Method


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Titles in the Liberty Fund Library of the Works of

Ludwig von MisesTheory and History: An Interpretation of Social and

Economic EvolutionLiberalism: The Classical TraditionHuman Action: A Treatise on EconomicsThe Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay

on MethodNation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics

and History of Our Time


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ludwig von mises


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The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science An Essay on Method

ludwig von misesEdited by Bettina Bien Greaves

liberty fund Indianapolis


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This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation establishedto encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsibleindividuals.

The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the wordfreedom (amagi), or liberty. It is taken from a clay document writtenabout 2300b.c. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

Editorial Additions 2006 Liberty Fund, Inc.

Front cover photograph of Ludwig von Mises used by permission of theLudwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.

Frontispiece courtesy of Bettina Bien Greaves All Rights Reserved

First published in 1962 by William Volker Fund in association with D. VanNostrand, Inc. The second edition was published in 1978 by the Institutefor Humane Studies, Inc. In 2002, Bettina Bien Greaves reprinted the secondedition in association with the Foundation for Economic Education.

Printed in the United States of America

10 09 08 07 06 c 5 4 3 2 110 09 08 07 06 p 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Von Mises, Ludwig, 18811973.

The ultimate foundation of economic science: an essay on method/ Ludwig von Mises.2nd ed.

p. cm.(Liberty Fund library of the works of Ludwig von Mises)The second edition was published in 1978 by the Institute for Humane

Studies, Inc. In 2002, Bettina Bien Greaves reprinted the second edition inassociation with the Foundation for Economic EducationT.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.isbn-13: 978-0-86597-638-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)isbn-10: 0-86597-638-4 (hardcover: alk. paper)isbn-13: 978-0-86597-639-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)isbn-10: 0-86597-639-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)1. Economics. 2. EconomicsMethodology. 3. Positivism.I. Title. II. Series: Von Mises, Ludgwig, 18811973. Works. 2005.

HB71.V65 2006330.01dc22 2005033274

Liberty Fund, Inc.8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684


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contents

Preface to the Second Edition xi

Some Preliminary Observations Concerning PraxeologyInstead of an Introduction 1

1 The Permanent Substratum of Epistemology 12 On Action 23 On Economics 3 4 The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking 45 The Reality of the External World 5

6 Causality and Teleology 67 The Category of Action 78 The Sciences of Human Action 7

chapter 1 The Human Mind 91 The Logical Structure of the Human Mind 92 A Hypothesis about the Origin of the A Priori

Categories 123 The A Priori 15 4 The A Priori Representation of Reality 165 Induction 186 The Paradox of Probability Empiricism 237 Materialism 258 The Absurdity of Any Materialistic Philosophy 26

chapter 2 The Activistic Basis of Knowledge 301 Man and Action 302 Finality 313 Valuation 33 4 The Chimera of Unied Science 34


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viii contents

5 The Two Branches of the Sciences of Human Action 366 The Logical Character of Praxeology 397 The Logical Character of History 408 The Thymological Method 41

chapter 3 Necessity and Volition 471 The Innite 472 The Ultimate Given 483 Statistics 49 4 Free Will 515 Inevitability 54

chapter 4 Certainty and Uncertainty 561 The Problem of Quantitative Deniteness 562 Certain Knowledge 573 The Uncertainty of the Future 58 4 Quantication and Understanding in Acting

and in History 595 The Precariousness of Forecasting in Human Affairs 606 Economic Prediction and the Trend Doctrine 617 Decision-Making 628 Conrmation and Refutability 629 The Examination of Praxeological Theorems 64

chapter 5 On Some Popular Errors Concerning theScope and Method of Economics 66

1 The Research Fable 662 The Study of Motives 673 Theory and Practice 69 4 The Pitfalls of Hypostatization 705 On the Rejection of Methodological Individualism 726 The Approach of Macroeconomics 747 Reality and Play 788 Misinterpretation of the Climate of Opinion 819 The Belief in the Omnipotence of Thought 82

10 The Concept of a Perfect System of Government 8511 The Behavioral Sciences 91


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contents ix

chapter 6 Further Implications of the Neglect of Economic Thinking 94

1 The Zoological Approach to Human Problems 942 The Approach of the Social Sciences 953 The Approach of Economics 98 4 A Remark about Legal Terminology 995 The Sovereignty of the Consumers 101

chapter 7 The Epistemological Roots of Monism 1041 The Nonexperimental Character of Monism 1042 The Historical Setting of Positivism 106

3 The Case of the Natural Sciences 108 4 The Case of the Sciences of Human Action 1095 The Fallacies of Positivism 110

chapter 8 Positivism and the Crisis of Western Civilization 1131 The Misinterpretation of the Universe 1132 The Misinterpretation of the Human Condition 1143 The Cult of Science 116 4 The Epistemological Support of Totalitarianism 1175 The Consequences 120

Index 121


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preface

This essay is not a contribution to philosophy. It is merely the exposi-

tion of certain ideas that attempts to deal with the theory of knowledgeought to take into full account.Traditional logic and epistemology have produced, by and large,

merely disquisitions on mathematics and the methods of the naturalsciences. The philosophers considered physics as the paragon of sci-ence and blithely assumed that all knowledge is to be fashioned on itsmodel. They dispensed with biology, satisfying themselves that one daylater generations would succeed in reducing the phenomena of life to

the operation of elements that can be fully described by physics. Theyslighted history as mere literature and ignored the existence of eco-nomics. Positivism, as foreshadowed by Laplace, baptized by AugusteComte, and resuscitated and systematized by contemporary logical orempirical positivism, is essentially pan-physicalism, a scheme to denythat there is any other method of scientic thinking than that startingfrom the physicists recording of protocol sentences. Its materialismencountered opposition only on the part of metaphysicians who freelyindulged in the invention of ctitious entities and of arbitrary systemsof what they called philosophy of history.

This essay proposes to stress the fact that there is in the universesomething for the description and analysis of which the natural sci-ences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the rangeof those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are t to ob-serve and to describe. There is human action.

It is a fact that up to now nothing has been done to bridge over thegulf that yawns between the natural events in the consummation of which science is unable to nd any nality and the conscious acts of men that invariably aim at denite ends. To neglect, in the treatmentof human action, reference to the ends aimed at by the actors is no less


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absurd than were the endeavors to resort to nality in the interpretationof natural phenomena.

It would be a mistake to insinuate that all the errors concerning theepistemological interpretation of the sciences of human action are tobe ascribed to the unwarranted adoption of the epistemology of posi-tivism. There were other schools of thought that confused the philo-sophical treatment of praxeology and history even more seriously thanpositivism, e.g., historicism. Yet, the following analysis deals rst of allwith the impact of positivism.1

In order to avoid misinterpretation of the point of view of this essay,it is advisable, even necessary, to stress the fact that it deals with knowl-

edge, science, and reasonable belief and that it refers to metaphysicaldoctrines only as far as it is necessary to demonstrate in what respectsthey differ from scientic knowledge. It unreservedly endorses Lockesprinciple of not entertaining any proposition with greater assurancethan the proofs it is built upon will warrant. The viciousness of posi-tivism is not to be seen in the adoption of this principle, but in the factthat it does not acknowledge any other ways of proving a propositionthan those practiced by the experimental natural sciences and qualies

as metaphysicalwhich, in the positivist jargon, is synonymous withnonsensicalall other methods of rational discourse. To expose thefallaciousness of this fundamental thesis of positivism and to depict itsdisastrous consequences is the only theme of this essay.

Although full of contempt for all it considers as metaphysics, theepistemology of positivism is itself based upon a denite brand of meta-physics. It is beyond the pale of a rational inquiry to enter into ananalysis of any variety of metaphysics, to try to appraise its value or itstenability and to afrm or to reject it. What discursive reasoning canachieve is merely to show whether or not the metaphysical doctrine inquestion contradicts what has been established as scientically provedtruth. If this can be demonstrated with regard to positivisms assertionsconcerning the sciences of human action, its claims are to be rejectedasunwarrantedfables.Thepositiviststhemselves,fromthepointofviewof their own philosophy, could not help but approve of such a verdict.

General epistemology can be studied only by those who are per-fectly familiar with all branches of human knowledge. The special

1. About historicism,see Mises,Theory and History(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957[Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1985]), pp. 198 ff.

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epistemological problems of the different elds of knowledge areaccessible only to those who have a perfect acquaintance with therespective eld. There would not be any need to mention this point if it were not for the shocking ignorance of everything concerning the sci-ences of human action that characterizes the writings of almost all con-temporary philosophers.2

It may even be doubted whether it is possible to separate the analysisof epistemological problems from the treatment of the substantiveissues of the science concerned. The basic contributions to the mod-ern epistemology of the natural sciences were an accomplishment of Galilei, not of Bacon, of Newton and Lavoisier, not of Kant and Comte.

What is tenable in the doctrines of logical positivism is to be found inthe works of the great physicists of the last hundred years, not in theEncyclopedia of Unied Science. My own contributions to the the-ory of knowledge, however modest they may be, are in my economicand historical writings, especially in my booksHuman ActionandThe-ory and History.Thepresentessayismerelyasupplementtoandacom-mentary on what economics itself says about its own epistemology.

He who seriously wants to grasp the purport of economic theory

ought to familiarize himself rst with what economics teaches and onlythen, having again and again reected upon these theorems, turn to thestudy of the epistemological aspects concerned. Without a most care-ful examination of at least some of the great issues of praxeologicalthinkingas, e.g., the law of returns (mostly called the law of dimin-ishing returns), the Ricardian law of association (better known as thelaw of comparative cost), the problem of economic calculation, and soonnobody can expect to comprehend what praxeology means andwhat its specic epistemological problems involve.

preface xiii

2. A striking example of this ignorance displayed by an eminent philosopher, Henri Bergson, isquoted in Mises,Human Action(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949 [4th ed., Irvington, N.Y.:Foundation for Economic Education, 1996]), p. 33 note.


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Some Preliminary ObservationsConcerning Praxeology Instead of an Introduction

1 The Permanent Substratum of Epistemology

Pav nta rJ i , everything is in a ceaseless ux, says Heraclitus; there is nopermanent being; all is change and becoming. It must be left to meta-physical speculation to deal with the problems whether this proposi-tion can be borne out from the point of view of a superhuman intelli-genceandfurthermorewhetheritispossibleforahumanmindtothinkof change without implying the concept of a substratum that, while itchanges, remains in some regard and sense constant in the succession

of its various states. For epistemology, the theory of human knowledge,there is certainly something that it cannot help considering as perma-nent,viz.,thelogicalandpraxeologicalstructureofthehumanmind,onthe one hand, and the power of the human senses, on the other hand.Fully aware of the fact that human nature as it is in this epochof cosmicchangesinwhichwearelivingisneithersomethingthatexistedfromtheverybeginningofallthingsnorsomethingthatwillremainforever,epis-temology must look upon it as if it were unchanging. The natural sci-ences may try to go further and to study the problems of evolution. Butepistemology is a branchor rather, the basisof the sciences of man.Itdealswithoneaspectofthenatureofmanasheemergedfromtheeonsof cosmic becoming and as he is in this period of the history of the uni-verse.Itdoesnotdealwiththinking,perceivingandknowingingeneral,but withhuman thinking, perceiving and knowing. For epistemologythere is something that it must take as unchanging, viz., the logical andpraxeological structure of the human mind.

One must not confuse knowledge with mysticism. The mystic maysay that shadow and sunlight are the same.1 Knowledge starts fromthe clear distinction between A and non- A.

1. R. W. Emerson,Brahma.


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We know that there were ages of cosmic history in which there didnot exist beings of the kind we call Homo sapiens, and we are free to as-sume that there will be again ages in which this species will not exist.But it is vain for us to speculate about the conditions of beings that are,in the logical and praxeological structure of their minds and in thepower of their senses, essentially different from man as we know himand as we are ourselves. Nietzsches concept of a superman is devoid of any epistemological meaning.

2 On Action

Epistemology deals with the mental phenomena of human life, withman as he thinks and acts. The main deciency of traditional episte-mological attempts is to be seen in their neglect of the praxeological as-pects. The epistemologists dealt with thinking as if it were a separateeld cut off from other manifestations of human endeavor. They dealtwith the problems of logic and mathematics, but they failed to see thepractical aspects of thinking. They ignored the praxeological a priori.

Theshortcomings of this approach became manifest in the teachingsof natural theology as distinguished from revealed theology. Naturaltheology saw the characteristic mark of deity in freedom from the limi-tationsofthehumanmindandthehumanwill.Deityisomniscientandalmighty. But in elaborating these ideas the philosophers failed to seethat a concept of deity that implies an acting God, that is, a God behav-ing in the way man behaves in acting, is self-contradictory. Man acts be-causeheisdissatisedwiththestateofaffairsasitprevailsintheabsenceof his intervention. Man acts because he lacks the power to render con-ditions fully satisfactory and must resort to appropriate means in orderto render them less unsatisfactory. But for an almighty supreme beingthere cannot be any dissatisfaction with the prevailing state of affairs.TheAlmightydoesnotact,becausethereisnostateofaffairsthathecan-not render fully satisfactory without any action, i.e., without resorting toanymeans.ForHimthereisnosuchthingasadistinctionbetweenendsand means. It is anthropomorphism to ascribe action to God. Startingfrom the limitations of his human nature, mans discursive reasoningcan never circumscribe and dene the essence of omnipotence.However, it must be emphasized that what prevented peoplefrom paying attention to the praxeological issues was not theological

2 preliminary observations concerning praxeology


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considerations. It was the passionate longing for the realization of theutopian chimera of the landofCockaigne.As the science ofeconomics,the up-to-now best elaborated part of praxeology, exploded the falla-cies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized asunscientic.

The most characteristic trait of modern epistemology is its entireneglect of economics, that branch of knowledge whose developmentand practical application was the most spectacular event of modernhistory.

3 On EconomicsThe study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vainidea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sci-ences. The mischief done by such misconstructions cannot be avoidedby admonishing the economist to stop casting longing glances uponother elds of knowledge or even to ignore them entirely. Ignorance,whatever subject it may concern, is in no case a quality that could be

useful in the search for truth. What is needed to prevent a scholar fromgarbling economic studies by resorting to the methods of mathematics,physics, biology, history or jurisprudence is not slighting and neglectingthese sciences, but, on the contrary, trying to comprehend and to mas-ter them. He who wants to achieve anything in praxeology mustbe conversant with mathematics, physics, biology, history, and juris-prudence, lest he confuse the tasks and the methods of the theory of human action with the tasks and the methods of any of these otherbranches of knowledge. What was wrong with the various HistoricalSchools of economics was rst of all that their adepts were merely dilet-tantes in the eld of history. No competent mathematician can fail tosee through the fundamental fallacies of all varieties of what is calledmathematical economics and especially of econometrics. No biologistwas ever fooled by the rather amateurish organicism of such authors asPaul de Lilienfeld.

When I once expressed this opinion in a lecture, a young man in theaudience objected. You are asking too much of an economist, he ob-served; nobody can force me to employ my time in studying all thesesciences. My answer was: Nobody asks or forces you to become aneconomist.

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4 The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking

The a priori knowledge of praxeology is entirely differentcategoriallydifferentfrom the a priori knowledge of mathematics or, more pre-cisely, from mathematical a priori knowledge as interpreted by logicalpositivism. The starting point of all praxeological thinking is not arbi-trarily chosen axioms, but a self-evident proposition, fully, clearly andnecessarily present in every human mind. An unbridgeable gulf sepa-rates those animals in whose minds this cognition is present from thosein whose minds it is not fully and clearly present. Only to the former is

the appellation man accorded. The characteristic feature of man is pre-cisely that he consciously acts. Man is Homo agens, the acting animal. Allapart from zoologythat has ever been scientically stated to

distinguish man from nonhuman mammals is implied in the proposi-tion: man acts. To act means: to strive after ends, that is, to choose agoal and to resort to means in order to attain the goal sought.

The essence of logical positivism is to deny the cognitive value of apriori knowledge by pointing out that all a priori propositions are

merely analytic. They do not provide new information, but are merelyverbal or tautological, asserting what has already been implied in thedenitions and premises. Only experience can lead to synthetic propo-sitions. There is an obvious objection against this doctrine, viz., thatthis proposition that there are no synthetic a priori propositions is in it-self aas the present writer thinks, falsesynthetic a priori proposi-tion, for it can manifestly not be established by experience.

The whole controversy is, however, meaningless when applied topraxeology. It refers essentially to geometry. Its present state, especiallyits treatment by logical positivism, has been deeply inuenced by theshock that Western philosophy received from the discovery of non-Euclidian geometries. Before Bolyai and Lobachevsky, geometry was,in the eyes of the philosophers, the paragon of perfect science; it was as-sumed that it provided unshakable certainty forever and for everybody.To proceed also in other branches of knowledgemore geometricowasthe great ideal of truth-seekers. All traditional epistemological conceptsbegan to totter when the attempts to construct non-Euclidian geome-tries succeeded. Yet praxeology is not geometry. It is the worst of all superstitionsto assume that the epistemological characteristics of one branch of



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knowledge must necessarily be applicable to any other branch. In deal-ing with the epistemology of the sciences of human action, one mustnot take ones cue from geometry, mechanics, or any other science.

The assumptions of Euclid were once considered as self-evidentlytrue. Present-day epistemology looks upon them as freely chosenpostulates, the starting point of a hypothetical chain of reasoning.Whatever this may mean, it has no reference at all to the problems of praxeology.

The starting point of praxeology is a self-evident truth, the cognitionof action, that is, the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing asconsciously aiming at ends. There is no use cavilling about these words

by referring to philosophical problems that have no bearing upon ourproblem. The truth of this cognition is as self-evident and as indispens-able for the human mind as is the distinction between A and non- A.

5 The Reality of the External World

From the praxeological point of view it is not possible to question the

real existence of matter, of physical objects and of the external world.Their reality is revealed by the fact that man is not omnipotent. Thereis in the world something that offers resistance to the realization of hiswishes and desires. Any attempt to remove by a mere at what annoyshim and to substitute a state of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that suits him less is vain. If he wants to succeed, he must pro-ceed according to methods that are adjusted to the structure of some-thing about which perception provides him with some information.We may dene the external world as the totality of all those things andevents that determine the feasibility or unfeasibility, the success or fail-ure, of human action.

The much discussed question whether physical objects can or can-not be conceived as existing independently of the mind is vain. Forthousands of years the minds of physicians did not perceive germs anddid not divine their existence. But the success or failure of their en-deavors to preserve their patients health and lives depended on the waygerms inuenced or did not inuence the functioning of the patientsbodily organs. The germs were real because they conditioned the out-come of events either by interfering or by not interfering, either by be-ing present in or by being absent from the eld.

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6 Causality and Teleology

Action is a category that the natural sciences do not take into account.The scientist acts in embarking upon his research work, but in the orbitofnaturaleventsoftheexternalworldwhichheexploresthereisnosuchthing as action. There is agitation, there is stimulus and response, and,whateversomephilosophersmayobject,thereiscauseandeffect.Thereis what appears to be an inexorable regularity in the concatenation andsequence of phenomena. There are constant relations between entitiesthat enable the scientist to establish the process called measurement.

But there is nothing that would suggest aiming at ends sought; there isno ascertainable purpose.The natural sciences are causality research; the sciences of human

action are teleological. In establishing this distinction between the twoelds of human knowledge, we do not express any opinion concerningthe question whether the course of all cosmic events is or is not ulti-mately determined by a superhuman beings design. The treatment of this great problem transcends the range of mans reason and is outside

the domain of any human science. It is in the realm that metaphysicsand theology claim for themselves.The purpose to which the sciences of human action refer is not the

plans and ways of God, but the ends sought by acting men in the pur-suit of their own designs. The endeavors of the metaphysical disciplinecommonly called philosophy of history to reveal in the ux of histori-cal events the hidden plans of God or of some mythical agency (as, forinstance, in the scheme of Marx, the material productive forces) arenot science.

In dealing with a denite historical fact, for instance with the rstWorld War, the historian has to nd out the ends sought by the variousindividuals and groups of individuals who were instrumental in organ-izing these campaigns or in ghting the aggressors. He has to examinethe outcome resulting from the actions of all people involved and com-pare it with the preceding state of affairs as well as with the intentions of the actors. But it is not the historians business to search after a higheror deeper sense that manifested itself in the events or was realized bythem. Perhaps there is such a hidden higher or deeper purpose orsignicance in the succession of historical events. But for mortal manthere isnoway opentolearn something about suchhigherordeepermeanings.



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7 The Category of Action

All the elements of the theoretical sciences of human action are alreadyimplied in the category of action and have to be made explicit by ex-pounding its contents. As among these elements of teleology is also thecategory of causality, the category of action is the fundamental categoryof epistemology, the starting point of any epistemological analysis.

The very category or concept of action comprehends the concepts of means and ends, of preferring and putting aside, viz., of valuing, of suc-cess and failure, of prot and loss, of costs. As no action could be de-

vised and ventured upon without denite ideas about the relation of cause and effect, teleology presupposes causality. Animals are forced to adjust themselves to the natural conditions of

their environment; if they do not succeed in this process of adjustment,they are wiped out. Man is the only animal that is ablewithin denitelimitsto adjust his environment purposively to suit him better.

We can think of the evolutionary process that transformed the non-human ancestors of mankind into human beings as a succession of

small, gradual changes spread over millions of years. But we cannotthinkofamindinwhichthecategoryofactionwouldhavebeenpresentonlyinanincompleteform.Thereisnothinginbetweenabeingdrivenexclusively by instincts and physiological impulses and a being thatchoosesendsandthemeansfortheattainmentoftheseends.Wecannotthink of an acting being that would notin concretodistinguish what isend and what is means, what is success and what is failure, what he likesmoreandwhathelikesless,whatishisprotorhislossderivedfromtheaction and what his costs are. In grasping all these things, he may, of course, err in his judgments concerning the role various external eventsand materials play in the structure of his action.

A denite mode of behavior is an action only if these distinctions arepresent in the mind of the man concerned.

8 The Sciences of Human Action

The German language has developed a term that would have been ex-pedient todenote the totality of the sciencesdealing withhuman actionas distinguished from the natural sciences, viz., the termGeisteswis-senschaften.Unfortunately some authors have heavily loaded this term

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with metaphysical and mystical implications that detract from itsusefulness. In English the termpneumatology(suggested by Bentham2as the oppositeof somatology) would have served the purpose, but itwasnever accepted. The termmoral sciencesas employed by John StuartMill is unsatisfactory on account of its etymological afnity with thenormative discipline of ethics. The termhumanities is traditionally em-ployed exclusively for the historical branches of the sciences of humanaction. Thus we are forced to employ the rather heavy term sciences of human action.


2. Bentham, Essay on Nomenclature and Classication, Appendix No. IV toChrestomathia(Works, ed. Bowring [18381843], VIII, 84 and 88).


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chapter 1

The Human Mind

1 The Logical Structure of the Human Mind

On the earth man occupies a peculiar position that distinguishes himfrom and elevates him above all other entities constituting our planet.While all the other things, animate or inanimate, behave according toregular patterns, man alone seems to enjoywithin denite limitsamodicum of freedom. Man meditates about the conditions of his ownself and of his environment, devises states of affairs that, as he believes,would suit him better than the existing states, and aims by purposive

conduct at the substitution of a more desired state for a less desired thatwould prevail if he were not to interfere.There is within the innite expanse of what is called the universe or

nature a small eld in which mans conscious conduct can inuencethe course of events.

It is this fact that induces man to distinguish between an externalworld subject to inexorable and inextricable necessity and his humanfaculty of thinking, cognizing, and acting. Mind or reason is contrastedwith matter, the will with self-acting impulses, instincts, and physio-logical processes. Fully aware of the fact that his own body is subject tothe same forces that determine all other things and beings, man im-putes his ability to think, to will and to act to an invisible and intangi-ble factor he calls his mind.

There were in the early history of mankind attempts to ascribe sucha faculty of thinking and purposively aiming at ends chosen to many oreven to all nonhuman things. Later people discovered that it was vainto deal with nonhuman things as if they were endowed with somethinganalogous to the human mind. Then the opposite tendency developed.People tried to reduce mental phenomena to the operation of factorsthat were not specically human. The most radical expression of this


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10 the human mind

doctrine was already implied in the famous dictum of John Lockeaccording to which the mind is a sheet of white paper upon which theexternal world writes its own story.

A new epistemology of rationalism aimed at the refutation of this in-tegral empiricism. Leibniz added to the doctrine that nothing is in theintellect that has not previously been in the senses the proviso: exceptthe intellect itself. Kant, awakened by Hume from his dogmatic slum-bers, put the rationalistic doctrine upon a new basis. Experience, hetaught,providesonlytherawmaterialoutofwhichthemindformswhatis called knowledge. All knowledge is conditioned by the categories thatprecedeanydataofexperiencebothintimeandinlogic.Thecategories

are a priori; they are the mental equipment of the individual that en-ables him to think andwe may addto act. As all reasoning presup-poses the a priori categories, it is vain to embark upon attempts to proveor to disprove them.

The empiricist reaction against apriorism centers around a mislead-ing interpretation of the non-Euclidean geometries, the nineteenthcenturys most important contribution to mathematics. It stresses thearbitrary character of axioms and premises and the tautological char-

acter of deductive reasoning. Deduction, it teaches, cannot add any-thing to our knowledge of reality. It merely makes explicit what was al-ready implicit in the premises. As these premises are merely productsof the mind and not derived from experience, what is deduced fromthem cannot assert anything about the state of the universe. Whatlogic, mathematics, and other aprioristic deductive theories bring for-ward are at best convenient or handy tools for scientic operations. It isone of the tasks incumbent upon the scientist to choose for his work outof the multiplicity of the various existing systems of logic, geometry,and algebra the system that is most convenient for his specic purpose.1The axioms from which a deductive system departs are arbitrarily se-lected. They do not tell us anything about reality. There is no suchthing as rst principles a priori given to the human mind.2 Such is thedoctrine of the famous Vienna Circle and of other contemporaryschools of radical empiricism and logical positivism.

In order to examine this philosophy, let us refer to the conict be-tweentheEuclidiangeometryandthenon-Euclidiangeometrieswhich

1. Cf. Louis Rougier,Trait de la connaissance(Paris, 1955), pp. 13 ff.2. Ibid., pp. 47 ff.


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gave rise to these controversies. It is an undeniable fact that technologi-cal planning guided by the Euclidian system resulted in effects that hadtobeexpectedaccordingtotheinferencesderivedfromthissystem.Thebuildings do not collapse, and the machines run in the expected way.The practical engineer cannot deny that this geometry aided him in hisendeavorstodiverteventsoftherealexternalworldfromthecoursetheywould have taken in the absence of his intervention and to direct themtowards goals thathewantedtoattain.Hemustconcludethat thisgeom-etry, although based upon denite a priori ideas, afrms somethingaboutrealityandnature.ThepragmatistcannothelpadmittingthatEu-clidian geometry works in the same way in which all a posteriori knowl-

edge provided by the experimental natural sciences works. Aside fromthe fact that the arrangement of laboratory experiments already presup-poses and implies the validity of the Euclidian scheme, we must notforget that the fact that the George Washington bridge over the HudsonRiver and many thousand other bridges render the services the con-structors wanted to get conrms the practical truth not only of the ap-plied teachings of physics, chemistry, and metallurgy, but no less of thoseofthegeometryofEuclid.Thismeansthattheaxiomsfromwhich

Euclid starts tell us something about the external world that to ourmind must appear no less true than the teachings of the experimentalnatural sciences.

The critics of apriorism refer to the fact that for the treatment of cer-tain problems recourse to one of the non-Euclidian geometries appearsmore convenient than recourse to the Euclidian system. The solid bod-ies and light rays of our environment, says Reichenbach, behave accord-ingtothelawsofEuclid.Butthis,headds,ismerelyafortunateempir-ical fact. Beyond the space of our environment the physical worldbehaves according to other geometries.3 There is no need to argue thispoint.Fortheseothergeometriesalsostartfromaprioriaxioms,notfromexperimental facts. What the panempiricists fail to explain is how a de-ductive theory, starting fromallegedlyarbitrary postulates, renders valu-able, even indispensable, services in the endeavors to describe correctlythe conditions of the external world and to deal with them successfully.

The fortunate empirical fact to which Reichenbach refers is thefact that the human mind has the ability to develop theories which,

the logical structure of the human mind 11

3. Cf. Hans Reichenbach,The Rise of Scientic Philosophy(University of California Press, 1951),p. 137.


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although a priori, are instrumental in the endeavors to construct any aposteriori system of knowledge. Although logic, mathematics, and prax-eology are not derived from experience, they are not arbitrarily made,but imposed upon us by the world in which we live and act and whichwewant to study.4 They are not empty, not meaningless, and not merelyverbal. They arefor manthe most general laws of the universe, andwithout them no knowledge would be accessible to man.

The a priori categories are the endowment that enables man to at-tain all that is specically human and distinguishes him from all otherbeings. Their analysis is analysis of the human condition, the role manplays in the universe. They are the force that enables man to create and

to produce all that is called human civilization.

2 A Hypothesis about the Origin of the A Priori Categories

The concepts of natural selection and evolution make it possible to de-velop a hypothesis about the emergence of the logical structure of the

human mind and the a priori. Animals are driven by impulses and instincts. Natural selection elim-inated those specimens and species which developed instincts thatwere a liability in the struggle for survival. Only those endowed withimpulses serviceable to their preservation survived and could propa-gate their species.

We are not prevented from assuming that in the long way that ledfrom the nonhuman ancestors of man to the emergence of the speciesHomo sapiens some groups of advanced anthropoids experimented, asit were, with categorial concepts different from those of Homo sapiensand tried to use them for the guidance of their conduct. But as suchpseudo categories were not adjusted to the conditions of reality, behav-ior directed by a quasi reasoning based upon them was bound to failand to spell disaster to those committed to it. Only those groups couldsurvive whose members acted in accordance with the right categories,i.e., with those that were in conformity with reality and thereforetouse the concept of pragmatismworked.5

12 the human mind

4. Cf. Morris Cohen, A Preface to Logic(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1944), pp. 44 and 92;Mises,Human Action, pp. 7291.5. Mises,Human Action, pp. 86 ff.


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However, reference to this interpretation of the origin of the a prioricategories does not entitle us to call them a precipitate of experience,of a prehuman and prelogical experience as it were.6 We must not blotout the fundamental difference between nality and the absence of nality.

The Darwinian concept of natural selection tries to explain phylo-genetic change without recourse to nality as a natural phenomenon.Natural selection is operative not only without any purposive interfer-ence on the part of external elements; it operates also without any in-tentional behavior on the part of the various specimens concerned.

Experience is a mental act on the part of thinking and acting men. It

isimpossibletoassigntoitanyroleinapurelynaturalchainofcausationthe characteristic mark of which is the absence of intentional behavior.Itislogicallyimpossibletocompromisebetweendesignandtheabsenceof design. Those primates who had the serviceable categories survived,not because, having had the experience that their categories were serv-iceable, they decided to cling to them. They survived because they didnot resort to other categories that would have resulted in their own ex-tirpation. In the sameway inwhich the evolutionary process eliminated

allothergroupswhose individuals,because ofspecicpropertiesoftheirbodies, were not t for life under the special conditions of their envi-ronment, it eliminated also those groups whose minds developed in away that made their use for the guidance of conduct pernicious.

The a priori categories are not innate ideas. What the normalhealthychildinheritsfromhisparentsarenotanycategories,ideas,orconcepts,but the human mind thathas the capacity to learn and tocon-ceive ideas, the capacity to make its bearer behave as a human being,i.e., to act.

Howeverwemaythinkaboutthisproblem,onethingiscertain.Sincethe a priori categories emanating from the logical structure of the hu-man mind have enabled man to develop theories the practical applica-tion of which has aided him in his endeavors to hold his own in thestruggle for survival and to attain various ends that he wanted to attain,these categories provide some information about the reality of the uni-verse. They are not merely arbitrary assumptions without any informa-tive value,not mere conventions that could as well be replaced by someother conventions. They are the necessary mental tool to arrange sense

the origin of the a priori categories 13

6. As J. Benda,La crise du rationalisme(Paris, 1949), pp. 27 ff., suggests.


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data ina systematicway, to transformthemintofacts ofexperience, then[to transform] these facts into bricks to build theories, and nally [totransform] the theories into technics to attain ends aimed at.

The animals too are equipped with senses; some of them are even ca-pable of sensing stimuli that do not affect mans senses. What preventsthem from taking advantage of what their senses convey to them in theway man does, is not an inferiority of their sense equipment, but thefact that they lack what is called the human mind with its logical struc-ture, its a priori categories.

Theory as distinct from history is the search for constant relations be-tween entities or, what means the same, for regularity in the succession

of events. In establishing epistemology as a theory of knowledge, thephilosopher implicitly assumes or asserts that there is in the intellectualeffort of man something that remains unchanged, viz., the logicalstructure of the human mind.

If there were nothing permanent in the manifestations of the humanmind, there could not be any theory of knowledge, but merely a histor-ical account of the various attempts made by men to acquire knowl-edge.Theconditionofepistemologywouldresemblethatofthevarious

branches of history, e.g., what is called political science. In the sameway in which political science merely records what has been done orhas been suggested in its eld in the past, but is at a loss to tell anythingabout invariant relations among the elements with which it deals, epis-temology would have to restrict its work to the assemblage of historicaldata about the mental activities of the past.

In stressing the fact that the logical structure of the human mind iscommon to all specimens of the species Homo sapiens, we do not wantto assert that this human mind as we know it is the only or the best pos-siblementaltoolthatcouldbedevisedorthathaseverbeenandwilleverbecalled intoexistence. Inepistemology, as well as inall other sciences,we are dealing neither with eternity nor with conditions in parts of theuniverse from which no sign reaches our orbit nor with what may possi-bly happen in future eons. Perhaps there are somewhere in the inniteuniverse beings whose minds outrank our minds to the same extent asour minds surpass those of the insects. Perhaps there will once some-where live beings who will look upon us with the same condescensionas we look upon amoebae. But scientic thinking cannot indulgein such imagery. It is bound to limit itself to what is accessible to thehuman mind as it is.

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3 The A Priori

One does not annul the cognitive signicance of the a priori by qualify-ing it as tautological. A tautology mustex denitionebe the tautologyrestatementof something said already previously. If we qualify Eu-clidian geometry as a hierarchical system of tautologies, we may say:The theorem of Pythagoras is tautological as it expresses merely some-thing that is already implied in the denition of a right-angled triangle.

Butthequestionis:Howdidwegettherstthebasicpropositionof which the secondthe derivedproposition is merely a tautology?

In the case of the various geometries the answers given today are either(a) by an arbitrary choice or (b) on account of its convenience or suit-ability. Such an answer cannot be given with regard to the category of action.

Neither can we interpret our concept of action as a precipitate of ex-perience. It makes sense to speak of experience in cases in which alsosomething different from what was experiencedin concretocould havepossiblybeenexpectedbeforetheexperience.Experiencetellsussome-

thingwedidnotknowbeforeandcouldnotlearnbutforhavinghadtheexperience. But the characteristic feature of a priori knowledge is thatwe cannot think of the truth of its negation or of something that wouldbe at variance with it. What the a priori expresses is necessarily impliedineverypropositionconcerningtheissueinquestion.Itisimpliedinallour thinking and acting.

If we qualify a concept or a proposition as a priori, we want to say:rst, that the negation of what it asserts is unthinkable for the humanmind and appears to it as nonsense; secondly, that this a priori conceptor proposition is necessarily implied in our mental approach to all theproblems concerned, i.e., in our thinking and acting concerning theseproblems.

The a priori categories are the mental equipment by dint of whichman is able to think and to experience and thus to acquire knowledge.Their truth or validity cannot be proved or refuted as can those of a pos-teriori propositions, because they are precisely the instrument that en-ables us to distinguish what is true or valid from what is not.

What we know is what the nature or structure of our senses and of our mind makes comprehensible to us. We see reality, not as it is andmay appear to a perfect being, but only as the quality of our mind and

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of our senses enables us to see it. Radical empiricism and positivism donot want to admit this. As they describe it, reality writes, as experience,its own story upon the white sheets of the human mind. They admitthat our senses are imperfect and do not fully and faithfully reect re-ality. But they do not examine the power of the mind to produce, outof the material provided by sensation, an undistorted representation of reality. In dealing with the a priori we are dealing with the mental toolsthat enable us to experience, to learn, to know, and to act. We are deal-ing with the minds power, and this implies that we are dealing with thelimits of its power.

We must never forget that our representation of the reality of the uni-

verseisconditionedbythestructureofourmindaswellasofoursenses.We cannot preclude the hypothesis that there are features of reality thatare hidden to our mental faculties but could be noticed by beingsequipped with a more efcient mind and certainly by a perfect being.We must try to become aware of the characteristic features and limita-tionsofourmindinordernottofallpreytotheillusionofomniscience.

The positivistic conceit of some of the forerunners of modern posi-tivism manifested itself most blatantly in the dictum: God is a mathe-

matician.Howcanmortals,equippedwithmanifestlyimperfectsenses,claim for their mind the faculty of conceiving the universe in the sameway in which the wholly perfect may conceive it? Man cannot analyzeessential features of reality without the help provided by the tools of mathematics. But the perfect being?

After all, it is quite supererogatory to waste time upon controversiesconcerning the a priori. Nobody denies or could deny that no humanreasoningandnohumansearchforknowledgecoulddispensewithwhatthese a priori concepts, categories, and propositions tell us. No quib-bling can in the least affect the fundamental role played by the categoryof action for all the problems of the science of man, for praxeology, foreconomics, and for history.

4 The A Priori Representation of Reality

No thinking and no acting would be possible to man if the universewere chaotic, i.e., if there were no regularity whatever in the successionand concatenation of events. In such a world of unlimited contingencynothing could be perceived but ceaseless kaleidoscopic change. There

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would be no possibility for man to expect anything. All experiencewould be merely historical, the record of what has happened in thepast. No inference from past events to what might happen in the futurewould be permissible. Therefore man could not act. He could at bestbe a passive spectator and would not be able to make any arrangementsfor the future, be it only for the future of the impending instant. Therst and basic achievement of thinking is the awareness of constant re-lations among the external phenomena that affect our senses. A bundleof events that are regularly related in a denite way to other events iscalled a specic thing and as such distinguished from other specicthings. The starting point of experimental knowledge is the cognition

that an A is uniformly followed by aB. The utilization of this knowl-edge either for the production of B or for the avoidance of the emer-gence of B is called action. The primary objective of action is either tobring aboutB or to prevent its happening.

Whatever philosophers may say about causality, the fact remains thatno action could be performed by men not guided by it. Neither can weimagine a mind not aware of the nexus of cause and effect. In this sensewe may speak of causality as a category or an a priori of thinking and

acting.To the man anxious to remove by purposive conduct some uneasi-ness felt, the question occurs: Where, how, and when would it be nec-essary to interfere in order to obtain a denite result? Cognizance of the relation between a cause and its effect is the rst step toward mansorientation in the world and is the intellectual condition of any suc-cessful activity. All attempts to nd a satisfactory logical, epistemologi-cal, or metaphysical foundation for the category of causality weredoomed to fail. All we can say about causality is that it is a priori notonly of human thought but also of human action.

Eminent philosophers have tried to elaborate a complete list of thea 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 theindividual thinkers discretion. There is only one point about whichthere cannot be any disagreement, viz., that they all can be reduced tothe a priori insight into the regularity in the succession of all observablephenomena of the external world. In a universe lacking this regularitythere could not be any thinking and nothing could be experienced. Forexperience is the awareness of identity or the absence of identity in

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what is perceived; it is the rst step toward a classication of events. And the concept of classes would be empty and useless if there were noregularity.

If there were no regularity, it would be impossible to resort to classi-cationandtoconstructalanguage.Allwordssignifybundlesofregularlyconnected acts of perception or regular relations among such bundles.Thisisvalidalsoofthelanguageofphysics,whichthepositivistswanttoelevatetotherankofauniversallanguageofscience.Inaworldwithoutregularity there would not be any possibility of formulating protocolsentences.7 But even if it could be done, such a protocol languagecould not be the starting point of a science of physics. It would merely

express historical facts.If there were no regularity, nothing could be learned from experi-ence. In proclaiming experience as the main instrument of acquiringknowledge, empiricism implicitly acknowledges the principles of regu-larityandcausality.Whentheempiricistreferstoexperience,themean-ingis:as AwasinthepastfollowedbyB,andasweassumethattherepre-vails a regularity in the concatenation and succession of natural events,weexpectthat AwillalsointhefuturebefollowedbyB.Therefore there

is a fundamental difference between the meaning of experience in theeld of natural events and in the eld of human action.

5 Induction

Reasoning is necessarily always deductive. This was implicitly admit-ted by all the attempts to justify ampliative induction by demonstratingor proving its logical legitimacy, i.e., by providing a deductive inter-pretation of induction. The plight of empiricism consists precisely inits failure to explain satisfactorily how it is possible to infer from ob-served facts something concerning facts yet unobserved.

All human knowledge concerning the universe presupposes andrests upon the cognition of the regularity in the succession and con-catenation of observable events. It would be vain to search for a rule if there were no regularity. Inductive inference is conclusion from prem-ises that invariably include the fundamental proposition of regularity.

18 the human mind

7. About the protocol language, cf. Carnap, Die physikalische Sprache als Universalspracheder Wissenschaft,Erkenntnis,II (1931), 432465, and Carnap, ber Protokollstze,Erkenntnis,III (1932/33), 215228.


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The practical problem of ampliative induction must be clearly dis-tinguished from its logical problem. For the men who embark upon in-ductive inference are faced with the problem of correct sampling. Didwe or did we not, out of the innumerable characteristics of the individ-ual case or cases observed, choose those which are relevant for the pro-duction of the effect in question? Serious shortcomings of endeavors tolearn something about the state of reality, whether in the mundanesearch for truth in everyday life or in systematic scientic research, aredue to mistakes in this choice. No scientist doubts that what iscorrectlyobservedinonecasemustalsobeobservedinallothercasesofferingthesameconditions.Theaimoflaboratoryexperimentsistoobservetheef-

fects of a change in one factor only, all the other factors remaining un-changed.Success or failure of such experiments presupposes, of course,the control of all the conditions that enter into their arrangement. Theconclusions derived from experimentation are not based upon the rep-etition of the same arrangement, but upon the assumption that whathappened in one case must necessarily also happen in all other cases of the same type. It would be impossible to infer anything from one caseor from an innumerable series of cases without this assumption, which

implies the a priori category of regularity. Experience is always the ex-perience of past events and could not teach us anything about futureevents if the category of regularity were merely a vain assumption.

The panphysicalists probability approach to the problem of induc-tion is an abortive attempt to deal with induction without reference tothe category of regularity. If we do not take account of regularity, thereis no reason whatever to infer from anything that happened in the pastwhat will happen in the future. As soon as we try to dispense with thecategory of regularity, all scientic effort appears useless, and thesearch for knowledge about what is popularly called the laws of naturebecomes meaningless and futile. What is natural science about if notabout the regularity in the ux of events?

Yet the category of regularity is rejected by the champions of logicalpositivism. They pretend that modern physics has led to results incom-patible with the doctrine of a universally prevailing regularity and hasshown that what has been considered by the school philosophy as themanifestation of a necessary and inexorable regularity is merely theproduct of a great number of atomic occurrences. In the microscopicsphere there is, they say, no regularity whatever. What macroscopicphysics used to consider as the outcome of the operation of a strict

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regularity is merely the result of a great number of purely accidental el-ementary processes.The laws of macroscopic physics are not strict laws,but actually statistical laws. It could happen that the events in the mi-croscopic sphere produce in the macroscopic sphere events that are dif-ferentfromthosedescribedbythemerelystatisticallawsofmacroscopicphysics, although, they admit, the probability of such an occurrence isvery small. But, they contend, the cognition of this possibility demol-ishes the idea that there prevails in the universe a strict regularity inthe succession and concatenation of all events. The categories of regu-larity and causality must be abandoned and replaced by the laws of probability.8

It is true that the physicists of our age are faced with behavior onthe part of some entities that they cannot describe as the outcome of adiscernible regularity. However, this is not the rst time that science hasbeen faced with such a problem. The human search for knowledgemustalwaysencountersomethingthatitcannottracebacktosomethingelse of which it would appear as the necessary effect. There is always inscience some ultimate given. For contemporary physics the behavior of the atoms appears as such an ultimate given. The physicists are today at

a loss to reduce certain atomic processes to their causes. One does notdetract from the marvelous achievements of physics by establishing thefact that this state of affairs is what is commonly called ignorance.

What makes it possible for the human mind to orient itself in thebewildering multiplicity of external stimuli that affect our senses, to ac-quire what is called knowledge, and to develop the natural sciences isthe cognition of an inevitable regularity and uniformity prevailing inthe succession and concatenation of such events. The criterion that in-duces us to distinguish various classes of things is the behavior of thesethings. If a thing in only one regard behaves (reacts to a denite stimu-lus) in a way different from the behavior of other things to which it isequal in all other respects, it must be assigned to a different class.

We may look upon the molecules and the atoms the behavior of which is at the bottomof the probabilistic doctrineseither as original el-ements or as derivatives of the original elements of reality. It does notmatter which of these alternatives we choose. For in any case their be-havior is the outcome of their very nature. (To say it more correctly: It istheir behavior that constitutes what we call their nature.) As we see it,

20 the human mind

8. Cf. Reichenbach,op. cit.,pp. 157 ff.


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there are different classes of these molecules and atoms. They are notuniform; what we call molecules and atoms are groups composed of various subgroups the members of each of which in some regards differin their behavior from the members of the other subgroups. If the be-havior of the members of the various subgroups were different fromwhat it is or if the numerical distribution of subgroupmembership weredifferent, the joint effect produced by the behavior of all the membersof the groups would be different too. This effect is determined by twofactors: the specic behavior of the members of each subgroup and thesize of subgroup membership.

If the proponents of the probabilistic doctrine of induction had ac-

knowledged the fact that there are various subgroups of microscopic en-tities, they would have realized that the joint effect of the operation of these entities results in what the macroscopic doctrine calls a law ad-mitting of no exception. They would have had to confess that we do notknow today why the subgroups differ from one another in some regardsand how, out of the interaction of the members of the various sub-groups, the denite joint effect emerges in the macroscopic sphere. In-stead of this procedure they arbitrarily ascribe to the individual mole-

cules and atoms the faculty of choosing among various alternatives of behavior. Their doctrine does not essentially differ from primitive ani-mism. Just as the primitives ascribed to the soul of the river the powerto choose between quietly owing in its customary bed or inundatingthe adjacent elds, so they believe that these microscopic entities arefree to determine some characteristics of their behavior, e.g., the speedand the path of their movements. In their philosophy it is implied thatthese microscopic entities are acting beings just like men.

But even if we were to accept this interpretation, we must not forgetthat human action is entirely determined by the individuals physiolog-ical equipment and byall the ideas that were working in their minds. Aswe do not have any reason to assume that these microscopic entities areendowed with a mind generating ideas, we must assume that what arecalled their choices necessarily correspond to their physical and chemi-cal structure.The individualatomor moleculebehaves ina denite en-vironment and under denite conditions precisely as its structure en-joins it. The speed and the path of its movements and its reaction to anyencounterswithfactorsexternaltoitsownnatureorstructurearestrictlydetermined by this nature or structure. If one does not accept this inter-pretation, one indulges in the absurd metaphysical assumption that

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Bertrand Russell and all other positivists referring to what they callstatistical laws are committing a serious blunder in commentingupon human statistics, i.e., statistics dealing with facts of human actionas distinguished from the facts of human physiology. They do not takeinto account the fact that all these statistical gures are continuallychanging, sometimes more, sometimes less rapidly. There is in humanvaluations and consequently in human actions no such regularity as intheeldinvestigatedbythenaturalsciences.Humanbehaviorisguidedby motives, and the historian dealing with the past as well as the busi-nessman intent upon anticipating the future must try to understandthis behavior.10

If the historians and the acting individuals were not able to apply thisspecic understanding of their fellow mens behavior, and if the natu-ral sciences and the acting individuals were not in a position to graspsomething about the regularity in the concatenation and succession of natural events, the universe would appear to them as an unintelligiblechaos and they could not contrive any means for the attainment of anyends. There would not be any reasoning, any knowledge, or any sci-ence, and there would not be any purposive inuencing of environ-

mental conditions on the part of man.The natural sciences are possible only because there prevails regu-larity in the succession of external events. Of course, there are limits towhat man can learn about the structure of the universe. There are un-observables and there are relations about which science up to now hasnot provided an interpretation. But the awareness of these facts doesnot falsify the categories of regularity and causality.

6 The Paradox of Probability Empiricism

Empiricism proclaims that experience is the only source of humanknowledge and rejects as a metaphysical prepossession the idea that allexperience presupposes a priori categories. But starting from its em-piricistic approach, it postulates the possibility of events that have neverbeen experienced by any man. Thus, we are told, physics cannot ex-clude the possibility that whenyouput an ice cube into a glass ofwater,

the paradox of probability empiricism 23

10. About the understanding, see below, pp. 49 ff.


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the water starts boiling and the ice cube gets as cold as the interior of adeep-freezing cabinet.11

However, this neoempiricism is far from being consistent in the ap-plication of its doctrine. If there is no regularity in nature, nothingjusties the distinction between various classes of things and events.If one calls some molecules oxygen and others nitrogen, one impliesthat each member of these classes behaves in a denite way differentfrom the behavior of the members of other classes. If one assumes thatthe behavior of an individual molecule can deviate from the way inwhich other molecules behave, one must either assign it to a specialclass or one must assume that its deviation was induced by the inter-

vention of something to which other members of its class had not beenexposed. If one says that one cannot exclude the possibility that someday the molecules of the air in our room, by pure chance, arrive at anordered state such that the molecules of oxygen are assembled on oneside of the room and those of nitrogen on the other,12 one impliesthat there is nothing either in the nature of oxygen and nitrogen or inthe environment in which they are dwelling that results in the way inwhich they are distributed in the air. One assumes that the behav-

ior of the individual molecules in all other regards is determined bytheir constitution, but that they are free to choose the place of theirdwelling. One assumes quite arbitrarily that one of the characteristicsof the molecules, viz., their movement, is not determined, while alltheir other characteristics are determined. One implies that there issomething in the nature of the moleculesone is tempted to say: intheir soulthat gives them the faculty of choosing the path of their wanderings. One fails to realize that a complete description of thebehavior of the molecules ought also to include their movements. Itwould have to deal with the process that makes the molecules of oxy-gen and nitrogen associate with one another in the way in which theydo in the air.

If Reichenbach had lived as a contemporary of magicians and tribalmedicine men, he would have argued: Some people are aficted witha disease having denite symptoms that kills them; others remainhealthy and alive. We do not know of any factor the presence of whichwould cause the suffering of those stricken and the absence of which

24 the human mind

11. Cf. Reichenbach,op. cit., p. 162.12.Ibid., p. 161.


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would cause the immunity ofothers. It isobvious that these phenomenacannot be dealt with scientically if you cling to the superstitious con-ceptof causality. All that we can know about them is the statistical lawthat x% of the population were aficted and the rest not.

7 Materialism

Determinism must be clearly distinguished from materialism. Materi-alism declares that the only factors producing change are those that areaccessible to investigation by the methods of the natural sciences. It

does not necessarily deny the fact that human ideas, judgments of value, and volitions are real too and can produce denite changes. Butas far as it does not deny this, it asserts that these ideal factors are the in-evitable result of external events that necessarily beget in the bodilystructure of men denite reactions. It is only a deciency of the presentstate of the natural sciences that prevents us from imputing all mani-festations of the human mind to the materialphysical, chemical, bi-ological and physiologicalevents that have brought them about. A

more perfect knowledge, they say, will show how the material factorshave necessarily produced in the man Mohammed the Moslem reli-gion, in the man Descartes co-ordinate geometry, and in the manRacinePhaedra.

It is useless to argue with the supporters of a doctrine that merely es-tablishes a program without indicating how it could be put into effect.What can be done and must be done is to disclose how its harbingerscontradict themselves and what consequences must result from its con-sistent application.

Iftheemergenceofeveryideaistobedealtwithasonedealswiththeemergence of all other natural events, it is no longer permissible to dis-tinguish between true and false propositions. Then the theorems of Descartes are neither better nor worse than the bungling of Peter, a dullcandidate for a degree, in his examination paper. The material factorscannot err. They have produced in the man Descartes co-ordinategeometry and in the man Peter something that his teacher, not enlight-ened by the gospel of materialism, considers as nonsense. But what en-titles this teacher to sit in judgment upon nature? Who are the materi-alist philosophers to condemn what the material factors have producedin the bodies of the idealistic philosophers?

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It would be useless for the materialists to point to pragmatisms dis-tinction between what works and what does not work. For this distinc-tion introduces into the chain of reasoning a factor that is foreign to thenatural sciences, viz., nality. A doctrine or proposition works if con-duct directed by it brings about the end aimed at. But the choice of theend is determined by ideas, is in itself a mental fact. So is also the judg-ment whether or not the end chosen has been attained. For consistentmaterialism it is not possible to distinguish between purposive actionand merely vegetative, plant-like living.

Materialists think that their doctrine merely eliminates the distinc-tion between what is morally good and morally bad. They fail to see

that it no less wipes out any difference between what is true and whatis untrue and thus deprives all mental acts of any meaning. If therestands between the real things of the external world and the mentalacts nothing that could be looked upon as essentially different from theoperation of the forces described by the traditional natural sciences,then we must put up with these mental phenomena in the same way aswe respond to natural events. For a doctrine asserting that thoughts arein the same relation to the brain in which gall is to the liver,13 it is not

more permissible to distinguish between true and untrue ideas than be-tween true and untrue gall.

8 The Absurdity of Any Materialistic Philosophy

The insurmountable difculties that any materialistic interpretation of reality encounters can be shown in an analysis of the most popular ma-

terialistic philosophy, Marxian dialectical materialism.Of course, what is called dialectical materialism is not a genuine ma-terialistic doctrine. In its context the factor that produces all changes inthe ideological and social conditions of mans history is the materialproductive forces. Neither Marx nor any of his followers dened thisterm. But from all the examples they provided one must infer that whatthey had in mind was the tools, machines, and other artifacts that menemploy in their productive activities. Yet these instruments are in them-selvesnotultimatematerialthings,buttheproductsofapurposivemen-tal process.14 But Marxism is the only attempt to carry a materialistic or

26 the human mind

13. Karl Vogt,Khlerglaube and Wissenschaft(2nd ed.; Giessen, 1855), p. 32.14. Cf. Mises,Theory and History,pp. 108 ff.


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quasi-materialistic doctrine beyond the mere enunciation of a meta-physical principle and to deduce from it all other manifestations of thehuman mind. Thus, we must refer to it if we want to show the funda-mental shortcoming of materialism.

As Marx sees it, the material productive forces bring forthinde-pendentlyofthewillofmentheproductionrelations,i.e.,thesocialsystem of property laws, and their ideological superstructure, i.e., thejuridical, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical ideas.15 In thisscheme, action and volition are ascribed to the material productiveforces.Theywanttoattainadenitegoal,viz.,theywanttobefreedfromfetters that are hindering their development. Men are mistaken when

they believe that they themselves are thinking, resorting to judgments of value, and acting. In fact, the production relations, the necessary effectoftheprevailingstageofthematerialproductiveforces,aredeterminingtheir ideas, volitions, and actions. All historical changes are ultimatelyproduced by the changes in the material productive forces, whichasMarx implicitly assumesare independent of human inuence. Allhuman ideas are the adequate superstructure of the material productiveforces. These forces aim ultimately at the establishment of socialism, a

transformation that is bound to come with the inexorability of a law of nature.Now let us for the sake of argument admit that the material produc-

tive forces have a constitution such that they are continually trying tofree themselves from fetters upon their development. But why must,out of these attempts, rst capitalism and, at a later stage of their devel-opment, socialism emerge? Do these forces reect upon their ownproblems and nally reach the conclusion that the existing property re-lations, from having been forms of their own (viz., the forces) develop-ment, have turned into fetters16 and that therefore they no longer cor-respond (entsprechen) to the present stage of their (viz., the forces)development?17 And do they, on the ground of this insight, resolve thatthese fetters have to burst asunder, and do they then proceed to actionthat causes them to burst asunder? And do they determine what newproduction relations have to take the place of the burst ones?

The absurdity of ascribing such thinking and acting to the mate-rial productive forces is so blatant that Marx himself paid but little

the absurdity of any materialistic philosophy 27

15. Cf. Karl Marx,Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie,ed. Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1897), pp. xxii.16. Marx,op. cit., p. xi.17. Marx and Engels,The Communist Manifesto,I.


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attention to his famous doctrine when later, in his main treatise,Cap-ital, he made more specic his prognostication about the coming of so-cialism. Here he refers not merely to action on the part of the materialproductive forces. He speaks of the proletarian masses who, dissatisedwith the progressive impoverishment that capitalism allegedly bringsupon them, aim at socialism, obviously because they consider it as amore satisfactory system.18

Every variety of materialistic or quasi-materialistic metaphysics mustimply converting an inanimate factor into a quasi man and ascribing toit the power to think, to pass judgments of value, to choose ends, andto resort to means for the attainment of the ends chosen. It must shift

the specically human faculty of acting to a nonhuman entity that itimplicitly endows with human intelligence and discernment. There isno way to eliminate from an analysis of the universe any reference tothe mind. Those who try it merely substitute a phantom of their owninvention for reality.

From the point of view of his professed materialismand, for thatmatter, from the point of view of any materialistic doctrineMarx didnot have the right to reject as false any doctrines developed by those

with whom he disagreed. His materialism would have enjoined uponhim a kind of listless recognition of any opinion and a readiness to at-tach to every idea advanced by a human being the same value as to anyother idea advanced by somebody else. To escape such a self-defeatingconclusion, Marx took recourse to his scheme of philosophy of history.He pretended that, by dint of a special charisma, denied to other mor-tals, he had a revelation that told him what course history must neces-sarily and unavoidably take. History leads to socialism. The meaning of history, the purpose for which man has been created (it is not said, bywhom) is to realize socialism. There is no need to pay any attention tothe ideas of people whom this message did not reach or who stubbornlyrefuse to believe in it.

What epistemology has to learn from this state of affairs is this: Anydoctrine that teaches that some real or external forces write theirown story in the human mind and thus tries to reduce the human mindto an apparatus that transforms reality into ideas in the way in whichthe digestive organs assimilate food is at a loss to distinguish between

28 the human mind

18. Marx,Das Capital (7th ed.; Hamburg, 1914), Vol. I, ch. xxiv, p. 728. For a critical analysis of this argumentation,seeMises,Theory and History,pp. 102 ff.


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what is true and what is not. The only way it can avoid a radical skepti-cism that does not have any means of sifting truth from falsehoodin ideas is by distinguishing between good men, i.e., those who areequipped with the faculty of judging in conformity with the mysterioussuperhuman power that directs all affairs of the universe, and badmen, who lack this faculty. It must consider as hopeless any attempts tochange the opinions of the bad men by discursive reasoning and per-suasion. The only means to bring to an end the conict of antagonisticideas is to exterminate the bad men, i.e., the carriers of ideas that aredifferent from those of the good men. Thus, materialism ultimatelyengenders the same methods of dealing with dissent that tyrants used

always and everywhere.In establishing this fact epistemology provides a clue for the under-standing of the history of our age.

the absurdity of any materialistic philosophy 29


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chapter 2

The Activistic Basis of Knowledge

1 Man and Action

The characteristic feature of man is action. Man aims at changingsome of the conditions of his environment in order to substitute a stateof affairs that suits him better for another state that suits him less. Allmanifestations of life and behavior with regard to which man differsfrom all other beings and things known to him are instances of actionand can be dealt with only from what we may call an activistic point of view. The study of man, as far as it is not biology, begins and ends with

the study of human action. Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behaviorbegot by judgments of value, aiming at a denite end and guided byideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of denite means. It isimpossible to deal with it without the categories of causality and nal-ity. It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will.

Action is sometimes viewed as the human variety of the struggle forsurvival common to all living beings. However, the term struggle forsurvival as applied to animals and plants is a metaphor. It would be amistake to infer anything from its use. In applying literally the termstruggleto animals and plants one would ascribe to them the power tobecome aware of factors threatening their existence, the will to pre-serve their own integrity, the mental faculty of nding means for itspreservation.

Seen from an activist point of view, knowledge is a tool of action. Itsfunction is to advise man how to proceed in his endeavors to removeuneasiness. At the higher stages of mans evolution from the conditionsof the Stone Age to those of the age of modern capitalism, uneasinessis also felt by the mere prevalence of ignorance concerning the nature


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finality 31

and the meaning of all things, no matter whether knowledge aboutthese fundamental things would be of practical use for any technolog-ical planning. To live in a universe with whose nal and real structureone is not familiar creates in itself a feeling of anxiety. To remove thisanguish and to give men certainty about the last things has been fromthe earliest days the solicitude of religion and metaphysics. Later thephilosophy of the Enlightenment and its afliated schools promisedthat the natural sciences would solve all the problems involved. At anyrate, it is a fact that to brood over the origin and essence of things, mansnature and his role in the universe, is one of the concerns of manypeople. Seen from this angle, the pure search for knowledge, not mo-

tivated by the desire to improve the external conditions of life, is alsoaction, i.e., an effort to attain a more desirable state of affairs. Another question is whether the human mind is tted for the full

solution of the problems involved. It may be argued that the biologicalfunction of reason is to aid man in his struggle for survival and the re-moval of uneasiness. Any step beyond the limits drawn by this function,it is said, leads to fantastic metaphysical speculations which are liableneither to demonstration nor to refutation. Omniscience is forever de-

nied to man. Every search for truth must, sooner or later, but inevita-bly, lead to an ultimate given.1The category of action is the fundamental category of human knowl-

edge. It implies all the categories of logic and the category of regularityand causality. It implies the category of time and that of value. It en-compassesall the specic manifestations of human life as distinguishedfrom the manifestations of mans physiological structure which he hasin common with all other animals. In acting, the mind of the individ-ual sees itself as different from its environment, the external world, andtries to study this environment in order to inuence the course of theevents happening in it.

2 Finality

What distinguishes the eld of human action from the eld of externalevents as investigated by the natural sciences is the category of nality.We do not know of any nal causes operating in what we call nature.1. See below, p. 54.


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But we know that man aims at denite goals chosen. In the natural sci-ences we search after constant relations among various events. In deal-ing with human action we search after the ends the actor wants orwanted to attain and after the result that his action brought about orwill bring about.

The clear distinction between a eld of reality about which mancannot learn anything else than that it is characterized by a regularityin the concatenation and succession of events and a eld in which pur-poseful striving after ends chosen takes place is an achievement of along evolution. Man, himself an acting being, was rst inclined to ex-plain all events as the manifestation of the action of beings acting in a

way that was essentially not different from his own. Animism ascribedto all things of the universe the faculty of action. When experiencemoved people to drop this belief, it was still assumed that God or na-ture acts in a way not different from the ways of human action. Theemancipation from this anthropomorphism is one of the epistemolog-ical foundations of modern natural science.

Positivist philosophy, which nowadays styles itself also scientic phi-losophy, believes that this rejection of nalism by the natural sciences

implies the refutation of all theological doctrines as well as that of theteachings of the sciences of human action. It pretends that the naturalsciences can solve all the riddles of the universe and provide an al-legedly scientic answer to all the questions that may trouble mankind.

However, the natural sciences did not contribute and cannot con-tribute anything to the clarication of those problems with which reli-gion tries to cope. The repudiation of naive anthropomorphism thatimagined a supreme being either as a dictator or as a watchmaker wasanachievement of theology and of metaphysics. With regard to the doc-trine that God is wholly other than man and that his essence and naturecannot be grasped by mortal man, the natural sciences and a philoso-phy derived from them have nothing to say. The transcendent is beyondthe realm about which physics and physiology convey information.Logic can neither prove nor disprove the core of theological doctrines. All that scienceapart from historycan do in this regard is to exposethe fallacies of magic and fetishistic superstitions and practices.

In denying the autonomy of the sciences of human action and theircategory of nal causes, positivism enounces a metaphysical postulatethat it

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The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method LF Ed. [1962]