A priori in philosophy refers to knowledge that is independent of experience, such as mathematics and logic. Praxeological economic theory is a priori in the sense that it is not an empirical science understood through experimental methods and empirical observations, but rather an analysis of the logical structure of human action. There are two conceptions of the nature of this a priori knowledge: The impositionist along the lines of Kant believes that man imposes a structure on the world, while the reflectionist believes that there can be knowledge independent of any such impositions due to inherent “intelligibility” of structures of the world (Smith, 1990: 2).
However, like most dichotomies in Western philosophy, this one, too, is false due to a number of misunderstandings of the nature of the cosmos. These “isms” suffer from the distortions created by the Newtonian Worldview, the earliest of which arose in understanding perception and knowledge.
As early as Locke, what is now known as the Representative Theory of Perception was argued. At this stage, it was an argument from illusion, where a person is said to see something in both the veridical and hallucination cases, but in the hallucination case it is argued they still see something. This was understood as the representation (called “ideas” by Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley and “impressions” by Hume) of an object being the object of perception rather than directly perceiving the object (Searle, 2015: 21-22). Later on, this became the Argument from Science describing the processes of visual perception and the idea that the representation (called “sense data” in the 20th century) is the object of perception (Searle, 2015: 21-23).
This led to a disaster of epistemology as described by John Searle in Seeing Things as They Are (2015). A proper understanding of how man comes to know things in the world is that by seeing an object in the veridical case he simply knows that it is there (Searle, 2015: 188). This is due to the direct presentational Intentionality of perception, which is denied by most Western philosophers.
This radical disconnect between knowledge and the world as a result of the Representative Theory of Perception is at the root of the false dichotomy of impositionism and reflectionism. Upon reflection, there is a deeper issue regarding the understanding of Intentionality, and still deeper, and understanding of the nature of the cosmos and how there can be intrinsic Intentionality.
Rather than attempting to use “isms” of a false dichotomy, or attempting to make subcategories of either “ism,” it is best to approach the issue by analyzing the world, the consciousness of man, and his action. To attempt to account for the a priori knowledge of praxeology in Kantian or Aristotelian terms (e.g., Smith, 1990) requires accepting the categories and overall framework of Kant or Aristotle, but both should be rejected since both have fundamentally mistaken views of the world.
The social institutions involved in economics such as money, private property, or corporations all have a subjective ontology (see Searle 2010). These social institutions are, ontologically speaking, fundamentally linguistic (Searle, 2010: 12-13) and exist as a result of sufficient collective Intentionality (Searle, 2010: 25). The speech acts constituting social institutions have the same logical form as declarative illocutionary acts (Searle, 2010: 12-13).
Money is not money because of any intrinsic properties, but is money because of sufficient collective Intentionality that establishes it as a common medium of exchange. In the U.S., money is established by way of status function declaration: “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.” However, if collective Intentionality no longer exists in a sufficient amount for whatever reason, it will no longer be money. Similarly, a corporation only exists by way of a speech act known as a status function declaration known as articles of incorporation. To be sure, there are often physical correlates of the corporation such as an office, employees, etc., but the corporation is fundamentally linguistic and subjective in its ontological mode of existence.
A great deal of economics and social reality in general is created by man, but this does not make it arbitrary. The fact that a particular piece of paper is a dollar bill is epistemically objective and not an arbitrary social construct that can be deconstructed and reconstructed at the whims of people.
There is a deeper point here that is critical to the understanding of the world, which is this distinction between subjective and objective ontological modes of existence. The difference can be understood by comparing the existence of pain with the existence of a mountain. The awareness of pain is constitutive of its existence, while the awareness of the mountain is one of Intentionality, in that the awareness is directed to states of affairs in the world. The mountain exists when no one is looking at it, but to say that a person is in pain but they just do not feel it is literal nonsense.
The subject of praxeological economics is human action, which has a subjective ontology. However, this does not, therefore, mean that it is also epistemically subjective, and indeed the logical structure of human action is absolute in its epistemic objectivity. This ability to, one could say reflect, on the logical structure of human action is the ability to recognize independently valid inferences.
This is also the case in Searle’s solution to the Lewis Carroll Paradox (Carroll, 1895), which involves an infinite regress of rules that would be required if logic were based on rules. The resolution to this apparent paradox is that rationality bottoms out in what Searle refers to as recognitional rationality of valid inferences (Searle, 2001: 117[1]), and the key is that the inferences are valid in and of themselves, as a result, their semantic content (Searle, 2001: 19-20). In other words, the semantic content is sufficient to guarantee the validity of the inference (Searle, 2001: 21[2]) which is what permits rationality to exist prior to the formalization of rules of inference. This is the proper explanation for the “self-evident” propositions of praxeology, rather than being psychologically or phenomenologically self-evident. The phenomenology does not get to the underlying logical structure since this underlying structure is not phenomenologically present.
The human brain developed under evolutionary pressures (the details of which can be set aside for now, but the problems with Darwinian evolution theory must be addressed later). These involve cognitive operators involved in the Background neurobiological capacities necessary in order to perceive the world. Such operators are necessary for everything from perceiving causation, thinking in terms of opposites (e.g., hot and cold, dark and light), breaking down whole things into component parts, abstracting quantities from various elements, and abstracting a general structure from particulars (Newberg & D’Aquili, 2001: 48-50).
This structure of the mind is not arbitrary or simply imposed on the world by man. Human action is the critical link between the world and the mind of man, but the Newtonian Worldview fundamentally denies the ontological existence of human action. This severs the connection between the mind and the physical world and creates all manner of pseudo-philosophical problems with real world consequences.
This situation is most fundamentally a result of interpretation of physical theories. These interpretations are generally materialist or physicalist, which are fundamentally no different, and view the physical world as “causally closed.” This Causal Closure of the Physical is taken as axiomatic, but there is no causal closure of the physical as indicated in the orthodox quantum formalism (Stapp, 2007: 24; 1992: 248). In other words, the von Neumann formalization of quantum theory is an explicit mathematical description of a psycho-physical interaction. The entire notion of causation is itself a controversial and confused subject, unable to account for the causation involved in quantum experiments, particularly those with radioactive decay (what caused the random decay?).
Nevertheless, human action is a matter of Intentional causation. That is to say that the Intentional contents of the mind play a causal role in action, whether it be in thought, word, or deed. This can be through a prior intention or an intention-in-action, but either way it is the Intentional mental states that function causally in bringing about the action. To get down to the nitty gritty requires a theory of consciousness and causation, as well as an interpretation of quantum theory, but that must be left to future posts. Suffice it to say for this post that the von Neumann quantum formalism provides an explicit model of psycho-physical interaction, so the physical world is not causally closed, and human action has ontological existence.
This action, this interaction with the world, results in a brain that is able to perceive aspects of the world. It can abstract structure from the world from independently valid inferences, creating syntactic logical abstractions such as modus ponens or basic arithmetic. It can also analyze the logical structure of human action, which is a priori knowledge about the world that is neither analytic nor synthetic because human action is necessarily an interaction between the mind of man and the world. This world also includes ontologically subjective social institutions created by speech acts, which have a deontological structure that can be analyzed a priori.
This a priori knowledge is both a logical abstraction and constructed or “impositionist” in this sense, but derived from the logical structure of the world, in this case the logical structure of human action, so “reflectionist” in this sense. It is best to reject the “isms” of Western philosophy and focus on understanding the more fundamental subjects underlying these “isms” in order to best explain reality. Western science and philosophy is largely stuck in a Newtonian Worldview that is the lens through which all these issues are viewed, distorting the understanding of the world. Several fundamental topics were glossed over out of necessity, for they are subjects in themselves that must be explained in future posts.
[1] “In order to show why such cases do not lead to an infinite regress, I need to introduce the notion of recognitional rationality. Rationality may require that an agent under certain epistemic conditions simply recognize a fact in the world such as the fact that he has undertaken an obligation or that he has a certain need, or that he is in a certain kind of danger, etc., even though there is no rational process, no activity of deliberation, leading to the rational result. The acquisition of a rational intentional state does not always require a rational process of deliberation, or indeed any process at all.”
[2] “[…] the sophistication of our simulations in machine models of reasoning makes us forget the semantic content. But in real-life reasoning it is the semantic content that guarantees the validity of the inference, not the syntactical rule.”
Works Cited:
Carroll; Lewis. (1895) “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” Mind. 104(416): 691–693. doi:10.1093/mind/104.416.691. JSTOR 2254477
Newberg; Andrew & D’Aquili; Eugene. (2001) Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York, U.S.A.: The Ballantine Publishing Group, First Edition, ISBN: 0-345-44033-1.
Searle; John R. (2001) Rationality in Action. Cambridge, U.S.A.: The MIT Press, ISBN: 0-262-69282-1.
Searle; John R. (2010) Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. New York, U.S.A.: Oxford University Press, 1 edition, ISBN: 978-0-19-539617-1.
Searle; John R. (2015) Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception. New York City, U.S.A.: Oxford University Press, 1st Edition, ISBN-10: 0199385157, ISBN-13: 978-0199385157
Smith; Barry. (1990) “The Question of Apriorism.” Austrian Economics Newsletter (Fall 1990), 12(1): 1-5. Available online: https://cdn.mises.org/aen12_1_1_6.pdf
Stapp; Henry P. (1992) Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics. The Frontiers Collection, Springer; 3rd edition (2009), ISBN-10: 3540896538, ISBN-13: 978-3540896531. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-89654-8
Stapp; Henry P. (2007) Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. New York, U.S.A.: Springer, ISBN: 978-3-642-18075-0.
