All Human Science starts with Praxeology: The Science of Human Action

Praxeology is not only the basis of a science of Economics, but is also the foundation of epistemology, logic, geometry, arithmetic, all natural science, ethics, and politics.  This is a wild claim, I know that.  In The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science,  Ludwig von Mises constructs a philosophical argument that praxeology is not only the basis of a science of Economics, but also that human action is the foundation of epistemology, logic, geometry and arithmetic.

I think he missed something else though.  I believe that human action (intentional choice followed by physical change in the world, by intelligent, knowledge using human animals), also provides a priori categories from which we can derive a logical foundation, or source, of the fields of Ethics and Politics.

I'll briefly describe how Human Action is defined, and how each category flows out of the human brain as a tool for producing action.  The key to human action is intentionality.  Action is a subcategory of change.  Change is not something I clearly define.  I take a changing reality as a fundamental axiom.  The concept of time arises out of regularity in changes observed.  That difference between the changes we experience in the natural world and the changes we initiate as human action is that our actions are intentional.  I will not argue that we don't often perceive and attribute intention to animals, and I'm not going to argue that animals don't experience much of what we do.  However, I've yet to have a dog give me a thesis on why he likes bones and why he chases sticks.  So it's left for me to assume and theorize about it.

Praxeology - The Foundation

In human action, the core difference that we talk about is "goals" or "ends".  When we act we aim at some desired end that we expect to experience in the future.  Note that what we expect to happen when we act may or may not.  Human action is fundamentally speculative.   It is an experiment into the future.  All of our thoughts and experiences that are happening now, are happening based on observations of a reality that has past us by.  It takes time for the changes we perceive in reality to propogate through our senses to our brains.  It takes more time for us to convert those perceptions into concepts, to form conclusions about how reality is going to appear in the future.  It takes time to imagine actions we can take that might alter the future we see coming.  When we act we hold in our mind (however firmly or not) an outcome that we desire to see appear to our senses as time passes by.  The results of an action we initiate in the present will play out in a future we have not yet seen.  Action is fundamentally speculative.  So in summary, human action is any action taken by a man which has as it's goal the substitution of a new reality for one we believe would occur without the action.  We take as a priori definition that the new substituted reality is "better" than the one that would have occurred without the action.

Epistemology - Knowlege as a Tool for Action

Without arguing about how or when it began, humans use language to communicate and to think.  I'm going to call the "imagining" of the future described above as modeling.  We model reality in our minds.  Language and words are a way of carving up and thinking about the experiences we have of the past, and of the imagining we do of the future.  They give us ways of forming, describing, and sharing the components and content of those models.  We model the past in replaying memories.  We play counterfactual games about the past.  We imagine how things could have gone differently.  We model the future in our minds, and play counterfactual games about how to alter things we see coming.

Now, language is carved up into "concepts" or the word I like best, "categories" that we use as fundamental units for modeling the external reality.    Those concepts that we have are carved up at the most fundamental level into words, more advanced would be phrases, then sentences, paragraphs, etc.  These components of language are the means by which we hang memories and experience, and with which we think, reflect, model, and reason about reality.  But reflect for a moment on the role knowledge would play in a world that doesn't change.  Conversely imagine knowledge in a world that did not change in predictable ways.  If there was no change, what would it mean to think?


I will state as an assumption, and an unprovable one, that knowledge has no meaning apart from human action, and that knowledge can only arise in a world that has some regularity of change.  If the world doesn't change AND I don't try to change it in ways I prefer, why would I think, why would I reason, why would I model, about what would I know or think?  The regular and stable nature of the way in which the world changes, what we refer to as the laws of nature, provides a basis form forming knowledge that can play a role in human action.  So to come full circle the fact of Human Action arises out of a constantly changing world which follows a stable set of rules in how it changes, and provides a basis for forming categories and thinking, modeling and doing.  Thus human action provides a basis for the entire field of Epistemology.  I don't think one can "do" epistemology without recognizing the origin of categories and language and modeling (at least the type we do) as being the human brain, and that the driving force FOR the development and evolution of those phenomena (the brain and language : the two components of knowledge) is human action in a reality which resists (in very specific ways) our efforts.  I can't prove that these statements are true, I assume them a priori because I don't know how to think about or reflect on a reality where they are not true.  I don't have a way to think about what knowledge would be without change, regularity in change, time, and action.

Logic - Implicit in Language

Logic is itself a feature of knowledge and in fact may be a feature of the brain.  Each category is used to represent a set of things.   And a set describes two things simultaneous members of the set and non-members.  Now when I say this, I do not mean that a car is a thing in reality.  I simply mean that the idea car in my mind is used to represent a set of things that I see in reality.  The idea of a thing, an object, a singular isolated phenomena, is a feature of the mind, not of reality.  I see cars, I have no idea what the universe sees or does not see.  This separateness and carving up of reality is a thing I do inside my mind.  But my point here was to remark on the fact that all thinking involves fundamental concepts of logic (a and not-a, and, or).  The logical AND operation describes membership of a thing in two sets, or to represent the UNION of two sets of items.  The logical concept of OR is used to represent exclusivity, for example, a thing is either a car or not a car, it cannot be both.  Now, I don't mean that this maps perfectly onto reality.   Only that logic is a tool (and evidently a useful and effective one) that we use in knowledge which we use to act.

Mathematics - Counting Writ Large

Now Arithmetic (the origins of math) is a simple counting at heart.  Now that we have minds with hooks for things, we have counting of things.  At some point it may have been sufficient to use the words 'a','some', and 'many'.  To count, but we continued to advance these concepts and to come up with generic operations that represent addition/subtraction and multiplication/division, and all of mathematics grows from there.

Geometry - Our Logical Response to a 3D World

Except for Geometry which at it's core introduces an additional piece, and that's the operation or existence of objects in what we describe or interpret as a 3-dimensional space.  It isn't that triangles and circles and squares are perfect, but that they can be used to describe behaviors that we experience in reality and combined with mathematics of arithmetic, flowing into trigonometry and calculus, can be used to successfully, but not perfectly describe reality with sufficient precision to enable breathtaking and amazing feats of engineering, from the Pyramids, aqueducts, and other architecture of ancient Rome, to the amazing technologies of the 19th and 20th centuries.  But the origins of those sciences is in action performed into a 3-dimensional universe.  The salient feature is not that those maths and physical sciences are able to perfectly model reality.  It's that they can sufficiently model reality AT ALL.


I'll take that last statement to perform a temporary detour.  Some systems in our knowledge base have stood the test of time, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Calculus appear to be of that type.    The fact that they continue to be relevant and useful, and have not been directly replaced or discarded, is an interesting feature of human knowledge and the correlation (in some way) of that knowledge to reality.

Measurement : The Foundation of the Natural Sciences

Now, combining change (Time), arithmetic, and geometry gives us all manner of measurement.  Length, widths, volumes, heights, mass, weight, Air pressure, Speed, etc.  Without measurement the physical sciences would not be possible, and more importantly provides a basis for the application of that knowledge, Technology.

Causal vs. Teleological

We view our natural science as causal.  By causal we refer to the apparent order to the succession of events in reality.  The word 'apparent' doesn't seem strong enough.  For example, gravity is so "regular" in its operation on matter that saying 'apparent' seems ridiculous.  However, the causal stance is about triggering a succession of events to achieve a result in the future, or to trace a result in the present back through a series of events to understand how the current result occurred.   The ideas of cause and effect are in the human mind, and not in reality.  Things to happen in an orderly way, and we can intuit knowledge that enables us to understand the regularity, but the causal connection of events never prevents reality from going a different way.  In fact, we can never attain such certainty in our knowledge as to never be wrong.  Modeling is by it's very nature going to be a simplification of the complexity of the real system.  We cannot account for everything that's actually in the real world.

So when we look at the world, we look for causal chains in order to predict and model outcomes.  The goal is to reduce the risk inherent in action, which by its very nature must be speculative.   When dealing with natural phenomena we (very successfully) reduce our understanding of the regularity of events to "rules" or "laws" about the phenomena.

In human action the intentional stance brings a different "rule" to the table, than in physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc.  Human behavior and any science that derives from it MUST embrace intentionality, it is teleological.  However, the physical sciences must embrace causality.  Both are features of the human mind, neither exists in reality directly.  Causality is simply the mechanism by which we interpret the orderly succession of events which seem to have a direct correspondence.

Causal systems can be very chaotic (weather systems) due to the sheer complexity( = moving parts) of the system being analyzed.  However, the "rules" of the systems are ones we tend to assume to be static and unchanging.  They tend to also have a relatively small set of rules that govern the system.

The underlying system that produces intentionality (the human brain) may in fact be a causal system.  However, the results that come out of even a single human brain are significantly more complex and unpredictable than the relatively simple weather system of this planet.  Regardless of whether the brain is such a system, we can be sure that their is variability between different human beings in how they value and act.  There is variation between the choices at different times by the same human even when the external conditions appear to be the same, such that prediction of human action, and on a larger basis prediction of the complex social systems that evolve out of human action are 1 or more orders of magnitude more complex and thus to model than those analyzed by the physical and biological sciences.

But just as we can gain insight into electrical systems and how changes in different values (voltage, current, resistance, etc.) can effect other parts of the system, so the a priori deductions about the nature of human action can be used to understand the effects that we observe in our social systems.

Ethics and Politics - Emergent Properties of Acting Man and his Social Interactions

I will not here discuss how human action is the basis for a science of Economics, it has been discussed elsewhere.  Instead I'd like to show how Human Action as described is a basis for understanding the origin of the questions asked by the fields of Ethics and Politics.  Even more importantly, I would also argue that the implications of the role of Human Action and the teleological stance is essential in analyzing the social organizations that emerge.  Let's be clear, no matter how hard we try to design them, the social institutions we have, emerge from the fundamental nature of Human Action, from the very characteristics of the human mind that produce the intentional stance.  If we setup institutions that ignore this intentional nature, we will surely achieve results we could have avoided.

Ethics - The Normative Stance is Implicit in Action

How then does the field of Ethics arise out of Acting Man?  First off, the essential question of Ethics is a normative one.  It's "what is good?"  What is good for me?  What is good for you?  What is good for us?  What does it mean to be good?  What does it mean to be bad?  What does it mean to be evil?  And more practically "what 'should' I do?"  It's a completely different question from "what is true?"  But note also that it's a question of action.  It's not a question of existence, it's not a question of reality itself.  The categories of true and false arise out of knowledge itself.  But should and shouldn't, arise out of intention.  Should this be a goal, should I use this means.  It's a question that is posed and judged from inside each and every individual mind.  Notice very carefully that it's an implied question in human action...  Human intention aims at ends.  By definition we say that human action aims at relieving a psychic discomfort.  In other words, action means to attempt to substitute a new reality that one believes is preferred to the one being experienced, or more precisely the one we imagine would occur if we did not act.

No more elements are needed to understand the appearance of the concept of good.  What we actually have at this point is a micro view of the origin of the very questions of Ethics.   We aim at a resulting reality that is "better", no more and no less.  We are getting away from a world that is "worse", no more and no less.  The subjective evaluation of results of action as "better/worse" is sufficient to generate the entire category of normative thought and discourse.   If I apply Occam's Razor at this point, I need go no further in generating these ideas.  I believe I have an answer to the Meta-Ethics question which is "where does Good and Evil come from?"  We have emotional and mental states that we want, and ones we don't want.  Regardless of how we get those mental states, action aims at changing them.   That's it, beginning and end.  There is no need for more than that, the internal experience of being a human being is enough for us to abstract words to describe the experiences we have individually, and that through communication we have reason to believe we share in common.

There are those who will argue that there's more to it than that.  I'm choosing an Occam's razor type of solution.  The pure simple fact of motivation to act, intentionality as the impetus for changes to reality, is sufficient for us to form abstract concepts of good and evil, of right and wrong, of moral and immoral.

The reason for all knowledge is predictive capability.  We continue to act, we continue to aim at new and better ends, at better realities than the one we experience, we continue to look to our knowledge and our understanding of the world to give us tools that help us choose actions that ACTUALLY improve the futures we encounter.  That's why we argue about Ethics.  The last point I'll make about Ethics is that since its source is the individual decision and the individual mind, jumping beyond that to describe "should/shouldn't" normative standards as truth statements as something other than normative as generic for all men at all times is dangerous in the extreme.  Each man is the owner of his own internal ethics, by which I mean the engine that drives his decision making.  The structure of knowledge that produces in him actions.  What things he chooses as "the good", the knowledge that forms the basis of modeling and understanding reality such that his actions aim at "the good", and the consequence (all of them) produced in reality are his and his alone.

Politics - Conflict and It's Resolutions

Sometimes the consequences of an action in reality by one man don't fit with the actions of others.  They may produce "bad" for others.  In that moment at that time we encounter the essential driver for politics: conflict.  Now a new question enters the arena, "Who's right?"  Until this happens, I would argue there is no "politics", there is no normative question to be answered at a higher social level, about "What is the good?"  In support of this argument, I'd like to bring in for the first time, a micro-breakdown of the essential components that produce what I consider to be a conflict, and then demonstrate how that definition of a conflict is at the core of all political discourse.  In the future I would like to also demonstrate how we can interpret different political theories in the light of this core construction of conflict.  In addition, I will show that it has the ability to inform and enlighten us about the nature of the political (conflict resolution) institutions we encounter both historically and in the modern world.

So how does the idea of conflict flow out of the ideas of human action?  Well at it's core human action isn't interesting unless something "happens".  What do I mean by happen?  Well there must be some evidence of it in reality.  Even more that evidence must be noticed by a second party.  Without a second party, there can never exist a conflict.  I act, I may or may not like the results, I act again.  But until another human being exists and interacts with the same reality, there is no second point of view with which to conflict.  So, in this case, we're not interested in any internal experience or thinking of a human being that doesn't involve a change in reality.  Specifically, a human mind must act such that some matter, at some time, in some place, must change in some way, such that someone else notices.  So we have an intersection of 4 (intentional mind, matter, specific time, and in a specific location.  Note that time and space will always have dimensions to them.  All action takes time, so there will be a start and a stop time.  All space referenced will have volume.  In addition matter will be moved in space over time.  But the intersection of those 4 sets produce an event in reality that originates in a human mind.  The "cause" of the change is the mind of a man.  If I introduce a second person, there is the possibility that two people can aim at two different realities  (through action) that they wish to achieve in the future and find that when they merge their two different chosen actions, one or the other realizes that the reality they wanted to achieve didn't happen.  But we still don't have conflict.  We only have conflict when one intersection of mind + (space/time/matter) conflicts in some incompatible way with another intersection of mind + (space/time/matter).  Every conflict can be reduced to that basic formula.  I haven't thought thoroughly about all the permutations, but.  The same matter cannot be in two places at the same time (Both children need to be at their soccer practices at the same time, but we only have one car).  Also, you can't squeeze the different matter into the same location at the same time (Car accident in an intersection).   Note those are the only two fundamental versions of conflict,  having two minds with plans that correspond with matter and location but not with time, doesn't represent a conflict.  Time flows in one direction and there is no going "back".  If the car doesn't move from a location, time goes by and both plans have no conflict.

Now, let's be clear, there is no conflict in reality.  If we both try to jam the different cars into the same location, reality has plenty of physical laws to tell us what actually happens.  Here comes the interesting part.  One or both of us (conscious acting minds) may notice that our plans can't merge successfully into reality.  We now have a "conflict".  Note, the conflict is in the mind, NOT in reality itself.  The resolution sought is one of the mind.  Nature resolves this through might makes right!  The gazelle and the cheetah each implement their plan, and reality tells dictates what actually happens.

Political institutions arise out of this essential occurrence of conflict.   The conflict is between plans.   The conflict is who's plan gets the right of way.  From this essential question of "Who get's the right of way?",   flows all of the field of Politics.   Another interesting point, ownership appears to be a social formalization of "the right of way" combined with an intersection of mind + space/time/matter.  In fact, I'd also argue that regardless of the society and it's norms, one can interpret the norms, rules, laws that govern the behavior and interactions of the members of that society as ways of resolving the right of way issue over use of scarce resources.

I have more, but that's a start!  Hope you enjoy.