Austrian economics on RTE!

[20000miles]

OK, for a given definition of human and "act" it seems reasonable, but a bit of a tautology.
Also, my pen acts. Try disprove that.

This is a new criticism I haven't heard before. I heard another that went something like "well maybe we only think we act".

I think the pen point is inconsequential.

I found another axiom from Mises's Apriorism Against Relativism in Economics - Thorsten Polleit - Mises Institute.
"only individuals act"

I object to this. The human organism is made up of individual cells. Society is made up of individual humans. So saying individual humans act but society doesn't is as valid as saying my skin cells act, but my human whole doesn't.

I don't think this analogy is correct either. It's a case of metaphor run wild. "Society" is an abstract noun referring to a system of interpersonal exchange. A "society" does not have shared means to obtain shared ends.

Even if you were correct, it's only a peripheral point, and isn't even close to slamming the action axiom itself.

[Mr.De-Regulation]

Just listened to it. Ok I guess. Probably more interesting to an ordinary.

[20000miles]

Thats a belief, not a fact.

As Rothbard put it:

The first truth to be discovered about human action is that it can be undertaken only by individual “actors.” Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as ends of or actions by “groups,” “collectives,” or “States,” which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals. “Societies” or “groups” have no independent exist­ence aside from the actions of their individual members. Thus, to say that “governments” act is merely a metaphor; actually, certain individuals are in a certain relationship with other in­dividuals and act in a way that they and the other individuals recognize as “governmental.”

[Seos]

This is a new criticism I haven't heard before. I heard another that went something like "well maybe we only think we act".

That was I, I wasn't so much as trying to disprove the axiom as to show that if you're going to use extreme doubt to build knowledge upon why not go as far as Descartes starts his method off with? Also at the time you where saying it was entirely indubitable which using extreme doubt is not the case, it is dubitable.

Another variation of that is if I say I know I act but I have no way of knowing all humans act.

[Seos]

All sounds like philosophy envy to me.

[20000miles]

But a human is just a group of cells. If I am thinking about whether I act or not my brain cells are acting, but my calf muscles are not.

All in all these axioms are as much articles of faith as the Nicene Creed.

Again, there's only one fundamental axiom, the point about "society" acting is peripheral at best and has little bearing on the study of production, exchange and distribution of goods.

That was I, I wasn't so much as trying to disprove the axiom as to show that if you're going to use extreme doubt to build knowledge upon why not go as far as Descartes starts his method off with? Also at the time you where saying it was entirely indubitable which using extreme doubt is not the case, it is dubitable.

Another variation of that is if I say I know I act but I have no way of knowing all humans act.

The answer to these is somewhere in Hoppe's Economic Science, but I can't wade my way through it right now.

[Seos]

The answer to these is somewhere in Hoppe's Economic Science, but I can't wade my way through it right now.

Do you know the gist?

I can't see how anyone can know (indubitably) that anyone else acts.

The axiom of action must therefore in my opinion have a precondition of some sort which defeats the whole purpose.

Just to reiterate it is only the indubitability of the axiom which I am challenging.

[20000miles]

Here is what I could find from the text, wrt your earlier question of "thinking":

Consider, for example, this programmatic statement of his: "So far it has been assumed that our knowledge had to conform to observational reality"; instead it should be assumed "that observational reality conform to our knowledge."
Mises provides the solution to this challenge. It is true, as Kant says, that true synthetic a priori propositions are grounded in self-evident axioms and that these axioms have to be understood by reflection upon ourselves rather than being in any meaningful sense "observable." Yet we have to go one step further. We must recognize that such necessary truths are not simply categories of our mind, but that our mind is one of acting persons. Our mental categories have to be understood as ultimately grounded in categories of action. And as soon as this is recognized, all idealistic suggestions immediately disappear. Instead, an epistemology claiming the existence of true synthetic a priori propositions becomes a realistic epistemology. Since it is understood as ultimately grounded in categories of action, the gulf between the mental and the real, outside, physical world is bridged. As categories of action, they must be mental things as much as they are characteristics of reality. For it is through actions that the mind and reality make contact.

[Seos]

Here's my argument made into one sentence:

Why can I not say "I act, but other humans don't"?

[20000miles]

Because an attempt to deny it is an action?