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Roderick T. Long –
Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action
, p. 1
WORK IN PROGRESS:COMMENTS AND CRITICISM WELCOME 
Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action
_______________________________________________________________________________
 
PRAXEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONSRoderick T. Long
 
Department of Philosophy6080 Haley CenterAuburn UniversityAuburn AL 36830longrob@auburn.edu
 
Roderick T. Long –
Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action
, p. 2
1Introduction: A Tale of Two Ludwigs___________________________________________
Trieste is no Vienna.
 – Gottlob Frege (
CO
200)The basic principles of economics are not empirical but
a priori
.Such is the contention of a number of theorists in the Austrian School
1
– most notablyLudwig von Mises,
2
who originated the view, and his students Friedrich Hayek andMurray Rothbard, who developed and extended it. On their view, the laws of economicsare conceptual truths, and economic truth is grounded in an
a priori
science they call
 praxeology
,
3
or the “logic of action.”
4
Essentially, praxeology is the study of thosepropositions concerning human action that can be grasped and recognized as true simplyin virtue of an inspection of their constituent concepts.
5
 
1
This movement is sometimes referred to as the Austrian School
of Economics
, but I find this longerdesignation misleadingly narrow. While Austrian School theorists (“Austrians,” for short) are best knownfor their contributions to economics, their interests have always ranged over philosophy and social thoughtgenerally. Indeed, some thinkers who must reasonably be regarded as part of the Austrian School, likephenomenologist Alfred Schütz and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, were not economists at all.Hence I prefer the simple designation “Austrian School” (by analogy with, say, the Frankfurt School).
 
2
Ludwig von Mises is the only major economist to lead a double life as a cartoon character; WaltDisney Studios is rumored to have based Ludwig von Drake, eccentric Viennese professor and uncle of Donald Duck, on Mises. In a more recent tribute, DC Comics released a comic book in which Batmanattempts to save Mises’ papers from being confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis. Can a team-up withLara Croft be far behind?
3
The term was coined by Alfred Espinas, “Les origins de la technologie,”
 Revue Philosophique de laFrance et de l’Étranger 
15 (1890). A keyword search on the internet confirms the following: The term“praxeology,” thus spelled, is largely confined to the Austrian School, and is used with this meaning almostexclusively. By contrast, the variant “praxiology” is used by many different schools of thought in a varietyof different senses. To add to the confusion, the French term “praxéologie” and the German term“Praxeologie” now mainly correspond to
 praxiology
, not
 praxeology
. (I think the term “practology” mightactually be etymologically more precise than either, but it looks enough like “proctology” that it hasn’tcaught on.)
4
See, e.g.,
EPE 
I. 1. 6.
5
Is praxeology supposed to be a
 field of study
(the science of human action), or an (aprioristic)
method 
 for studying that field? Mises suggests the former, Rothbard the latter. (This divergence was first pointed
 
Roderick T. Long –
Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action
, p. 3
Economics is above all
catallactics
– the science of exchange. But, according toMises, all action is exchange. Even when I am not exchanging goods or services withother people, so long as I am acting at all I am still engaging in what Mises calls
autistic
 exchange: I am exchanging a state of affairs I value less for one that I value more.
6
 Praxeological economics,
7
accordingly, traces the implications of the logical featuresinherent in exchange as such, features that must necessarily apply to every action.As Mises writes:As thinking and acting men, we grasp the concept of action. In graspingthis concept we simultaneously grasp the closely correlated concepts of value, wealth, exchange, price, and cost. They are all necessarily impliedin the concept of action, and together with them the concepts of valuing,scale of value and importance, scarcity and abundance, advantage anddisadvantage, success, profit, and loss. The logical unfolding of all theseconcepts and categories in systematic derivation from the fundamentalcategory of action and the demonstration of the necessary relations amongthem constitutes the first task of our science. (
EPE 
I. 2. 1.)The praxeological approach has always been a hard sell. We live in an empirical age,in which claims to
a priori
knowledge are regarded with suspicion. Mises’
a priori
 derivation of the laws of economics can easily strike us as a piece of rationalisticdogmatism, on a par with the claims of Descartes and Kant to have derived the laws of physical motion
a priori.
Mark Blaug’s negative judgment on Austrian methodologyilluminatingly expresses the temper of our time: “Mises’ statements of radical apriorismare so uncompromising that they have to be read to be believed”; they “smack of anantiempirical undertone … that is wholly alien to the very spirit of science,” and are “so
out to me by Peter Boettke.) But I think the field/method conflict is merely apparent. The definition I’veoffered is the one that I think is implicit in both Mises and Rothbard: praxeology is the study of 
thoseaspects of action that can be grasped a priori.
Thus the method is constitutive of the field. LikewiseRothbard defines praxeology as “the complete
 formal analysis
of human action in all its aspects” (
 MES
IV.8; emphasis added) and as “[t]he
 formal implications
of the fact that men use means to attain variouschosen ends” (
 MES
I. A; emphasis added).
6
“The proposition: Man acts, is tantamount to the proposition: Man is eager to substitute a state of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that suits him less.” (
TH 
III. 12. 1.)
7
The official view is that economics is just one
branch
of praxeology; but considering how broadly theAustrians define economics, it’s not clear what other branches of praxeology there could be. (But seeRothbard,
 MES
I. A.)
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