Mises on Mind and Method

 LEE ESTO EN ESPAÑOL

TAGS History of the Austrian School of EconomicsPraxeology

04/21/2011Dan Sanchez

 Introduction
 "A Priori" and "Categories"
 Causality
 Teleology and Action
 The Will
 Praxeology
 Economics
 Praxeology Is Nothing New
 Nature and the Human Realm
 Radical Antiteleology
 Scientistic Economics
 Conclusion
 Notes

Introduction
When Austrian economist Thomas DiLorenzo recently testified before the House Subcommittee
on Domestic Monetary Policy, Congressman William Lacy Clay tried to dismiss the Austrian
School of economics as lacking "scientific rigor," because it relies on "deductive reasoning."
There is something dystopian about a member of the government saying to a dissenting
intellectual, in essence, "Isn't it true, sir, that you are part of a group of thinkers who uses [cue the
scary music] … logic?" Not even the obtuse inquisitors of Socrates, Abelard, and Galileo would
have been so bold.
It has become a popular trick among people who are unprepared to grapple with the actual
economic arguments of the Austrian School to try to short-circuit the debate by groaning, zombie-
like, "unscientific!" with hardly any familiarity, outside of what they were taught in grade school,
of even the epistemological issues concerning the natural sciences, let alone the even more
neglected epistemological issues concerning the social sciences.
Crude methodological critiques like these against sound economics are old, predating Austrian
economics itself. Before Carl Menger had even started the Austrian School, the members of
the German Historical School thought they could discredit the classical economists, not by
actually grappling with their arguments, but by simply dismissing the whole enterprise of
theoretical economics as "bloodless abstractions."
Ludwig von Mises remarked that when faced with such potentially biased methodological attacks
on the validity of sound economics, it may seem appropriate to simply "let the dogs bark and pay
no heed to their yelping," and to remember the dictum of Baruch Spinoza that "just as light
defines itself and darkness, so truth sets the standard for itself and falsity."[1]
However, Mises rejected such an "above it all" approach, insisting,

No scientist is entitled to assume beforehand that a disapprobation of his

theories must be unfounded because his critics are imbued by passion and party
bias. He is bound to reply to every censure without any regard to its underlying
motives or its background.[2]
He considered spelling out the foundational underpinnings of economics to be essential. For this
reason, Mises devoted a significant amount of his scientific attention to epistemological and
methodological problems.
In what follows, I will endeavor to systematically explain Mises's epistemology and its bearings
on his economics, drawing especially on his treatises Human Action, Theory and History,
and The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science.

"A Priori" and "Categories"

Mises characterized economics as an a priori science. By this he means that economic laws are
prior to, and independent of, economic experience, and that it makes no sense to try to test
economic laws with experiments, observations, statistics, or any other kind of empirical data.
This position tends to immediately set off alarms with people inculcated with a simplistic version
of the methods used by the natural sciences. Some even go so far as to malign such an approach as
"religious," because anything that isn't based on empirical fact must be "faith based." One
wonders if such critics think of geometry as a religion, being that the theorems of geometry are
prior to, and not based on, the gathering of topographical data. (More on that comparison later.)
Such critics don't realize that all reasoning (including the reasoning of the natural sciences) has an
a priori aspect.
To deny this would be to think of the mind in the way that is, as Mises wrote, "implied in the
famous dictum of John Locke according to which the mind is a sheet of white paper upon which
the external world writes its own story."[3]
On the contrary, the "human mind is not a tabula rasa on which the external events write their own
history."[4]
There is an empiricist doctrine that nothing is in the intellect that has not previously been in the
senses. As Mises noted, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz added the essential proviso: "except the
intellect itself." This is because for external events to even become knowledge, they need to be
processed by the intellect/mind. And for the mind to meaningfully process events, it must be, as
Mises puts it, "equipped with a set of tools for grasping reality."[5]
Mises credited Immanuel Kant for spelling out this key insight: "Experience, [Kant] taught,
provides only the raw material out of which the mind forms what is called knowledge."[6] .
The "set of tools for grasping reality" are certain inbuilt conceptions that the mind must apply to
raw sensations in order for those sensations to be converted into actual knowledge. We must have
these conceptions, for all sensation would be meaningless without their application. And these
conceptions must be inbuilt, because they cannot be learned, since learning is the acquisition of
knowledge (meaningful interpretations of external and internal sensations), and the acquisition of
knowledge presupposes the capacity to apply these "reality-grasping" conceptions.[7]
Kant called these inbuilt conceptions "categories" (a term Mises used very frequently). Mises
referred to the "categories" as necessary features of the "logical structure of the human
mind,"[8] and as the mind's "projection into the external world of becoming and change."[9]

All knowledge is conditioned by the categories that precede any data of

experience both in time and in logic. The categories are a priori; they are the
mental equipment of the individual that enables him to think and — we may add
— to act.[10]
A primary example of this "mental equipment" is the laws of logic themselves. Application of the
"fundamental logical relations" (for example, the law of noncontradiction) is necessary for all
reasoning regarding truth and falsity, but the principles of logic themselves
are not subject to proof or disproof. Every attempt to prove them must
presuppose their validity. It is impossible to explain them to a being who would
not possess them on his own account. Efforts to define them according to the
rules of definition must fail. They are primary propositions antecedent to any
nominal or real definition. They are ultimate unanalyzable categories. The
human mind is utterly incapable of imagining logical categories at variance with
them. No matter how they may appear to superhuman beings, they are for man
inescapable and absolutely necessary. They are the indispensable prerequisite of
perception, apperception, and experience.
The apriori forms and categories of human thinking and reasoning cannot be
traced back to something of which they would appear as the logically necessary
conclusion. It is contradictory to expect that logic could be of any service in
demonstrating the correctness or validity of the fundamental logical principles.
All that can be said about them is that to deny their correctness or validity
appears to the human mind nonsensical and that thinking, guided by them, has
led to modes of successful acting.[11]

Causality
Even the natural sciences must take recourse to a priori categories. Considering observed
experiences scientifically useful at all for discovering causal laws itself rests on what Mises called
an "aprioristic assumption."

Experience is necessarily of past events. It can be resorted to for the prediction

of future events only with the aid of the assumption that an invariable uniformity
prevails in the concatenation and succession of natural phenomena.
Only with this aprioristic assumption can one infer "from regularity observed in the past to the
same regularity in future events."[12]
Furthermore, as David Hume pointed out in his famous discussion of the "problem of induction,"
if you say that we can know that prior regularity predicts subsequent regularity, because it has
reliably done so in the past, then that is simply begging the question (committing the logical
fallacy of assuming that which is to be proved). That would be assuming that a prior regularity
("prior regularity predicting subsequent regularity in the past") predicts a subsequent regularity
("prior regularity predicting subsequent regularity in the future"), which is exactly what one is
trying to prove in the first place.[13]
The "category of causality" is our inbuilt conception that past regularity predicts future regularity.
That conception is a prerequisite to all reasoning regarding cause and effect in the natural world.
As Mises wrote, agreeing with Hume, there is no deductive proof that past regularity predicts
future regularity.

There is no deductive demonstration possible of the principle of causality and of

the ampliative inference of imperfect induction; there is only recourse to the no
less indemonstrable statement that there is a strict regularity in the conjunction
of all natural phenomena. If we were not to refer to this uniformity, all the
statements of the natural sciences would appear to be hasty generalizations.[14]
However, there is no other imaginable way of making sense of the material world without
assuming that past regularity predicts future regularity. Without taking recourse to the category of
causality, the physical universe around us would be a meaningless jumble of sensations.
Not only the natural sciences but everyday life would be impossible without our inbuilt
conception that past regularity does indeed predict future regularity. Without it, we would never
have developed agriculture, because we would have no reason to infer from past seasonal cycles
that similar seasonal cycles might occur in the future. Without it, we would never even avoid
contact with flame, because we would have no reason to infer from past contact the pain and
damage we would incur from future contact.

In a world without causality and regularity of phenomena there would be no

field for human reasoning and human action. Such a world would be a chaos in
which man would be at a loss to find any orientation and guidance. Man is not
even capable of imagining the conditions of such a chaotic universe.[15]

Teleology and Action

The most important "mental equipment" for thinking about mankind is the "category of
teleology/action": our inbuilt conception of purpose and purposeful behavior. Action (purposeful
behavior) is the use of means to seek an end (the "end" always being "the relief from a felt
uneasiness").[16]
"Should I try to deny the reality of purpose, means and ends, I would find myself caught in the
manifest absurdity of trying to deny the reality of trying."
Just as the natural world would be a meaningless jumble of sensations without the category of
causality, the social world around us (as well as our understanding of our own states of mind)
would be a meaningless jumble of sensations if we were not equipped with the category of
teleology/action. The conception of action in general is necessarily prior to the cognition of any
particular action.
Gestures and words would be meaningless motions and sounds unless the mind were able to apply
the conception of "purpose" to them. And how could you explain "purpose" to someone who did
not already have an inbuilt conception of it, when such an explanation would be, to your
"student," meaningless motions and sounds?
If I know anything, I know what action is. With every sentence I write with the purpose of
communicating to you, the reader, I live it. And if you are looking at these words with
the purpose of understanding them, you, too, are living it. Should I try to deny the reality of
purpose, means and ends, I would find myself caught in the manifest absurdity of trying to deny
the reality of trying.

The Will
According to Mises, man's will is not free in the metaphysical sense (that is, free from causation):

The content of human action, i.e., the ends aimed at and the means chosen and
applied for the attainment of these ends, is determined by the personal qualities
of every acting man. Individual man is the product of a long line of zoological
evolution which has shaped his physiological inheritance. He is born the
offspring and the heir of his ancestors, and the precipitate and sediment of all
that his forefathers experienced are his biological patrimony. When he is born,
he does not enter the world in general as such, but a definite environment. The
innate and inherited biological qualities and all that life has worked upon him
make a man what he is at any instant of his pilgrimage. They are his fate and
destiny. His will is not "free" in the metaphysical sense of this term. It is
determined by his background and all the influences to which he himself and his
ancestors were exposed.[17]
Furthermore, man is not a wholly independent "god" outside of the "machine" of the universe.

Freedom of the will does not mean that the decisions that guide a man's action
fall, as it were, from outside into the fabric of the universe and add to it
something that had no relation to and was independent of the elements which
had formed the universe before. Actions are directed by ideas, and ideas are
products of the human mind, which is definitely a part of the universe and of
which the power is strictly determined by the whole structure of the universe.
[18]
However, according to Mises, man's will is free in the sense that he can suppress his impulses.
[19] "Man is not, like the animals, an obsequious puppet of instincts and sensual impulses. Man
has the power to suppress instinctive desires, he has a will of his own, he chooses between
incompatible ends. In this sense he is a moral person; in this sense he is free."[20]
Yet, the notion of "will" is but a facet of the notion of "action." "Action is will put into
operation."[21]
So, for all the reasons listed that action is a necessary reality for man, will also is a necessary
reality. Whether it is called "free" or not, man (as far as man himself is concerned) does have a
will.

Some philosophers are prepared to explode the notion of man's will as an

illusion and self-deception because man must unwittingly behave according to
the inevitable laws of causality. They may be right or wrong from the point of
view of the prime mover or the cause of itself. However, from the human point
of view action is the ultimate thing. We do not assert that man is "free" in
choosing and acting. We merely establish the fact that he chooses and acts.[22]
The last two sentences seem consonant with the dictum of Arthur Schopenhauer: "Man can do
what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."[23]

Praxeology
Action, although it is an inbuilt conception, is not as simple a conception as one might first think.
There are quite a few subsidiary notions that are "bundled up" (implied) in the notion of action.
The "unbundling" of those notions (making explicit that which is implicit about action) is what
Mises referred to as the science of praxeology (of which the science of economics is a
subdiscipline).[24]

The scope of praxeology is the explication of the category of human action. All
that is needed for the deduction of all praxeological theorems is knowledge of
the essence of human action. It is a knowledge that is our own because we are
men; no being of human descent that pathological conditions have not reduced
to a merely vegetative existence lacks it. No special experience is needed in
order to comprehend these theorems, and no experience, however rich, could
disclose them to a being who did not know a priori what human action is. The
only way to a cognition of these theorems is logical analysis of our inherent
knowledge of the category of action. We must bethink ourselves and reflect
upon the structure of human action. Like logic and mathematics, praxeological
knowledge is in us; it does not come from without.
All the concepts and theorems of praxeology are implied in the category of
human action. The first task is to extract and to deduce them, to expound their
implications and to define the universal conditions of acting as such.[25]
One can "unbundle" the subsidiary notions contained within the conception of action by simply
thinking of conditions whose absence would make the existence of action nonsensical. For
example, the notion of action without time is clearly nonsensical, and so time is a necessary
implication of action.
One potentially confusing aspect of Mises's writings is that he referred to necessary implications
of actions as "categories of action." Thus now we have two meanings of "category of action."
There is the general inbuilt conception of action itself (which was the first meaning we met with),
and now there are subsidiary notions that are bundled up in the conception of action.
These subsidiary notions are also characterized as categories, because they are also inbuilt and
prior to experience. Thus we can also say that time is a "category of action." The best way of
distinguishing between the two meanings is to keep in mind that "the category of action" refers to
the former definition and "a category of action" refers to the latter.
Other subsidiary categories of action include

 the existence of an actor

  the "felt uneasiness" of the actor
 the actor's anticipation of the possible success of action
 "technological ideas" or "recipes": plans for specific arrangements of means to achieve
ends
 an environment in which exist possible means (goods) for the attainment of ends
 utility: the perceived causal relevance of various means for the alleviation of felt
uneasiness
 a scarcity of means with regard to the ends that could potentially be served
 economization: the allocation of scarce means to various ends
 preference: ranking alternative actions allocating scarce means according to the relative
priorities of various ends
 choice: undertaking the highest-ranked action for the sake of the highest priority ends it
serves
 opportunity cost: the second-highest ranked action that is forgone when the highest ranked
action is chosen

Very importantly, the causality category itself is a category of human action, because, again, as
Mises noted, action would be unthinkable without the assumption of regularity in the natural
world.[26]
The above are subsidiary categories of all action. But praxeology is not limited to propositions of
such great generality as that, else it would not be nearly as useful as it actually is.

Having shown what conditions are required by any action, one must go further
and define — of course, in a categorial and formal sense — the less general
conditions required for special modes of acting.[27]
For example, one can think about the special mode of action, "indirect exchange" (exchanging for
a good only for the purpose of exchanging that good for yet another good), and then think about
the conditions that would be required for that special mode. These conditions would include the
existence of more than two actors, the existence of at least three goods, etc.

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"But the end of science is to know reality," Mises adds. "It is not mental gymnastics or a logical
pastime. Therefore praxeology restricts its inquiries to the study of acting under those conditions
and presuppositions which are given in reality."[28]
For example, Mises does not consider the "disutility of labor" to be a category of action.[29] He
regards the notion of labor having no disutility as being fully consistent with the notion of action.
However, it is an easily observed fact that the disutility of labor pervades the real world. So the
praxeologist, in order for his studies to be useful in the real world, must assume the disutility of
labor in his reasonings. Mises stresses that this does not make praxeology an "empirical"
discipline.

However, this reference to experience does not impair the aprioristic character
of praxeology and economics. Experience merely directs our curiosity toward
certain problems and diverts it from other problems. It tells us what we should
explore, but it does not tell us how we could proceed in our search for
knowledge.[30]

Economics
For example, it is a matter of fact that we live in a society in which actors who produce goods are
able to utilize prices consisting of a near-universal and basically commensurable medium of
exchange (money) in order to use arithmetic to calculate profit and loss for their business as a
whole, and for various subbranches of their business.
Money prices and economic calculation are not categories of all action.
Primitive autarkic households (as well as socialist states) have no recourse to monetary
calculation. But since we observe that they do exist in our society, our curiosity is directed toward
problems concerning them.
Thus, in order for our studies to be useful to us in the real world, we restrict many of our
praxeological reasonings to the subdiscipline of praxeology known as economics, or
"catallactics," which, as Mises defined it, is the study of the market economy, i.e., "the analysis of
those actions which are conducted on the basis of monetary calculation."[31] To engage in
economic science, we must, again, define the conditions required for this "special mode of acting"
(calculative action), and unbundle the special implications bound up in the notion of a market
economy.
The economist can then add further assumptions, based on real-life conditions (though never
perfectly modeling them) in order to inquire into the necessary implications of those conditions.
For example, not every conceivable market economy is burdened by price controls and
restrictions on production. Unfortunately, ours is, and so we assume those conditions and
unbundle the implications bound up in that more complicated notion. All the valid laws of
economics are simply such implications made explicit.
It is easier to accept broader economic laws as true, as they seem to be "verified" all the time in
life, because the conditions they are concerned with are so broad. But as we progressively add
assumptions to our thought experiments to produce ever-more specific economic laws, the
question arises: cannot such a specific proposition be disproved by events? To understand why
this question is spurious, it is useful to consider the analogy of geometry.
"The ancient Greeks pioneered using long chains of deductive inferences to discover geometric
principles (fortunately, there was no ancient Greek Congressman Clay at the time to deride this
deductive scientific enterprise)."
First let us reflect on the methodology of geometry. In preclassical times, geometry was largely
empirical. For example, ancient Egyptian surveyors called "rope stretchers" used to find right
angles by stretching out knotted ropes to make a 3-4-5 triangle (a triangle with sides in the ratio of
3 to 4 to 5). The geometric principle that all 3-4-5 triangles form right angles might have been
discovered by the Egyptians through experience, by simply noticing that such triangles generally
have perpendicular legs by eyeballing multiple instances of them.
However, the ancient Greeks pioneered using long chains of deductive inferences to discover
geometric principles (fortunately, there was no ancient Greek Congressman Clay at the time to
deride this deductive scientific enterprise). And so the Greeks could discover the same principle
(that all 3-4-5 triangles form right angles) by reasoning from the Pythagorean theorem. And the
Greeks were able to use deductive geometry to discover a great many geometric principles that
would have been too subtle to find with empirical methods.[32]
Nowadays the deductive method for geometry is universally embraced. A good geometry teacher
will not demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem with measuring tape and a pile of plastic right
triangles, except perhaps as a preliminary exercise. She will teach her students to derive the
theorem from prior premises.
What if, when measuring plastic triangles, one of the geometry teacher's students discovers
something that does not seem to fit the Pythagorean theorem as it was taught to him by the
teacher? There are a few possible explanations for such an occurrence.
Perhaps the teacher, bizarrely, doesn't know the correct Pythagorean theorem herself, or how to
derive it. An economic analogy to this situation is when a theoretical economist introduces vicious
formulations (as the classical economists did with their value theory) and invalid reasoning (as
Keynes did with much of his work) to build a false economic theorem.
Perhaps the student measured the right triangles incorrectly. This would be analogous to an
economic statistician gathering faulty data.
Perhaps the student is not even dealing with right triangles in the first place, and so the
Pythagorean theorem is not applicable. This would be analogous to an economist trying to explain
a rise in a good's price using the quantity theory of money when the quantity of money didn't
actually change, and instead the price rose because of an increase in demand.
If economic data do not seem to demonstrate the playing out of a certain market process described
by economic theory (assuming the theory is sound and the data are correct), that would indicate
that circumstances must have been dominated by another market process (also described by pure
economic theory), another set of factors, or the interplay of several market processes/sets of
factors.
The economic historian uses data to determine which economic laws are most relevant in any
given episode. If, for example, the economic historian discovers trustworthy data that show that
after an increase in the supply of a certain good the price for that good increased, instead of
falling, that would not testify against the law of supply. That would instead be an indication that
other relevant factors are at work, like perhaps a precipitous drop in the supply of another good
for which the first good can serve as a substitute.
"No matter how precise your instruments, no matter how powerful your computers, all you will
find in the brain are chemical, electrical, subatomic, and other physical patterns and processes.
You will never find preferences, purposes, costs, or proceeds."
Whatever the case ultimately proves to be, what should the geometry student do when faced with
data that do not harmonize with the theory he is using? Should he proudly announce that he has
refuted the "orthodoxy of Pythagoras" and publish a new theorem, based on his measurements?
Should he gather a larger sample set of plastic triangles and perform statistical analysis on the data
gathered?
Of course not. He should check the soundness of the reasoning used in deriving the theorem,
check his measurements, and check the applicability of the theorem to the data.
Insofar as the student derived the Pythagorean theorem using discursive reasoning, he was
a geometer. But insofar as he was using geometry along with measurement to study plastic
triangles, he was a topographer, not a geometer. While geometry is indispensable for topography,
it is completely invalid to try to derive geometric laws from topography.
This is analogous to the crucial distinction between economics and economic history. Insofar as a
scholar derives economic theorems using discursive reasoning, he is an economist. But insofar as
he uses economics along with data-gathering to study actual events, he is an economic historian,
not an economist. While economics is indispensable for economic history, it is completely invalid
to try to derive economic laws from history.
This is not to say that either topography or economic history is an unworthy endeavor; far from it,
both of these are incredibly important.
Yet the most history can do for an economist is to provide either an example with which to
illustrate (but not prove) an economic theorem to help students grasp the concept by giving them a
concrete manifestation of it, or a clue that perhaps he has performed fallacious reasoning in
deriving the economic theorems he has been operating with. But even in the latter case, he must
use discursive reasoning to catch the fallacy, and then to adjust his theory according to the
corrected reasoning.
Mises used the fruitful comparison to geometry to refute another popular objection to theoretical
economics:

Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce

anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. All its implications are
logically derived from the premises and were already contained in them. Hence,
according to a popular objection, it cannot add anything to our knowledge.
All geometrical theorems are already implied in the axioms. The concept of a
rectangular triangle [right triangle] already implies the theorem of Pythagoras.
This theorem is a tautology, its deduction results in an analytic judgment.
Nonetheless nobody would contend that geometry in general and the theorem of
Pythagoras in particular do not enlarge our knowledge. Cognition from purely
deductive reasoning is also creative and opens for our mind access to previously
barred spheres. The significant task of aprioristic reasoning is on the one hand to
bring into relief all that is implied in the categories, concepts, and premises and,
on the other hand, to show what they do not imply. It is its vocation to render
manifest and obvious what was hidden and unknown before.
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In the concept of money all the theorems of monetary theory are already
implied. The quantity theory does not add to our knowledge anything which is
not virtually contained in the concept of money. It transforms, develops, and
unfolds; it only analyzes and is therefore tautological like the theorem of
Pythagoras in relation to the concept of the rectangular triangle. However,
nobody would deny the cognitive value of the quantity theory. To a mind not
enlightened by economic reasoning it remains unknown. A long line of abortive
attempts to solve the problems concerned shows that it was certainly not easy to
attain the present state of knowledge.
It is not a deficiency of the system of aprioristic science that it does not convey
to us full cognition of reality. Its concepts and theorems are mental tools
opening the approach to a complete grasp of reality; they are, to be sure, not in
themselves already the totality of factual knowledge about all things. Theory and
the comprehension of living and changing reality are not in opposition to one
another. Without theory, the general aprioristic science of human action, there is
no comprehension of the reality of human action.[33]
Another mistake critics make along these lines, is that they are confused regarding the sense in
which the theorems of economics are tautologies. When Mises says that the quantity theory of
money, as well as the Pythagorean theorem, is a tautology, he is using the technical definition of
"tautology," as it is used in the field of logic: "a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of
its logical form."
He is not using the everyday definition that has arisen for the term: "the saying of the same thing
twice in different words," as in "bachelors are unmarried adult males." The latter pleonastic kind
of tautology is indeed barren (see my discussion of the "action axiom" in footnote 24), because it
does not tell anybody anything they do not already know. But, as Mises explained above, the
former kind of tautology is incredibly fruitful in expanding the knowledge of anyone who does
not already know all the implications of the premise.
Praxeology Is Nothing New
Since "praxeology" is a neologism, and since Mises's writings are distinctive by their consistent
characterization of economics as a priori, it is easy to suppose that Mises was inventing some new
way of looking at the world. But that is not the case.

In asserting the a priori character of praxeology we are not drafting a plan for a
future new science different from the traditional sciences of human action. We
do not maintain that the theoretical science of human action should be
aprioristic, but that it is and always has been so. Every attempt to reflect upon
the problems raised by human action is necessarily bound to aprioristic
reasoning.[34]
In his methodological writings, Mises was not basing economics on some new foundation so
much as he was pointing out the foundations upon which sound economics had always been
based. Everything that is valid in Gresham's law, Hume's price-specie flow mechanism, Ricardo's
law of comparative advantage, and Say's law of markets is valid because it is based on the
originator's sound aprioristic understanding of human action and the assumptions introduced in
formulating the theorem.
Furthermore, all careful thinkers about human affairs (not only economists) can only ever have
had any success to the extent that they engaged in aprioristic, praxeological reasoning.

Every attempt to reflect upon the problems raised by human action is necessarily
bound to aprioristic reasoning. It does not make any difference in this regard
whether the men discussing a problem are theorists aiming at pure knowledge
only or statesmen, politicians, and regular citizens eager to comprehend
occurring changes and to discover what kind of public policy or private conduct
would best suit their own interests. People may begin arguing about the
significance of any concrete experience, but the debate inevitably turns away
from the accidental and environmental features of the event concerned to an
analysis of fundamental principles, and imperceptibly abandons any reference to
the factual happenings which evoked the argument.[35]
In fact, all mankind has always utilized praxeological reasoning. Mises only made clear the
distinctions between that everpresent part of human reasoning and other parts. Only after it was
made distinct could that part of human reasoning be given a name. If man had not always utilized
praxeological reasoning, the most rudimentary understanding of the actions of his fellow man, and
thus all of human society, would have been totally impossible.

[A]ll experience concerning human action is conditioned by the praxeological

categories and becomes possible only through their application. If we had not in
our mind the schemes provided by praxeological reasoning, we should never be
in a position to discern and to grasp any action. We would perceive motions, but
neither buying nor selling, nor prices, wage rates, interest rates, and so on. It is
only through the utilization of the praxeological scheme that we become able to
have an experience concerning an act of buying and selling, but then
independently of the fact of whether or not our senses concomitantly perceive
any motions of men and of nonhuman elements of the external world. Unaided
by praxeological knowledge we would never learn anything about media of
exchange. If we approach coins without such preexisting knowledge, we would
see in them only round plates of metal, nothing more. Experience concerning
money requires familiarity with the praxeological category medium of
exchange.[36]

Nature and the Human Realm

Of the three types of categories discussed above, one (the fundamental logical relations) is
fundamental in all reasoning. The other two (causality and teleology/action) are fundamental in
any reasoning about change in the world.

The Mises Wiki
There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality,
namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of
these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to
an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and
mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of
mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no
third way available.[37]
And again, these categories are prior to all experience, because they are prerequisite to the
meaningfulness of any experience. For sensation to make sense, it must be refracted through the
dual cognitive lenses of "cause" and "purpose."

What differentiates the realm of the natural sciences from that of the sciences of
human action is the categorical system resorted to in each in interpreting
phenomena and constructing theories. The natural sciences do not know
anything about final causes; inquiry and theorizing are entirely guided by the
category of causality.[38]
The existence of these dual alternative ways of explaining change (causality and teleology) in the
world raises questions: How do we know which one to use regarding any particular change? How
do we know when we are dealing with nature and when we are dealing with the realm of human
action?
We are with every reflective moment aware of our own status as an acting being. But what about
those other beings moving around who happen to look and sound like us? How can we be sure
without somehow peering into their minds that they are not mere simulacra? This is obviously an
extravagant question. There is no praxeological proof of the existence of any given alter ego. But,
as Mises wrote,

it is beyond doubt that the principle according to which an Ego deals with every
human being as if the other were a thinking and acting being like himself has
evidenced its usefulness both in mundane life and in scientific research. It
cannot be denied that it works.[39]
And once we choose to consider others as acting beings, all the general theorems of praxeology
must be considered as applicable to those others.
The category of teleology is such a prominent feature of the human mind, that relatively
inexperienced minds often paint the whole world in teleological colors.

Both primitive man and the infant, in a naive anthropomorphic attitude, consider
it quite plausible that every change and event is the outcome of the action of a
being acting in the same way as they themselves do. They believe that animals,
plants, mountains, rivers, and fountains, even stones and celestial bodies, are,
like themselves, feeling, willing, and acting beings.[40]
Here Mises described animism, a view of the universe in which objects that more experienced
minds describe as inanimate are assigned intelligence and will.
As culture develops, a society often moves from animism to theism, in which the objects
themselves are considered inanimate, but their motions are determined according to the purposes
of willing, acting gods.

Where people did not know how to seek the relation of cause and effect, they
looked for a teleological interpretation. They invented deities and devils to
whose purposeful action certain phenomena were ascribed. A god emitted
lightning and thunder. Another god, angry about some acts of men, killed the
offenders by shooting arrows.[41]
However, it should not be supposed that primitive peoples only resorted to the category of
teleology, and never to the category of causality.

Both categories were resorted to by primitive man and are resorted to today by
everybody in daily thinking and acting. The most simple skills and techniques
imply knowledge gathered by rudimentary research into causality.[42]
Just as, in the example given earlier in this paper, a man devoid of the category of causality could
never learn to avoid fire, a people devoid of the category of causality could never learn to make
fire. Nobody would ever have any reason to suppose that friction generating flame in the past had
any bearing on the future.
As culture and technology progresses, the ambit of causality tends to expand at the expense of the
ambit of teleology. Thus progressing societies tend, as Mises explains, to substitute causality for
animistic teleology: "Only at a later stage of cultural development does man renounce these
animistic ideas and substitute the mechanistic world view for them."[43]
And societies eventually substitute causality as well for theistic teleology: "Slowly people came to
learn that meteorological events, disease, and the spread of plagues are natural phenomena and
that lightning rods and antiseptic agents provide effective protection while magic rites are
useless."[44]
This transition in thought was brilliantly exemplified by the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates, in
writing on epilepsy, which had, before his time, been called the "sacred disease."

It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise

more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from
the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine
from ignorance and wonder, because it is not at all like to other diseases. And
this notion of its divinity is kept up by their inability to comprehend it, and the
simplicity of the mode by which it is cured, for men are freed from it by
purifications and incantations. But if it is reckoned divine because it is
wonderful, instead of one there are many diseases which would be sacred; for,
as I will show, there are others no less wonderful and prodigious, which nobody
imagines to be sacred.[45]
Abandoning teleology for causality had such satisfactory results in pragmatic affairs that thinkers
began to make the same shift even regarding matters far removed from day-to-day life, and over
which they had no control.
Carl Sagan described this process eloquently in his book Cosmos.

For thousands of years humans were oppressed — as some of us still are — by

the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or
gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious
awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up
among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there
were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human
beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not
caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the
Sun. And that the stars were very far away.
This revolution made Cosmos out of Chaos. The early Greeks had believed that
the first being was Chaos, corresponding to the phrase in Genesis in the same
context, "without form." Chaos created and then mated with a goddess called
Night, and their offspring eventually produced all the gods and men. A universe
created from Chaos was in perfect keeping with the Greek belief in an
unpredictable Nature run by capricious gods. But in the sixth century B.C., in
Ionia, a new concept developed, one of the great ideas of the human species.
The universe is knowable, the ancient Ionians argued, because it exhibits an
internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be
uncovered. Nature is not entirely unpredictable; there are rules even she must
obey. This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos.
And in the television series upon which the book Cosmos was based, Sagan said,

The first Ionian scientist was named Thales. He was born over there, in the city
of Miletus, across this narrow strait. He had traveled in Egypt and was
conversant with the knowledge of Babylon. Like the Babylonians, he believed
that the world had once all been water. To explain the dry land, the Babylonians
added that their god Marduk had placed a mat on the face of the waters and had
piled dirt up on top of it. Thales had a similar view but he left Marduk out. Yes,
the world had once been mostly water, but it was a natural process which
explained the dry land. Thales thought it was similar to the silting up that he had
observed at the delta of the River Nile.
Whether Thales's conclusions were right or wrong is not nearly as important as
his approach. The world was not made by the gods, but instead was the result of
material forces interacting in nature.
This approach eventually led to the scientific revolution of modern ages.

Radical Antiteleology
Mises describes how the track record of the shift from teleology to causality led some thinkers to
assume that the complete abolition of teleology from all scientific thought was in order.

The marvelous achievements of the experimental natural sciences prompted the

emergence of a materialistic metaphysical doctrine, positivism. Positivism flatly
denies that any field of inquiry is open for teleological research. The
experimental methods of the natural sciences are the only appropriate methods
for any kind of investigation.[46]
Positivists and other radical antiteleologists even reject teleological investigations into the social
sciences. In an instance of "scientism" (the proclivity of aping the physical sciences) these critics
of the traditional approaches to the studies of human affairs think of all teleological sciences as
the last refuge of animism. B.F. Skinner, the founder of radical behaviorism, typified this attitude
when he wrote,

For twenty-five hundred years people have been preoccupied with feelings and
mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more precise
analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role lead in the first
place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices
to which they gave rise.[47]
Radical antiteleologists characterize words like "intend," "believe," "desire," and "love" as
"mentalese" or "folk psychology." Many do not even believe that these concepts can be reduced to
material phenomena (an endeavor many consider to be proved futile by Franz Brentano's theory
of intentionality). But rather they regard these teleological notions as complete fictions that should
be discarded, just as teleological animism and theism were not "reduced," but simply discarded.
Sidney Morgenbesser is said to have asked a question to B.F. Skinner that succinctly displayed
the ridiculousness of adopting this approach to the social sciences: "Let me see if I understand
your thesis. You think we shouldn't anthropomorphize people?"
Yet, some people assume radical antiteleology is a necessary concomitant of materialist monism,
and of rejecting Cartesian mind-body dualism. They think that anything less than radical
antiteleology would be, to some extent, accepting the independence of the soul as some kind of
"ghost in the shell."
Mises denied this. He argued that what he called "methodological dualism" (applying causality to
nature and teleology to human affairs) does not necessarily imply "ghost in the shell" dualism.
[48] Furthermore, methodological dualism is still necessary, even if you completely accept
materialist monism.

We may fairly assume or believe that they are absolutely dependent upon and
conditioned by their causes. But as long as we do not know how external facts
— physical and physiological — produce in a human mind definite thoughts and
volitions resulting in concrete acts, we have to face an insurmountable
methodological dualism.[49]
Methodological dualism is not resorted to because we do not know whether actions are
determined. Even if we assume that human behaviors are indeed determined, so long as we do not
know which actions will be caused by which factors, we still must resort to methodological
dualism.
It is not enough to know that firing neurons lead to behaviors. For a scientist studying human
behavior to practice methodological monism, he would need to know which circumstances
regarding the firing of neurons would lead to deciding to the bodily motions that "silly folk
psychologists" call "composing a symphony," and which circumstances regarding the firing of
neurons would instead lead to the bodily motions that "silly folk psychologists" call "reading a
book." So long as we can't accomplish such a mind-boggling feat as that, the only way of studying
human affairs that makes sense is by considering humans as acting beings with minds, wills, and
intentions.
"There is nothing wrong with neurobiology and neurochemistry; indeed these sciences are
achieving wonders for us. But the social sciences can never be resolved into these natural
sciences."
Some claim that "methodological dualism" is a provisional stance, resorted to only because we do
not yet have the technology to fully explain the complexity of the human brain, and that this
stance can eventually be dropped once we do achieve that level of technology.
However, to add an argument of my own, complementary to Mises's, humans are not special for
science just because they are complex. They are not basically on the same scientific grounds as
weather patterns. They are special for science because the very questions we want answered about
them are teleological in nature. The reason we study human action in the first place is that we
have certain questions that are inextricably bound up with the human purposes that
antiteleologists dismiss as mentalist fictions.
For example, people are vitally interested in economics largely in order to discover the legal and
institutional arrangements by which humans can prosper. How can one explain "how humans
prosper" when the teleological, "mental fiction" of "prospering" is dismissed as nonsense at the
outset? I would challenge any antiteleological economist to even define (let alone explain)
"goods," "money," "profit," "loss," and "income" without using the teleological, "mentalist"
language they deride as "folk psychology."
Inquiries into the causes and nature of the wealth of nations are fundamentally different from
inquiries into the causes and nature of the humidity of trade winds. If we had precise enough
instruments and powerful enough computers, we could explain every single thing about the most
complex weather pattern. But no matter how precise your instruments, no matter how powerful
your computers, all you will find in the brain are chemical, electrical, subatomic, and other
physical patterns and processes. You will never find preferences, purposes, costs, or proceeds.
This is not to say that the former does not cause the latter. It is rather that the terms in which our
minds grasp causality and teleology are fundamentally different and simply do not translate into
each other.
The most thoroughgoing, radical antiteleologists are actually right insofar as, in the language of
causality, there is no such thing as teleology. That is why they do not want to explain teleology in
terms of causality; instead they want to abandon teleology altogether. Their position is ridiculous,
because it would involve the abandonment of all economic, sociological, ethnographic, and
historical questions, but at least it is more logical than that of people who think they can answer
teleological questions with causality answers.
We have many causality-related questions about our bodies (including our brains), because our
bodies are useful to us. But we also have many teleological questions about choice, success,
failure, prosperity, and poverty. Once you abandon teleological language, you
have effectively changed the question. So, as long as we are still asking teleological questions, we
need to continue providing teleological answers.
There is nothing wrong with neurobiology and neurochemistry; indeed these sciences are
achieving wonders for us. But the social sciences can never be resolved into these natural
sciences, because the human mind can never resolve teleology into causality without abandoning
teleology altogether, and to study human affairs without considering purposive action is not to
study human affairs at all.

Scientistic Economics
Most social scientists who aim to emulate the natural sciences do not take things so far as to deny
teleology altogether. Most consider humans as acting beings. However, in their "scientistic"
striving, they end up vitiating all their efforts with faulty approaches. One aspect of the natural
sciences they try to emulate is the latter's empirical methods.

Complexity
Yet, all data, no matter how numerous and carefully gathered, are always information about past
events: historical experience. And as Mises wrote,

The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always
an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be
performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position to observe
the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event remaining
unchanged. Historical experience as an experience of complex phenomena does
not provide us with facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this
term to signify isolated events tested in experiments. The information conveyed
by historical experience cannot be used as building material for the construction
of theories and the prediction of future events. Every historical experience is
open to various interpretations, and is in fact interpreted in different ways. …
Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains are
interlaced cannot test any theory. Such phenomena, on the contrary, become
intelligible only through an interpretation in terms of theories previously
developed from other sources. In the case of natural phenomena the
interpretation of an event must not be at variance with the theories satisfactorily
verified by experiments. In the case of historical events there is no such
restriction. Commentators would be free to resort to quite arbitrary explanations.
Where there is something to explain, the human mind has never been at a loss to
invent ad hoc some imaginary theories, lacking any logical justification.[50]

Nonregularity
Moreover, the empirical approach to the natural sciences is only fruitful because of its regularity,
and our ability to use the category of causation to infer use carefully observed past regularity to
infer such regularities in general (in other places and times). But, as Mises argued, there is simply
no such regularity in the realm of human action:

Epistemologically the distinctive mark of what we call nature is to be seen in the

ascertainable and inevitable regularity in the concatenation and sequence of
phenomena. On the other hand the distinctive mark of what we call the human
sphere or history or, better, the realm of human action is the absence of such a
universally prevailing regularity. Under identical conditions stones always react
to the same stimuli in the same way; we can learn something about these regular
patterns of reacting, and we can make use of this knowledge in directing our
actions toward definite goals. Our classification of natural objects and our
assigning names to these classes is an outcome of this cognition. A stone is a
thing that reacts in a definite way. Men react to the same stimuli in different
ways, and the same man at different instants of time may react in ways different
from his previous or later conduct. It is impossible to group men into classes
whose members always react in the same way.[51]

Mathematical Economics
Nonregularity in the realm of human action also makes hopeless the other way in which many
economists try to ape the physical sciences: their "quantophrenia" (an irrational haste to introduce
mathematical analyses to their work).
First of all, measurements require constant relations. So, in contrast to the natural realm, the utter
lack of constant relations in the realm of human action precludes any useful measurements.

In the realm of physical and chemical events there exist (or, at least, it is
generally assumed that there exist) constant relations between magnitudes, and
man is capable of discovering these constants with a reasonable degree of
precision by means of laboratory experiments. No such constant relations exist
in the field of human action outside of physical and chemical technology and
therapeutics. …
Those economists who want to substitute "quantitative economics" for what they
call "qualitative economics" are utterly mistaken. There are, in the field of
economics, no constant relations, and consequently no measurement is possible.
[52]
Secondly, equations also require constant relations. So, again in contrast to the natural realm, the
utter lack of constant relations in the realm of human action precludes the formulation of any
meaningful equations.

[I]n mechanics the equation can render very important practical services. As
there exist constant relations between various mechanical elements and as these
relations can be ascertained by experiments, it becomes possible to use
equations for the solution of definite technological problems. Our modern
industrial civilization is mainly an accomplishment of this utilization of the
differential equations of physics. No such constant relations exist, however,
between economic elements. The equations formulated by mathematical
economics remain a useless piece of mental gymnastics and would remain so
even it they were to express much more than they really do.[53]
Besides these more basic epistemological errors, mathematical economists also torture economic
concepts like utility and equilibrium into vicious formulations so as to make them mathematically
manipulable, at the cost of truth and meaningfulness. As this is a paper on epistemology, and not
economics proper, I will not present all of Mises's arguments against the fallacies of mathematical
economics, except only to direct the reader to my study guide of Mises's Theory of Money and
Credit, chapter 2, and Human Action, chapter 9, section 5.

$275
The Mises Bust

Conclusion
Ludwig von Mises did the social sciences (and humanity itself) an inestimable service by not only
using his crystal clear understanding of the true character of the sciences of human action to
systematize and advance economic science, but also by illuminating that true character for
posterity.
Mises demonstrated once and for all that (and in what way) economics is indeed an exact, certain,
a priori, and (yes) deductive science.
In these dark days, in which unmoored methodology has led to fallacious economics, which in
turn has led to disastrous policies, the epistemological works of Mises shine like a beacon of
hope: hope that someday the social sciences will right themselves at the fundamental
methodological level, and thus will be clear-eyed enough to guide humanity back toward sanity,
peace, and prosperity.

Notes
[1] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (HA), Introduction, § 2.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (UFES), ch. 1, § 1.
[4] Mises, HA, ch. 2, § 2.
[5] Ibid.
[6] UFES, ch. 1, § 1
[7] My use of the term "inbuilt" refers to Mises's characterization of the mind being already
"equipped" with these conceptions prior to their use in grasping reality. It should not be taken as
implying "innate," in the sense that they are present at birth. It may however be that our genetic
constitution (which itself is present at birth) is such that we have the biological capacity to
develop these conceptions. "Man acquired these tools, i.e., the logical structure of his mind, in the
course of his evolution from an amoeba to his present state." HA, ch. 2, § 2. For a meeting of Kant
and Darwin in the expansive mind of Mises, see "Hypothesis about the Origin of A Priori
Categories" in UFES, ch. 1, § 2. However, regardless of how these conceptions do form, the point
is, again, that they cannot be formed from the acquisition of knowledge (meaningful
interpretations of external and internal sensations), because the capacity to apply these
conceptions is a prerequisite of knowledge.
[8] UFES, ch. 1, § 1.
[9] HA, ch. 2, § 2.
[10] UFES, ch. 1, § 1.
[11] Mises, Theory and History (TH), Introduction.
[12] TH, ch. 14.
[13] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV. "For all inferences
from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that
similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the
course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience
becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that
any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these
arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance."
[14] TH, Introduction.
[15] HA, ch. 1, § 5.
[16] HA, ch. 4, § 1.
[17] HA, ch. 2, § 6.
[18] UFES, ch. 3, § 4.
[19] Although I would argue that all acts of suppressing certain impulses are themselves impelled
by still other impulses, and that "impulse" is, praxeologically speaking, identical with "felt
uneasiness" that brings about all action.
[20] UFES, ch. 3, § 4.
[21] HA, ch. 1, § 1.
[22] HA, ch. 6, § 1.
[23] Arthur Schopenhauer, Prize Essay On The Freedom Of The Will.
[24] Many followers of Mises have characterized praxeology as deductions from an "action
axiom." And some say that this "action axiom" is "humans act" or "action is purposeful behavior."
It is important to note that Mises never used the term "action axiom." Mises used "human"
basically as a synonym for "actor." Thus saying "humans act" is tantamount to saying "acting
beings are acting beings." Furthermore, "purposeful behavior" means nothing more and nothing
less than "action." Therefore, saying "action is purposeful behavior" is tantamount to saying
"action is action." Thus both "axioms" are pleonastic, and nothing useful can be deduced from
them. Praxeology is the unbundling of the implications of a conception, not of a proposition.
Praxeology stems from the conception we think of when we hear the single word"action" (or any
of its translations or synonyms), not from the proposition "action is purposeful behavior." When
Mises wrote "action is purposeful behavior," he introduced "purposeful behavior" as a clarifying
substitute for "action," just in case readers are thinking of another meaning of the word "action,"
not as the second half of non-pleonastic proposition from which to derive theorems. Mises derived
praxeology from the a priori category of action, not the "action axiom." The propositions
immediately implied by the category of action might be considered axioms (e.g., "Action always
involves the passing of time."), because they are actually propositions, and thus can be used for
edifying deductions. But nouns ("action") and pleonasms ("action is action") cannot be so used.
[25] HA, ch. 2, § 10.
[26] David Hume himself seemed to imply that causality was a necessary implication of action
when he wrote that without the presumption of regularity, "we should never have been able to
adjust means to end, or employ our natural powers, either to the producing of good, or avoiding of
evil." An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section V. In fact, far from being the
"prepositivist" as he is often portrayed, Hume posited that our very notion of cause-and-effect is
derived from our understanding of will and action: "An act of volition produces motion in our
limbs, or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the will we know by
consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of power or energy; and are certain, that we ourselves
and all other beings are possessed of power. This idea, then, is an idea of reflection, since it arises
from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and on the command which is exercised by
will, both over the organs of the body and faculties of the soul." Ibid., Section VII.
[27] HA, ch. 2, § 10.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid.
[31] HA, ch. 14, § 1.
[32] While the similarities between geometry and economics are instructive, there are important
differences between the a priori natures of the two, discussed by Mises in UFES, "Some
Preliminary Observations Concerning Praxeology Instead of an Introduction," Section 4. Another
important discussion of the apriorism of geometry is in UFES, Ch 1. § 1.
[33] HA, ch. 2, § 3.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] HA, ch. 1, § 6.
[38] TH, ch. 11.
[39] HA, ch. 1, § 6.
[40] Ibid.
[41] TH, ch. 11.
[42] Ibid.
[43] HA, ch. 1, § 6.
[44] TH, ch. 11.
[45] Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease.
[46] TH, ch. 11.
[47] B.F. Skinner, About Behaviorism, ch. 1.
[48] In fact, Mises provides a good reason why it is natural to reject "ghost in the shell" dualism
when he points out that "our impotence to ascertain an absolute beginning out of nothing forces us
to assume that also this invisible and intangible something — the human mind —is an inherent
part of the universe, a product of its whole history." UFES, ch. 3, § 4.
[49] HA, ch. 1, § 3.
[50] HA, ch. 2, § 1.
[51] TH, Introduction.
[52] HA, ch. 2, § 8.
[53] HA, ch. 16, § 5.
 
Author:
Contact Dan Sanchez
Dan Sanchez is a libertarian writer and an editor at the Foundation for Economic Education. He is
a contributing editor at Antiwar.com, where he writes a regular column, and an independent
journalist at Anti-Media. His work has frequently appeared at such websites as Zero Hedge, the
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and David Stockman's Contra Corner. His writings
are collected at DanSanchez.me.