Common Errors About the Austrian School’s “Action Axiom”

There are many misunderstandings surrounding the Austrian School’s “action axiom,” namely the proposition that “human beings act consciously with purposes in mind.”

According to the Austrian School, this proposition is an “apodictic” truth. In other words, it does not apply only under certain conditions, but is “a universally valid and absolutely objective fact that requires no premises.” (This is why the Austrian School calls an axiom an axiom. Today, because the meaning of “axiom” has been almost lost in modern geometry, we often forget the “apodictic” character of axioms. In traditional scholarship, however, an axiom meant precisely “a proposition that cannot be logically refuted.”) Therefore, the truth claim of the action axiom itself, and of the laws logically deduced from it without error, stands on a level equal to the axioms of Euclidean geometry or formal logic. That is, logical propositions such as “1+1=2,” “the sum of the interior angles of a triangle on a plane is 180 degrees,” and “all unmarried people are unmarried,” are equally valid as the economic proposition that “because human beings act consciously with purposes in mind, all government action creates disutility.”

Yet our intuition tells us that the action axiom is not as universally valid as its ardent defenders declare. Although the difficulty of grasping a proposition intuitively does not determine its level of truth, many people try to disparage the action axiom precisely because it is difficult to understand. A representative error regarding the action axiom lies in misunderstanding the terms implied by the proposition or confusing categories. For example, many people fail to understand the difference between praxeology and psychology, and often confuse these two clearly distinct fields.

From a psychological point of view, human beings are often unconscious. This is a scientific fact. Since the unconscious is not conscious, it is not purposive. In such cases, the mode of human existence does not display purposiveness. For example, we may bite our nails or shake our legs. These are clearly unconscious, and therefore it is difficult to say that they are actions accompanied by purposes.

Although Korean does not draw this distinction clearly, in English “action” and “behavior” are plainly different. “Action” is carried out deliberately and with a purpose. “Behavior,” by contrast, is carried out unconsciously or by reflexes belonging to us as animals. At times, the distinction between action and behavior may seem extremely difficult to draw. But categorically, it is nevertheless true that purposive action and unconscious behavior are clearly different. What praxeology, and its most highly developed subfield, economics, deals with is the former, not the latter. The existence of the latter does not constitute a counterexample to the proposition that “human beings act consciously with purposes in mind.” That is because it is not action. To refute the proposition above, there would have to be a possible case of action that is purposeless and unconscious. But because the word “action” itself implies purposiveness, this is as self-contradictory as a “married bachelor.”

The causes of human action—that is, when someone performs a certain action, for what reason that person made that decision—are likewise not important in economics. That too belongs to the realm of psychology. The Austrian School does not dispute that many psychological factors—such as one’s life background, values, knowledge, and subconscious—exercise unconscious and direct influence at the root of action. Even so, the Austrian School’s point is that there are also laws of human action that function wholly independently of such external explanatory factors. Mises did not say that we can always control our actions through reason and free choice. Whatever reasons may have led us to act as we did, there is no room for disagreement that such decisions are governed by the law of supply and demand and that they form prices among goods. Praxeology and economics focus on the simple fact that human beings make choices, and they investigate choice, results, ends, and means.

The Austrian School did not make a fragile argument dependent on the sensitive normative issue of free will. Put more plainly, even if our choices and decisions were completely ruled by the subconscious, and even if in reality we were merely machine-puppets lacking free will and possessing no higher ontological status than stones, the Austrian School’s action axiom would still remain valid. The reason is that the Austrian School’s point of departure in cognition lies not in the standpoint of an external observer, but in inward reflection upon ourselves—that is, in methodological individualism—and because its object of inquiry belongs to the teleological category in which cause and effect are logically and temporally distinct.

Austrian epistemology proceeds, on the premise that the principles of identity and non-identity are valid, by eliminating through reductio ad absurdum the views that conflict with those principles, so it is difficult to explain its specific content fully here. (When written out, it takes roughly 14 pages.) But if one were to summarize it in the most extreme brevity, it would be as follows: 1. The cornerstones of logic are the principles of identity and non-identity. That is, propositions such as “A is not A” cannot hold. 2. The fact that the principles of identity and non-identity are always valid shows that there are objective a priori truths. 3. Objective truths discoverable on the basis of the principles of identity and non-identity hold when (a) they belong not to the a posteriori realm grasped through observational experience, but to the a priori realm grasped through inward reflection, and (b) every other proposition implies them, or every attempt to deny them immediately runs into self-contradiction. 4. The action axiom is included among such presuppositionless and absolutely valid a priori truths, because every attempt to refute the action axiom is itself a conscious action carried out with a purpose. 5. The fact that such action is purposive and conscious rests, from a teleological point of view, on the fact that such choice precedes the occurrence of the action both temporally and logically. 6. Action implies teleological causality between choice and result. In this respect, human action is intentional and purposive.

In conclusion, there is a temporal and logical gap between choice and result, and what fills that gap is human purposiveness and intentionality. Logically speaking, the fact that human being B at time A chose C out of alternatives C, D, and E, and that as a result F occurred, shows that human beings act purposively. It is entirely possible that the subconscious intervened in this process of choice, and from the standpoint of an external observer it may be a so-called unconscious choice; but from the standpoint of the subject, it is always intentional in the sense that “oneself became the cause” of the choice [to stress the point, things governed by the laws of nature cannot become their own cause].

I will end by summarizing the argument. 1. Praxeology and psychology deal with different categories. Praxeology deals with “action,” while psychology deals with “behavior” and the causes of action. 2. The fact that the unconscious may be identified as the cause of intentional human action does not logically serve as grounds for refuting the claim that human action is intentional.

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Original title: 오스트리아학파 '행동 공리'에 대한 흔한 오류

Author: Kyeong-hun Kim

Date: 2020-02-11

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=15&idx=22373