This is a draft for some thoughts to put on the Austrians email list.
The uneasy relationship between Popper and von Mises has persisted with many of their followers. Most Popperians are social democrats and many Misesians detest Popper’s epistemology and methods (in addition to his social democratic tendencies).
There are striking exceptions to that pattern such as the late Bill Bartley and Gerard Radnitzky and contemporaries such as Jack Birner, Larry Boland, Bruce Caldwell and Pete Klein. However I see hardly any citations of Larry’s work, or Jack’s in the Austrian literature on philosophy and methods, which is where their work is outstanding IMHO.
What Popper offers the Austrians.
1. Fallible or conjectural apriorism, supporting Barry Smith who is very much at home in the Austrian literature. (That reminds me, someone should nominate Barry for the CR Scholar award). This has the potential to focus the energies of Austrians on economics rather than philosophy and also to mount a challenge to other economists to bring their methods into line with the real methods of the natural sciences instead of the distorted version put about by the positivists and logical empiricists.
2. Support for the Weber/Austrian approach – the action framework (Parsons), situational analysis (Popper), praxeology (von Mises) with methodological individualism, subjectivism etc.
Boettke et al have signalled that economics is finding its way back to the big picture approach of Adam Smith and the political economists and moral philosophers who paid some attention to institutions and cognate influences. How did economics lose its way? At least Popper pointed in the right direction (even though e thought that methematical economics was going to pay off!). The institutional focus is explicit in the concluding sections 31 and 32 of The Poverty of Historicism and it is unhelpful that philosophers of economics have written so much criticism of Popper’s “falsificationism”, that distorted version of Popperism, without coming to grips with the book where he specifically addressed the social sciences. He hardly published anything on that topic after 1945 but he did draw a comparison between institutions and traditions in one of the Conjectures essays. The suggestion of the institutional turn in Poverty are very compacted, so sections 19, 20 and 20 should be read, followed by 30 and 31. People working in the relevant fields should not need more than those hints to get the message. Lately Ian Jarvie has traced the social/institutional turn in Popper’s thought from the very first published works, and this calls for a complete re-reading of Popper, to take account of the various “turns” that he initiated.
3. The theory of metaphysical research programs (MRPs) and some of the metaphysical theories which underpin Austrian economics. That paper “Austrian Economics as a Popperian MRP” makes three points.
First, the theory of MRPs shows that the Austrian program cannot be dismissed as “unscientific” quite as easily as many critics suppose. The theory of MRPs legitimates the use of untestable principles to provide the framework for a research program. The basic principles of Austrian economics can be regarded as working assumptions, either methodological or metaphysical postulates, of the kind that occur in all sciences. These need to stand up to criticism but they do not have to be testable or falsifiable.
Third, Popper championed some particular metaphysical assumptions that provide a congenial framework for the Austrian approach. In other words, Popper and the Austrians are metaphysical fellow travellers. That can be demonstrated by spelling out the agreement between Popper’s program and the Aristotelian metaphysics which Barry Smith found in Menger’s economics.
4. Support for classical liberalism (limited government under the rule of law)
A general statement of liberal principles (a Mont Pelerin address)
On leadership, chapter 7 of The Open Society and its Enemies.
On justice, chapter 6 of The Open Society.
On Misesian piecemeal social engineering.
Rafe,
Are you aware of any defender of the Misesian praxeology who is willing to face criticism honestly? I’m not. If so, can you indicate who this might be? I’m interested to see how they defend their views.
Kenneth, Barry Smith has produced very close-reasoned arguments to challenge the strong apriori position and he operates from the inside which makes him harder to ignore than Popper’s “outsider” arguments. It is a very strange situation and it will be interesting to see how they respond to my paper which brings together the case from Smith and the case from Popper as well. The situati0n is complicated by some disagreements between various parts of the Austrian movement which I don’t pretend to understand.
You have said this more than once, but I do not think it is true. The matter is far more complex than you suggest. Hayek certainly did advocate government policies that could ameliorate mass unemployment, at least. Although Hayek opposed the state monopolisation and regulation of money, when confronting the reality of those institutions he gave pragmatic policy prescriptions. In particular, he seems to have favoured some type of nominal income target as a rule for monetary policy — not unlike Friedman in later life.
I cannot remember the specifics of Popper’s views on such matters, and he appears to have rarely went into very much detail anyway. But even Hayek can be read to support state intervention in all manner of ways when discussing second best (and more realistic) policies. Would Popper have advocated the denationalisation of money or free banking as an ideal? Did he ever research or understand these concepts? Or was he always analysing these matter in the context of prevailing traditions and institutions?
It’s not like your comment is wrong exactly, but it is misleading.
I have less time for Austrians than I used to. In many respects, Austrian economics is a good fit for critical rationalist philosophy. However, Austrian economists seem constitutionally ill-equipped to comprehend or accept critical rationalism. There are few intellectual schools who demonstrate so thoroughly a justificationist attitude — with all its worts on full display.
Lee you are too generous to say that my comment is just misleading, we might as well agree that it is wrong and I will need to do some more serious work to find out just how wrong it is and how to fix it!
On Popper and economics I will put up a post soon with some stuff from his NZ friend Colin Simkin and also a reminder about the way Popper focussed his attention on certain things and just left other things aside.
Moving on to the Austrians I have to agree, bearing in mind that there are groups and sub-groups. I suppose you mean the Auburn Austrians, it is certainly disappointing to see the crass and self-indulgent way they stomp over Popper’s ideas and tragically it started at the top with Mises’ sophomoric use of the argument from technology to diss conjectural knowledge.
Yes, as you say, textbook examples of justificationism. Thank god or someone for Barry Smith.