On Epistemology: How do we know what we know?
written by: Scott Duryea
Humans act purposefully. Yes, believe it. It’s true.
This may seem like a fairly obvious statement, but the logical extensions of this proposition fail to prove meaningful in mainstream political economic thought. The study of economics and politics, it is believed by Karl Popper, among others, are empirical sciences. Propositions, in order for them to be true, must have observable falsifiability. This is the way we know, as political scientists, if a theory is scientific.
The social sciences, it is believed by logical positivists like Popper, belong to the same epistemological category as the natural sciences. In other words, we can gain scientific knowledge by employing the same methods for acting humans as we can for mechanical instruments or biological ecosystems. How do we know things to be true? Because we can observe hypotheses in reality and be able to falsify them.
But, the study of human action deals with complex phenomena that hold no constants in the empirical world.
Why?
Precisely because humans act purposefully and subjectively. Individuals use means to achieve ends. This is an a priori statement. The only way to understand and explain complex human interaction is by these deductive methods. In other words, the study of human action is not an empirical science. Constants in (and therefore the predictability of) human action can only be derived from axiomatic deductive reasoning.
To be sure, a priori knowledge does not explain much about human action, but what it does reveal is extremely important.
For instance, neoclassical economics teaches that individuals use cost-benefit analysis to make decisions and to maximize utility. Utility in the neoclassical sense is monetary gain. Humans often do act to increase their wealth. But, how do we explain someone who turns in a missing wallet to the police instead of raiding the wallet and throwing it in the trash? Cultural norms? Maybe. But, more specifically, individuals value things subjectively. This means that humans do not always act in accordance with monetary benefit, but with what they will benefit them in a given instance. The person valued more the satisfaction of knowing they did some moral good than the monetary benefit of keeping the money. In this sense, individuals will always act in accordance to their perceived personal benefit, whether it’s monetary gain, moral satisfaction, or leisure.
We know this because of a priori knowledge (self evident truths) instead of empirical testing and falsifiability.
Think about it. Every action is a choice and a preference over another action. Try to prove that you do not always act purposefully, and in a way that you think will get you a level of satisfaction that you would not have gotten had you not completed the action. Right now, I’m typing this article because I prefer it more than doing my statistics homework or eating an apple.
Whereas Popper would say that this is not a scientific statement because one cannot falsify it empirically, Immanuel Kant would prove that it is necessarily true given the law of non-contradiction.
We know that humans act purposefully because there is no way to disprove it without indeed acting purposefully and thus contradicting ourselves.
This is the science of praxeology, this science of human action.
This is not to say that the current methods of political science are not useful. We can understand how humans have acted in the past and may act in the future, given some probability and explanatory value of given variables. But, we should not forget that there is great explanatory value in deductive reasoning from the simple axiom that humans act purposefully.
written by: Scott Duryea
