Implications of Machlup’s Interpretation of Mises’s Epistemology

Abstract

We argue that Fritz Machlup's ( 1995 ) interpretation of Mises's epistemology is at least as, if not more, plausible than Murray N. Rothbard's ( 1957 ) interpretation. The implications of Machlup's interpretation of Mises and of Austrian epistemology affect Austrians and non-Austrians in their academic interaction. Machlup's interpretation shows that Austrian epistemology is well grounded in post-Popperian epistemology and that most criticisms of Austrian economics based on its aprioristiccharacter are misplaced. Furthermore, Machlup's interpretation provides us with a setting to rebuild the academic interaction between Austrians and non-Austrians that was characteristic of the early twentieth century.

Hermeneutics and phenomenology in the social sciences: Lessons from the Austrian school of economics case

“…Even if this approach has a considerable influence in Rothbard's (1962) aristotelic interpretation of praxeology, there is a consensus that Weber's influence on Mises is patent. Weber's influence on Mises also makes it more likely that Machlup's (1955) interpretation of Mises's apriorism is more accurate than that of Rothbard (1957) (Zanotti & Cachanosky, 2015). Our interpretation is that Austrians had issues with Gadamerian hermeneutics.…”

“…However, the Austrian school is not positivist because the inter-subjective definition defies the nature of empirical testing and conventional mathematics. In fact, it could be argued that Austrians are closer to modern epistemology than their positivist critics are (Zanotti & Cachanosky, 2015). 12 It is now clear why Austrians resort to phenomenology and analytical narratives.…”

“…However, Rothbard's interpretation of Mises's praxeology has been challenged (Leeson & Boettke, 2006;Zanotti & Cachanosky, 2015) and contrasted against the views of another of his disciples, Fritz Machlup (1955). Zanotti and Cachanosky (2015) sustain that Machlup can be used as a bridge to interpret Mises's epistemology in Lakatosian terms, arguing that the Austrian epistemology is not the simple-extreme and untenable position suggested by Rothbard (also see Rizzo, 1982).…”

“…Zanotti and Cachanosky (2015) argue that the Austrian school and mainstream economics are different paradigms built on different Lakatosian hard-cores. Of course, each paradigm can have, in turn, their own sub-paradigms (ie.…”

Viktor J. Vanberg, ed., The Sensory Order and Other Writings on the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology by F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), pp. 432, $70 (hardcover). ISBN: 9780226436425.

“…The mere fact of the early sketch of consciousness of (circa) 1920 and its relation to the more fully developed theoretical psychology of 1952 puts paid to the thesis, which survives in the secondary literature despite only ever being clumsily made (Hutchison 1981; Friedman 2013), that Hayek experienced some drastic mid-career epistemological or methodological change of heart (or of mind). These facts should similarly finish off the claim, again unfortunately long-lived in the literature despite also only ever being clumsily made (Hutchison 1981; Boettke 2015; Zanotti and Cachanosky 2015; cf. Scheall 2017), that there is some affinity between Hayek’s modern empiricist epistemology and von Mises’s pre-modern “almost eighteenth-century rationalism” (Hayek 1978, p. 137; see Scheall 2015a, 2017).…”