For the aspiring Austro-Libertarian: what to read? #9
I thought I would recommend some of the not so well known but nevertheless mind-blowing journal articles that should be read by everyone in the movement, especially by those outside it. This is the ninth in a series of many.
On Certainty and Uncertainty, Or: How Rational Can Our Expectations Be? by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
So many pure gems, I have avoided as many spoilers as possible.
I - ...It is possible to imagine a world characterized by complete certainty...
II - ...The idea of certain knowledge requires, as its logical counterpart, the idea of uncertainty...
III - ...Nothing about the external, physical world is or can be known with certainty-except for those rather abstract but universal and real things that are already implied in the certain knowledge of acting and action...
IV - ...Our practical certainty concerning future outcomes and events extends even further...
V - ...If pressed sufficiently hard, of course, Lachmann and his followers would probably admit the undeniable and, as if all of this did not matter, quickly move onto another problem...
VI - ...They would agree only on one consequence: that there exists a categorical difference between the logic of the natural sciences and that of the social sciences. Indeed, it follows from the recognition of man as a learning actor that the (still) dominating positivist (or falsificationist) philosophy, which assumes that all (empirical) sciences follow the same method-a uniform logic of science-is self-contradictory...
VII - ...As already indicated in section I1 above, the fundamental logical error involved in Lachmann's reasoning consists in the fact that it does not follow from the proposition that human actors face an uncertain future that everything regarding our future must be considered uncertain....
VIII - ...Even if the existence of a logic of action-praxeology-is admitted, as it must be, it does not follow that the knowledge provided by it can render our future certain. Praxeology allows us to predict with certainty some future events and aspects of the world of human actions, but its range of applicability is strictly limited. There are many events and aspects, and indeed far more of far greater practical significance, about which praxeology has nothing to say.....
