In Defence of the Kantian Tradition: A Response To Steven Yates
The first counterclaim offered, to simplify, is in essence to that of a Kantian epistemology making distinct metaphysical implications to that of idealism, and if I may draw from the passage
“Kant’s procedure strongly suggests an idealistic reading, his own refutation of idealism later in the first Critique notwithstanding:”
And he then goes on to quote Kant as follows…
“Hitherto it has been assumed that our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge (Kant [1787], 22).”
He then goes on to say…
“It is easy to interpret Kant as offering the very first version of what has become one of the prevailing dogmas of the contemporary academy, expressed in such ways as that “nature is made ‘ rather than found,”
The idealistic suggestions of this Kantian theory quickly disappear under one consideration, this being the pragmatic function of action in the pretext of rationalism. Action is the one category in which the mental realm, and the material, physical realm are bridged, action, as understood in a Misean view is that of “Will transformed into agency,” necessitating the type of methodological dualism proposed by such people as Descartes. As action is understood in this manner, we can thus distinctly see that these idealistic proponents are simply false, and disregard the contextual application of action within the rationalist gap, and thus, this dubbed ‘idealistic’ epistemology becomes one of realism, so to speak. In which all our universally true knowledge, derived from the fundamental starting point of maxims, or material axioms, as they are necessarily irrefutable, as any attempt to do so would lead to distinctive intellectual contradiction, and thereby the deductions made from these axioms, if they are to be valid, they will subsequently be as universally true, unfalsifiable by any experience.
This second claim if needs be to be justified, follows from Descartes principle not only of causality resting upon the cause, being that of a conserving one, but also, of a cause necessarily always being as perfect as its effect. I will not spend time here as such justifying Descartes’s thesis of causality as largely, this is irrelevant to the subject matter and will take us down a path that will stray away from the main discussion at hand.
A second ‘quasi-critique’ offered within this paper is drawn from the passage as follows:
“Kantian epistemology, which by supplying its first premise opened the door through which the legions of ‘polylogists’ slithered through. Mises should therefore have been acutely cautious of any Kantian elements in his own position, aware of their vulnerability to abuse.”
It should be evident within not only our previous reconstruction from the way in which the Kantian epistemology was presented, which renders this idea of the ‘first premise supplied by Kant being that of an idealist premise’ and thus ‘opening the floodgates to relativism/subjectivism’ completely void, and of no meaning, but also, one should sense intuitively that as a critique of ‘neo-kantians’ this doesn’t even take a step in the competitive race to universal truth, infact, even assuming the interpretation of the first premise to be true, this in fact would still not even render as a critique of neo-kantians, rather just branches off. Putting this fault upon neo-kantians is essentially equivalent to that of putting the failure of the orthdox Keynesian school on the Post-Keynesian school, which obviously, from the getgo is completely invalid, and actually is one big non-sequitur. We are not responsible for false deductions that other branches of subjectivism and relativism can make, we are only responsible for that of false deductions within our own position, not in another school of thoughts position.
The author of this paper goes on to note Hoppe’s reconstruction of the first premise, a similar argument used by myself at the beginning, and while he does note this, he does not offer any critique of this position, which makes me question why this critique was even brought up to begin with if the author was already aware of the critiques answer.
For purposes of clarity, Hoppe’s main argument for a deconstruction of the Randian argument against Kant goes as taken from the passage:
“We must recognize that such necessary truths are not simply categories of our mind, but that our mind is one of acting persons. Our mental categories have to be understood as ultimately grounded in categories of action. As soon as this is recognized, all idealistic suggestions immediately disappear. Instead, an epistemology claiming the existence of truth synthetic a priori propositions becomes a realistic epistemology. Since it is understood as ultimately grounded in categories of action, the gulf between the mental and the real, outside, physical world is bridged. As categories of action, they must be mental things as much as they are characteristics of reality. For it is through actions that the mind and reality make contact (Hoppe 1995, 20).”
The author then goes on to note…
“In this case, the incontestable proposition sentient beings act bridges the Kantian synthetic a priori and realism.”
He then goes on to say…
“This, Hoppe argues, establishes realism as also logically necessary:”
And goes on to quote Hoppe again…
“Recognizing knowledge as being structurally constrained by its role in the framework of action categories provides the solution . . . Understood as constrained by action categories, the seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the mental on the one hand and the real, outside physical world on the other is bridged. . . it is only through actions that the mind comes into contact with reality, so to speak. Acting is a cognitively guided adjustment of a physical body in physical reality. And thus there can be no doubt that a priori knowledge, conceived of as an insight into the structural constraints imposed on knowledge qua knowledge of actors, must indeed correspond to the nature of things (Hoppe 1995, 69–70).”
The author has hereby noted the answer to his own critique, and failed to provide a sufficient counter, or in this case, he has not even attempted to provide substance to his own claim, but rather moves on to a rather obscure interjection, Mises evolutionary views of causality.
He begins by quoting Mises in the passage as follows:
“It is an undeniable fact that technological planning guided by the Euclidean system resulted in effects that had to be expected according to the inferences derived from this system. The buildings do not collapse, and the machines run in the expected way. The practical engineer cannot deny that this geometry aided him in his endeavors to divert events of the real external world from the course they would have taken in the absence of his intervention and to direct them towards the goals that he wanted to attain (Mises 1978, 13).”
He continues with…
“According to the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theories, this environment imposes constraints on the categories of sentient agents through its d long-term causal effects on the cognitive capacities of any life form. Their categories will be a function of their needs for survival, biologically speaking. Hence a correspondence must exist between our categories and those immediate actual features of our environment. Of presumably many possible categories, then, ours fit our environment – hence we survive.”
He then goes on to offer an objection, and quote Mises;
“if a priori forms of intuition and categories of the understanding are conditions of all thought whatsoever; if, that is, they are really “the mental equipment of the individual that enables him to think and . . . all reasoning presupposes the a priori categories [so that] it is vain to embark upon attempts to prove or disprove them” (Mises 1978, 12), then this applies to all alleged knowledge of and reasoning about evolution as well, which is merely one instance of the kind of causal relation or pattern our a priori categories have projected willy-nilly into our environment.”
And then continues…
“The evolutionary explanation thus fails because of an inevitable circularity. Reality might still be vastly different from what our experiences and the a priori constraints on our cognition tell us. In this case, evolutionary Kantism does not really answer the all important epistemological question: why should we believe our form of intuition and categories of the understanding fit reality?”
And then continues….
“The evolutionary explanation thus fails because of an inevitable circularity. Reality might still be vastly different from what our experiences and the a priori constraints on our cognition tell us. In this case, evolutionary Kantism does not really answer the all important epistemological question: why should we believe our form of intuition and categories of the understanding fit reality?”
Ironically enough, the very answer to this question is cited in his quotation of Mises, we know universally true knowledge from that of maxims, propositions that can in no instance be denied, as their very denial would constitute an affirmation within the very act of making the proposition, and thus this knowledge can never be undone, making it universally true, irrefutable knowledge about reality,
He then turns to another proposition Mises proposes, which I will quote as follows:
“There are phenomena which cannot be analyzed and traced back to other phenomena. They are the ultimate given. The progress of scientific research may succeed in demonstrating that something previously considered as an ultimate given can be reduced to components. But there will always be some irreducible and unanalyzable phenomena, some ultimate given (Mises 1966, 17).”
He then goes on to say…
“This, I now submit, unbolts a door Mises does not want unlocked: the one to methodological reductionism. If someone with, e.g Skinnerian behaviorist leanings, pries it open, we might get the result that a basic proposition such as man acts is subject to potential reduction via behaviorist explanations which show aczion to be mere behavior with nothing more special to recommend it than the behavior of an animal.”
However, this critique yet again misses the mark, first off, and as I will quote from a previous section of this paper;
“We are not responsible for the false deductions that other branches of subjectivism and relativism can make, we are only responsible for that of the false deductions within our own position, not in another school of thoughts position.”
Not only this but secondly this misunderst-
ands what action is, and it also misunderstands what Mises claims action is, obviously action can be reduced into components. Action as defined in general terms ‘will put into agency’ thus presupposes lower factor components. I.e., conscious control over ones body, life, particles, atoms, quarks, etc.
Action is not the fundamental building blocks of reality, rather it is a combination of factor components that is incorporated before all knowledge derived from experience. It is that universally true knowledge, born out of reflection upon ones own subject, that in order to know anything at all, you first must understand what action is as such.
In similar fashion to how Leibniz answered Locke’s famous dictum;
“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.”
He then goes on to quote Mises, but in a rather misleading fashion I would say, he quotes Mises as follows:
“The natural sciences will succeed . . . in explaining the production of definite ideas, judgments of value, and actions in the same way in which they explain the production of a chemical compound as the necessary and unavoidable outcome of a certain combination of elements (Mises 1966, 18).”
However, this quote is rather out of context and does not provide a full description of what Mises actually claimed, the full quote from Human Action page 18 goes as follows:
“We may or may not believe the natural sciences will succeed . . . in explaining the production of definite ideas, judgments of value, and actions in the same way in which they explain the production of a chemical compound as the necessary and unavoidable outcome of a certain combination of elements.”
While this may not seem like a lot I would like to emphasise the couple very important words the author has left out of this quotation, ‘MAY OR MAY NOT.’ I think intentionally leaving these very important words out of this quotation is very intellectually dishonest and a poor attempt to misrepresent Mises for rhetorical gain.
Thus all deductions attempted to make from this proposition, such as the authors claim of…
“What at first glance looks like an eminently sensible fallibilism is entirely in line with the views of philosophers such as W. V. Quine who hold that all propositions whatsoever are subject to potential revision in the light of future experience”
falls due to this faulty misrepresentation. This is nothing more than simply an acknowledgement that we do not possess perfect knowledge, and while we can view certain possessions of knowledge to be irrefutable in every scenario, as Mises does with his inference to ‘material axioms’ within praxeology, we can distinctly see this is simply a recognition that faulty deductions can, and will happen, for if not, there would be no room for argumentation, after all, all knowledge is structured in a way that every proposition within its very act of making it is contingent upon the reflective understanding of what it means to be an actor, without this knowledge being known, no true knowledge could be known at all.
It is then said…
“Given the state of our knowledge uf present, acts of choice must be left within an end means conceptual framework. But this could change. The Kantian element clearly blocks what could eventually have yielded a comprehensive Austrian-school metaphysics which sees ends means categories as irreversible en toto.”
However, he misunderstands what comprehensive, fundamental Kantian epistemology would reflect, that of universally true knowledge, Mises only recognises the possibility that our deductions may be flawed, but these very fundamental principles in their totality, simply cannot be wrong. They cannot be denied under pretext, and must thus be considered universally true, as Mises has said numerous times throughout his works, these material axioms are not open to further analysis, they are the ultimate given. Of course one can attempt to contest the validity of this axiom, but under every pretext, he will, and always will be, wrong.
Thus Mises quite clearly leaves no room whatsoever for the truth of these axioms being refuted, rather, he just recognizes that we do not have perfect knowledge and thus the deductions that can follow from these axioms, can be wrong.
The rest of this section noted by the author is largely irrelevant, and there is a very odd common trend in this paper to go off on tangents about things that are very irrelevant to the epistemological refutation at hand. These behavioral mannerisms are very odd to say the least for a paper with one distinctive purpose, but regardless, I will pay no attention to this obscure interjection, completely changing the course of conversation for not only very little benefit, but also with very little reason to act as such.
This is where I will conclude my writings, this paper’s purpose is not intended to be a critique of the metaphysical rejoinder presented away from the neo-kantian tradition as such, rather, this was intended purely as a defence of the Kantian tradition followed by the most notable of the Austrian School, and hopefully, I have sufficiently proved that the critiques to show the intrinsic weakness of the Kantian epistemology, do not sufficiently withstand scrutiny.
