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Antagonistic Tyrannosaur
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Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Abstruse Caboose
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Feb 10th, 2006, 08:56 PM
The historical/neoclassical school of thought has no means of isolating variables in the same manner that physical scientists do, thus rendering much of its exertion useless.
The a priori/Austrian school of thought relies on Kantian philosophy to give their "axioms" validity (I reject Kant, remember?).
All that being said, Austrian axioms can be inferred with great sucess (if you truly need to organize an argument for them, use induction with reference to an ordinal model of chance). However, the fact that I admit that economic postulates are not necessarily true causes me to have some severe breaks with Austrian reasoning.
For example, Rothbard's attack on utilitarianism/consequentialism is based on the assertion that we are unable to know utility in any context outside of our mind. However, I argue that I can infer utility (from induction with reference to ordinal chance) with varying degrees of success. For example, while inferring the utility of Play-Doh for an individual might be difficult, inferring the utility of food and water in the condition of starvation is much more successful. Rothbard relies on absolutes; I rely on likelihood. That man hates to starve is not much less likely than man acts.
Again, QED.
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