Re: "As generalizações abusivas", no Crítico

Numa resposta ao "Posts liberais em blogs não liberais", do Liberdade de Expressão

CM parece ser um conservador crítico do liberalismo, o que parece ser consistente com a sua confiança na validade do seu positivismo quanto à ciência económica mas inconsistente quanto ao seu suposto conservadorismo, que, parece-me, deve ter a mais elevada das desconfianças em tratar a natureza e acção humana como elementos ou partes racionais de um todo, cujo plano final é apreensível pela mente humana.

A economia, como ciência positivista e de método epistemológico análogo ao das ciências físicas, tem mostrado o seu falhanço completo, quer na sua versão extrema de combater a propriedade a bem de uma eficiência comprovável cientificamente quer na versão soft de social-democracia de esquerda ou direita. E nada pode ser mais contrário ao sentimento conservador do que a aceitação de que os nossos actos, para além do respeito mútuo pela propriedade e livre arbítrio, são passíveis de ser regulados por uma elite que tira conclusões a partir de um qualquer método científico e, obviamente, estando qualquer coisa provada, serve para oprimir e esmagar a soberania individual. Assim o é, quer em termos económicos quer para o estudo de sistemas sociais.

Recomendo para esta discussão:

In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”, By Murray N. Rothbard, 1957 article on method from the Southern Economic Journal

"All the positivist procedures are based on the physical sciences. It is physics that knows or can know its “facts” and can test its conclusions against these facts, while being completely ignorant of its ultimate assumptions. In the sciences of human action, on the other hand, it is impossible to test conclusions. There is no laboratory where facts can be isolated and controlled; the “facts” of human history are complex ones, resultants of many causes. These causes can only be isolated by theory, theory that is necessarily a priori to these historical (including statistical) facts.

In physics, the ultimate assumptions cannot be verified directly, because we know nothing directly of the explanatory laws or causal factors. Hence the good sense of not attempting to do so, of using false assumptions such as the absence of friction, and so on. But false assumptions are the reverse of appropriate in economics. For human action is not like physics; here, the ultimate assumptions are what is clearly known, and it is precisely from these given axioms that the corpus of economic science is deduced. False or dubious assumptions in economics wreak havoc, while often proving useful in physics.

(...)

Postivists of all shades boggle at self-evident propositions. And yet, what is the vaunted “evidence” of the empiricists but the bringing of a hitherto obscure proposition into evident view? But some propositions need only to be stated to become at once evident to the self, and the action axiom is just such a proposition. Whether we consider the Action Axiom “a priori” or “empirical” depends on our ultimate philosophical position. Professor Mises, in the neo-Kantian tradition, considers this axiom a law of thought and therefore a categorical truth a priori to all experience. My own epistemological position rests on Aristotle and St. Thomas rather than Kant, and hence I would interpret the proposition differently. I would consider the axiom a law of reality rather than a law of thought, and hence “empirical” rather than “a priori.” But it should be obvious that this type of “empiricism” is so out of step with modern empiricism that I may just as well continue to call it a priori for present purposes. For (1) it is a law of reality that is not conceivably falsifiable, and yet is empirically meaningful and true; (2) it rests on universal inner experience, and not simply on external experience, that is, its evidence is reflective rather than physical7; and (3) it is clearly a priori to complex historical events."