Contribuições de Murray N. Rothbard - Epistemologia (2)

In Defense of “Extreme Apriorism”

"He assumes nothing about the wisdom of man’s ends or about the correctness of his means. He “assumes” only that men act, that is, that they have some ends, and use some means to try to attain them. This is Mises’s Fundamental Axiom, and it is this axiom that gives the whole praxeological structure of economic theory built upon it its absolute and apodictic certainty.

Now the crucial question arises: how have we obtained the truth of this axiom? Is our knowledge a priori or empirical, “synthetic” or “analytic”? In a sense, such questions are a waste of time, because the all-important fact is that the axiom is self-evidently true, self-evident to a far greater and broader extent than the other postulates. For this Axiom is true for all human beings, everywhere, at any time, and could not even conceivably be violated.

In short, we may conceive of a world where resources are not varied, but not of one where human beings exist but do not act. We have seen that the other postulates, while “empirical,” are so obvious and acceptable that they can hardly be called “falsifiable” in the usual empiricist sense. How much more is this true of the Axiom, which is not even conceivably falsifiable! 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. 6 Hutchison, “Professor Machlup on Verification in Economics,” p. 483.

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."