Saturday, October 03, 2009

Responding to Noel Campbell on Human Action

Over at Division of Labor, Noel Campbell has thrown down the gauntlet (more here) regarding Mises’ Human Action. Art Carden responds. I was not invited to the fight, but here are my two cents. The way to understand what Mises is doing in developing a “pure logic of action” is developing theory -- that which is prior -- to Noel’s Step 1: Observation. For Mises, economic theory (praxeology) is logical system of human action. Economics, on the other hand, is the application of economic theory to empirical phenomena. This distinction is crucial to understanding Mises’ project in Human Action and elsewhere.

Continued below the fold.
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