Subjectivism and Economic Analysis: Essays in memory of Ludwig ...

LÁSLÓ CSONTOSunambiguously. Although ‘every interpretation’, says Weber,‘attempts to attain clarity and certainty’, it does not really matter‘how clear an interpretation as such appears to be from the point ofview of meaning, it cannot on this account claim to be the causallyvalid interpretation. On this level it must remain only a peculiarlyplausible hypothesis’ (Weber 1978:5)—a hypothesis, we may add,the truth value or validity of which can be decided only bycomparing it with the facts of experience. Although the behaviour ofCaesar or a mentally ill person may not be immediately accessible toour empathic understanding, we may still be able to come up with arational interpretation or causal explanation of their behaviour withthe help of our nomological knowledge and the behaviouraluniformities of psychopathology.The nomological knowledge Weber talks about is nothing but aloose collection of intersubjectively valid rules of experience,assigning particular means to particular ends in a given society.Acquisition and consistent application of this nomologicalknowledge in a causal explanation or rational interpretation is theprecondition for the ‘understanding’ of a tribal or religious rite or ofan economic transaction that happens to take place in a social oreconomic setting different from ours. Possessing this kind ofnomological knowledge and not the special status of informationobtained through introspection enables the social scientist to cope inhis own society, and to understand the behaviour and actions of hisfellow human beings. It is simply not true that ‘a mind has a twofold“privileged access” to its own doings, which makes its selfknowledge superior in quality, as well as prior in genesis, to its graspof other things’ (Ryle 1966:154).The last assumption would imply the absurdity that societyconsists of windowless monads who obtain information about theirown minds and souls by a continuous process of non-sensuous innerperception, and who would have to peek into the other monadsthrough the missing window to get a direct knowledge of theirminds and souls. In reality, however,the problem is…simply the methodological question of howwe establish, and how we apply, certain sorts of law-likepropositions about the overt and the silent behaviour ofpersons. I come to appreciate the skill and tactics of a chessplayerby watching him and others playing chess, and Ilearn that a certain pupil of mine is lazy, ambitious andwitty by following his work, noticing his excuses, listening90