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

SUBJECTIVISM AND IDEAL TYPESthis or that, or some ‘true’ version of subjectivism, I’d rather create aclean terminological slate, and argue that Lachmann’s views can bebest described as belonging to the general category of methodologicalsolipsism.I consider methodological solipsism as a variety of methodologicalindividualism. 1 The programme of methodological solipsism seemsto be especially relevant to a thorough understanding of themethodological underpinnings of economic theory.Methodological solipsism, just like methodological individualism,is founded on a distinct and definite view of the nature of socialreality. Methodological solipsism s ontological doctrine, as a moreor less coherent picture of the world, can be reconstructed on thebasis of scattered remarks in the works of Hayek, Mises, Lachmannand others.The world, more precisely the world of human action is, accordingto these authors, unimaginably complex, involved and multifaceted(see Hayek 1952a; Mises 1940). Its elements are constantly changing(Lachmann 1976) and its phenomena are infinitely diverse (Hayek1952b, 1964). These complex phenomena and states of affairs areproduced by the interplay of an endless number of individualcircumstances and qualitatively different causal sequences; and theyare always given to us as a tangled web of countless individual causesand effects (Mises 1940:45). Everything hangs together witheverything else in the world of human action, but social reality lacksany kind of objective structure. It doesn’t comprise regulatoryprinciples that would bring order into the chaos of individualphenomena. I want to emphasise, however, that, according to theauthors whose views we are discussing here, the world of naturalsciences, as opposed to social reality or the realm of human action, ishomogeneous, ordered and governed by causal uniformities (Hayek1964:25; Mises 1940:63).In Lachmann’s words:From a methodological point of view we may regard theeconomic thought of the last hundred years as marked by along drawn-out struggle between two contending forces,subjectivity and formalism. While the formalists present modelscharacterized by constant relationships between formal entities(even though these are in general supposed to reflect measurablemagnitudes), subjectivists see social phenomena as the outcomeof human action guided by plans (even though these often fail)and prompted by mental acts. While subjectivist models also81