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

LÁSLÓ CSONTOS‘a mental structure common to all people’ refers in this context to thisalleged fact, and not, as it usually does, to the universal validity of thelaws of logic.) Accordingly, to recognise something as a mind meansto recognise it as something analogous to our own mind (Hayek1964:76–7; 1967:15, 18, 60). As a result, we understand human actionby imputing to the agent intentions and objectives similar to ours. Weare epistemologically entitled to this analogical inference for tworeasons. First, because of the postulated similarity of mental structures,and second, because we are acting human beings as well, that is, wehave a first-hand knowledge of what it means to act in a certain way.In Gottl’s openly irrationalistic language: the a priori and holisticallygiven personal experience of acting makes it possible that we directlyunderstand human action on the analogy of our own past and presentactions (Gottl 1925:154, 161–2, 169, 244–5).These two assumptions, i.e., the ontological supposition of aninconceivably complex, ever-changing world of human action andthe epistemological postulate of the direct intelligibility of humanaction by virtue of a legitimate analogical inference, are meant tobolster another fundamental tenet of methodological solipsism.Representatives of methodological solipsism advocate rather extremeforms of methodological dualism (see Wright 1971).Methodological dualists tend to hold the following views: (i)The subject matter of the social sciences is fundamentally differentfrom that of the natural sciences. It is human action in the first caseand brute facts and lifeless uniformities in the second, (ii) Themethodological autonomy of social sciences is grounded in socialscientists’ unique and immediate access to the subject matter oftheir disciplines. 4 (iii) Consequently, social scientists are able to useepistemic techniques, methods of analysis and explanatoryarguments unavailable and superior to those used by naturalscientists. According to Gottl (1925:203), an early and radicalmethodological dualist, the scientific outlook is delirious withcausality and drunken with laws.The heavy emphasis on methodological dualism seems even moreparadoxical considering the fact that the origins of the ontologicalworld view of methodological solipsism can in all probability betraced back to the late nineteenth century ‘scientific’ positivism ofMach and Avenarius. While Gottl’s views, as Max Weber had alreadypointed out (Weber 1975:211–12), could directly be linked to thissource, Hayek, Mises and Lachmann were indirectly influenced bythis sort of positivism through their Austrian connections. Let meillustrate this by presenting some striking similarities.84