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Value is subjective (personal). Individuals apply means (action) to their ends, according to ideas. From this, social phenomena (language, prices, money, order) emerge. More info: article, video
Feel free to discuss, criticize, and expand Austrian economic thought in method and application, as a social movement, and also the sciences and ideas that are related to it.
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Austrian Research in Other Fields - Question (self.austrian_economics)
submitted 2 years ago by dt084
How would somebody structure research in other social science fields from an Austrian perspective? Would it be strictly qualitative research? Are there any good examples to look at?
[–]UMULASSomewhat Austrian 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (2 children)
Here are some things in which I could think of:
Why man chooses various ends (why they value something): Psychology
What a person's ends should be: Philosophy of ethics
How to arrive at the ends of a good: Technology
How has man used means in order to attain them, or what were the past ends of their values: History
How does civilization interact: Sociology.
Anyway, there would subjective values of how a school of though in a social science would interacte (such as trying to be objective as possible in history while looking at their resources and any other alternatives).
I really can't find any usage for real sciences (pyhsics, chemistry...) since the epistomology between the two are vastly different.
[–]dt084[S] 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (1 child)
It seems as though quantitative surveys could be appropriate within an Austrian framework if they were purely historical in nature. For instance, it would be appropriate to measure proportions of a population that agree or disagree with something, but it may be concerning to start implying causality. The problem I see with that though (at least based on modern academic standards) is a survey isn't really looked at as research. Researchers typically are looking for some form of causality/predictability before it would ever be considered for publication. As soon as causality/predictability are introduced, researchers are now relying on a form of positivist thinking that I think many Austrians would reject.
So I am just stuck...how does one study something like psychology and attempt to determine why man chooses various ends, without creeping into the realm of positivism (even with qualitative data)? The ethnography concept posted by /u/lifeishowitis seems like it may actually do this, but I am admittedly ignorant on that methodology and I need to read up on it before I could even say I fully understand it.
[–]UMULASSomewhat Austrian 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (0 children)
You don't have to reject positivism, just not have to go overboard with scientism.
[–]splintercell 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children)
What is Praxeology?
[–]rolanteMisesian 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (1 child)
I have a few examples for you. Rory Sutherland applies praxeological concepts to marketing. Here Renaud Fillieule shows how praxeology applies to deliquency.
[–]dt084[S] 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (0 children)
That was a great presentation by Rory. Isn't some of the research he is referring to relying on empiricism though? For instance, the correlation between hotel stay satisfaction and check in experience. This would imply a causation that could be spurious, and could be rejected on the same grounds as many Keynesian economic claims.
[–]lifeishowitisLachmannian 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (3 children)
Praxeology is proposed as the method of all social sciences, so presumably it could be used in any. The important thing to focus on would be the methodological individualism, which means most of it would be qualitative rather than quantitative, although you could use simple statistics if quantitative was necessary, I'm sure.
There's a guy that written some articles in anthropology in the Austrian tradition, as well as a guy uses praxeology to talk about linguistics. Depending on how broad you consider other social sciences, this guy talks about entrepreneurship and Klein, et al study organization and more which are generally considered a separate field of study. I would also think
Libertarian Papers would have an ample amount of papers in other social sciences--as /u/umulas mentioned, philosophy of ethics would be an easy social science to look at praxeologically, and that gets talked about there a lot among other things.
[–]dt084[S] 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (2 children)
Thank you for the links. I think those are some excellent examples of applied praxeology, but I am still struggling to understand if it is possible to conduct any primary research in an Austrian spirit. It seems that methodological individualism and antipositivism are closely related. I believe that primary research is possible from an antipositivist perspective, but I am struggling to fully understand the methodology of such research.
[–]lifeishowitisLachmannian 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (1 child)
I am not a researcher, so I don't know exactly but something like the audio I linked under the "entrepreneurship" would be how I imagined you would do it. Interviews, surveys and ethnography seems like the best way to go about doing primary research in the praxeological perspective.
I hadn't listened to the audio because I was at work, but that is actually a very interesting example of primary research in an Austrian spirit. Thanks for sharing!
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