Who Were the Sea Peoples?

So here is a perhaps left-of-center economist getting this topic all wrong: "If I can choose how much I work, and my wage stays the same, and I work more and my income rises, then I must be better off. Because if I was not better off, then I wouldn't have chosen to work more and earn more income." Here is the correct version of this statement: "If I can choose how much I work, and my wage stays the same, and I work more and my income rises, then I must have thought, at the time of choosing, that I would be be better off working more. Because if I had not thought I would be better off, then I wouldn't have chosen to work more and earn more income." This distinction is not a matter of quibbling over words! The context in which our choices are made can be essential in determining what we choose. For instance, if the culture praises work over family life, many people might choose to work more even though they would be happier spending more time with ...

People who want to attack Mises's use of "praxeology" as some bizarre, idiosyncratic move on his part often fail to realize how common this sort of analysis was among philosophers in the early 20th century. Bradley, Bosanquet, Green, Croce, Collingwood, and Oakeshott all perform analyses similar to Mises, sometimes described as examining the presuppositions of human action. For instance, here is Green: "without intention there is no action... In saying then that the proper, because the only possible, function of law is to enforce performance of or abstinence from external actions , it is implied that its function is to produce or prevent certain intentions, for without intention on the part of someone there is no act." -- Principles of Political Obligation , pp. 18-19 I do think that Mises made two mistakes in this area: 1) There was no need for him to use the term "praxeology": this made what he was doing seem stranger than it needed to. (In f...

"Conditions which have become 'economic' have ceased to be material. They are motives, interests, means to ends." -- The Philosophical Theory of the State , p. 300 All of the idealist philosophers I have read recognized the "praxeological" nature of economic life.