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

LÁSLÓ CSONTOSIdeal typesThis section offers an analysis of the logic of intentionalexplanations by way of a partial rational reconstruction of MaxWeber’s views on the methodological foundations of economictheory. My aims are, first, to demonstrate that Lachmann, in at leastone important respect, misconstrued Weber’s methodologicallegacy; and second, to shed new methodological light on the notionof ideal types. The discussion will largely be based on Weber’swritings in the philosophy of science, including a neglected earlyarticle that was first published in 1908 in the Archiv fürSozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.Whereas the natural sciences, behaviouristically conceivedpsychology included, deal with brute facts, the subject matter of thesocial sciences proper, argues Weber, is human action. Humanaction, however, whether individual or collective, cannot be takenas a factum brutum, because it is not something given to us ex ante.That is, it is not something given before or without analysis. On thecontrary, human action is something that must be interpreted orproperly understood before we go about explaining it. Lachmann isseemingly in complete agreement with Weber. ‘Phenomena ofhuman action’, he maintains:unlike phenomena of nature, are manifestations of thehuman mind. Action has a meaning to the agent. We areunable to understand phenomena of human action otherwisethan as outward manifestations of human plans which mustexist before action is taken and which subsequently guide allaction. To understand phenomena of action we thereforehave to elucidate those acts of the minds of agents whichshape and steer their plans which in turn guide their overtaction. In other words, our task as social scientists isprimarily an interpretative one: we have to elucidate themeaning observable human acts have to their respectiveagents.(Lachmann 1986:49)The upshot of this argument is that the ‘facts’ of the social sciencesare ‘artifacts’, in the sense that in the process of a pre-explanatoryinterpretation we make them. In other words, when we set out toexplain human action, first we have to construct the raw materialfor our explanations.92