Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Economic Science and the Austrian Methodits terms alone, one has no less than a glaring contradictionat hand. Empiricism itself would prove to be nothing butself-defeating nonsense. 24So perhaps we should choose the other available optionand declare the fundamental empiricist distinction betweenempirical and analytical knowledge an empirical statement.But then the empiricist position would no longer carry anyweight whatsoever. For ifthis were done, it would have to beadmitted that the proposition-as an empiricalone-mightwellbe wrong and that one would be entitled to hear on the basis ofwhat criterion one would have to decide whether ornotit was.More decisivel~ as an empirical proposition, right or wrong,it could only state a historical fact, something like "allheretofore scrutinized propositions fall indeed into the twocategories analytical and empirical." The statement wouldbe entirely irrelevant for determining whether it would bepossible to produce propositions that are true a priori andare still empirical ones. Indeed, ifempiricism's central claimwere declared an empirical proposition, empiricism wouldcease altogether to be an epistemolog~ a logic of science,and would be no more than a completely arbitrary verbalconvention ofcalling certain arbitrary ways ofdealing withcertain statements certain arbitrary names. Empiricismwould be a position void of any justification.24Writes Mises in The Ultimate Foundation ofEconomic Science:The essence oflogical positivism is to deny the cognitive value ofa prioriknowledge by pointing out that all a priori propositions are merelyanalytic. They do not provide new information, but are merely verbalor tautological, asserting what has already been implied in the definitionsand premises. Only experience can lead to synthetic propositions.There is an obvious objection against this doctrine, viz., that thisproposition that there are no synthetic a priori propositions is in itself-as the present writer thinks, false-a synthetic a priori proposition,for it can manifestly not be established by experience. (p. 5)34 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute