Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Economic Science and the Austrian Methodcould not even silently say to oneself "1 cannot argue"without thereby contradicting oneself. One cannot arguethat one cannot argue. Nor can one dispute knowing whatit means to make a truth or validity claim without implicitlyclaiming the negation of this proposition to be true.It is not difficult to detect that both a priori axioms-ofaction and argumentation-are intimately related. On theone hand, actions are more fundamental than argumentationswith whose existence the idea of validity emerges, asargumentation is only a subclass of action. On the otherhand, to recognize what has just been recognized regardingaction and argumentation and their relation to each otherrequires argumentation, and so, in this sense, argumentationmust be considered more fundamental than action: withoutargumentation nothing could be said to be known aboutaction. But then, as it is in argumentation that the insightis revealed that-while it might not be known to be so priorto any argumentation-in fact the possibility ofargumentationpresupposes action in that validity claims can only beexplicitly discussed in the course ofan argumentation iftheindividuals doing so already know what it means to act andto have knowledge implied in action-both the meaning ofaction in general and argumentation in particular must bethought of as logically necessary interwoven strands of apriori knowledge.What this insight into the interrelation between the apriori ofaction and the a priori ofargumentation suggests isthe following: Traditionall)', the task ofepistemology has beenconceived of as that of formulating what can be known tobe true a priori and also what can be known a priori not tobe the subject ofa priori knowledge. Recognizing, as we havejust done, that knowledge claims are raised and decided uponin the course of argumentation and that this is undeni~bly66 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute