The following is an interview I conducted with the brilliant

philosopher, Dr. David Gordon, who has been described as the

semiofficial reviewer of the libertarian community. There is
hardly a better mind to help us understand praxeology and
the basis for Austro-libertarian thinking in the school of von
Mises, Rothbard, Block and Hoppe et al. Please follow the
links for helpful resources to understand the definition of some
philosophical terms and to access useful materials mentioned
by David.
R: David, you have divided up two schools of thought in
philosophy and economics - the German school, which I think
stems from the Vienna circle, influenced greatly by the British
David Gordon is the editor of the Mises
empiricists, such as Locke and Hume; and the Austrian school
Review and author of Resurrecting Marx
spearheaded by Ludwig von Mises who was influenced by
Menger and Bhm-Bawerk. Now, Mises was somewhat of a rationalist; at least, he used the
language of Immanuel Kant to show we need some sort of dualism when we engage in the
empirical, physical sciences (which use the scientific method and the historical method). That is,
in order to gain knowledge from the world, we must use rationalistic thinking as well. In that
sense, would you say Mises thinking hearkens back to Aristotle by ascertaining those irrefutable
axioms we can determine rationally for ourselves?
G: Yes, what you say sounds to me like what Mises thought. The
empiricists think we get knowledge by extracting our concepts
from the world; for example, you look at various tables and you
see what they have in common and you come up with the concept
of the table. But, Mises observed this doesnt work for certain
concepts and in this he was very much influenced by Kant. He
noted people would be unable to determine what actions are just
by looking at the world. We could see movements of various
kinds, but we wouldnt be able to see actions unless we had the
concept of action. So he thought there were some kinds of actions
that were most important, ones that could not be derived from
experience but, on the contrary, were needed in order for certain
types of experience to make sense.
R: Its important to bear in mind that the crux of Misesian thought is in these concepts.
However, some people have criticised Mises for his discussion of the a priori. Please define a
priori and what is a posteriori?

G: Well, this is a very controversial term. We have to distinguish between a priori

concepts and judgements or propositions. An a priori concept is the kind we have
already mentioned - it isnt derived from experience and it is presupposed to
understand a certain kind of experience. But, an a priori proposition, which is what
most of the controversy is about, is one that you can know to be true without testing it
by experience or anything else. Its just one that you grasp immediately once you
understand the meaning to be true. For example, 2 + 2 = 4; I dont know this by taking two
apples with two apples, I add them up and theres four apples, and then I repeat this and
make a generalisation - that doesnt prove its right. It seems that I can take 2+ 2 = 4,
expand on it and realise its true; thats the a priori truth. Its one that can be known
independent of experience. However, you cannot know it to be true because you were told
so by a reliable math teacher. Here, you dont know it to be true because you thought
about it, youre just relying on another persons word. That a priori proposition is one that
you could know or that could be known just by thinking about it.
(It gets more complicated though; for example, known by whom? Is it known by anybody
or by you? There are various theories on that.)
R: In summary, Mises view was that empiricism isnt enough because we need the concept of
action to make sense of our experiences. Is that a good summary of Mises thinking?
G: I like, very much, what you say because that is exactly his view - we need these
concepts in order to understand experience. Actually, if you just stop there, you wouldnt
have to say that there are any a priori propositions. You could just say, all our knowledge
turns out to be hypothetically true or yet to be tested. So someone could hold quite
consistently the theory that there are a priori concepts but no a priori propositions. You
could also hold it the other way, i.e. you get all your concepts from experience. Once
weve got these concepts, we see there are certain relations between them and we just
grasp its true. Mises held both these views and thought there were both a priori
concepts and a priori true propositions.
Synthetic or Analytic a priori?
R: I think the debate about whether Mises was really talking about an analytic a priori or a
synthetic a priori is unimportant. We only need to understand that we have these concepts
which we can determine to be true before we test the matter, and these are irrefutable axioms.
Would that be correct?
G: Yes, I agree with you entirely. I think there has been too much made of analytic and
synthetic theories. Some people will say (and I dont think theyre wrong to say) that
Austrian economics consists of synthetic a priori truths, but Mises himself in Human
Action never says that. Many say, Of course he says that, but he never says that. Mises

seems to think theyre analytic. Although, in his last book, The Ultimate Foundation of
Science, he does give one argument: if you deny that there are synthetic a priori truths,
isnt that a synthetic a priori proposition itself? But, again, even here he doesnt commit
himself to saying the truths of economics are synthetic a priori.
I think I should say a little bit about what these terms mean. In terms of analytic and
synthetic propositions as introduced by Kant, what Mises meant by these truths is
somewhat different from what the Vienna School of Economic Thought meant.
What does analytic mean?
Kant thought that the analytic proposition is one in which the predicate is contained in the
subject. Suppose I say all bachelors are male. Well, its part of the concept of a bachelor
that a bachelor is an unmarried male of a certain age; bachelors are male, so male is
contained in this concept of bachelor. Thats an analytic proposition.
What does synthetic mean?
In a synthetic proposition, the predicate isnt contained in the subject. So, all propositions
are either analytic or synthetic because either the predicate is contained in the subject or it
isnt. The logical positivists have a rather different definition. The division they make is:
analytic or empirical propositions. Their analytic proposition is the definition of a truth of
logic or part of a definition. It is similar but not exactly the same in its concept. But an
empirical one for them, is just one that can be verified by sensory observation; for
example, Im now talking to you on Skype. Perhaps there are observations that could
verify that it wasnt true. Perhaps our connection was disrupted; that wouldnt be true
then. But the main flaw with the logical positivists division between analytic and
empirical is that it isnt guaranteed that all propositions are either analytic or empirical,
whereas, in Kants view, theyre all either analytic or synthetic. In the positivists view,
there is still logical space for propositions that arent definitions and arent verifiable by
sense experience but could still exist! Kants thesis was that there arent any such
propositions.
R: I think that logical empiricism (or logical positivism) today seems to have descended into a
sort of scientism. By that I mean that many thinkers, such as Richard Dawkins, tend to point to
the scientific method as if this is the only way to derive knowledge about the world. But that
very statement, the scientific method is the only way to derive knowledge, cannot be
determined to be true with the scientific method. In fact, they assume and use the concepts we
are describing all the time in their work and in their everyday thinking, we all do. I think theres
something very intuitive about Misesian dualism. When I explain this concept to people, they
say, Yeah, I already know that. They seem to understand that is how they derive knowledge.
Do you find thats the case?

G: I think you have some excellent points there. It isnt scientific to say that physical
science is the only the way to know things; that would be a philosophical thesis about
science. If physical science were the only way to know things, we wouldnt be able to
know that because thats not a physical science proposition. One thing Mises stressed is
that we shouldnt confine science to the physical sciences. He said, just as you suggest, in
the physical sciences, we ask, How do we know what the matter is composed of? or,
Whats going to happen with the stars and planets? The way to find out is to observe
things; we dont have this inner grasp of how matter is moving. We cant say, just by
looking at certain physical elements, what theyre going to do. We would have to just
watch and see what happens. But with the concept of human action, its different.
Each of us is an actor, not in the sense of someone who acts in movies or plays but
someone that, as a human actor, does things all the time and is always acting. We have a
grasp of action from the inside, we all know we are actors and so can go on that basis.
Most importantly, we can build up a body of knowledge, just thinking about whats
involved in the concept of action. The whole point of praxeology, which is the term for
this science of action, is that we can infer some very surprising truths about economics that
people wouldnt just know without something difficult to understand, like complex
mathematics. We can take some very simple truths and come up with something great and
very valuable. And that is the basis on which Mises operated. But, the positivists and Karl
Popper said, Youre asking, what are the criteria for science? Scientific propositions cant
possibly be classifiable. But they were not taking into account all sciences, particularly
economics. Mises showed economics has a distinctive method of proceedings. If you
want to talk about the criteria for a scientific statement, you should take into account
economics as well.
R: So, in that sense, Mises was standing on the shoulders of Frege, in saying that we have logic,
we have mathematics, which is a logical science, and he was saying that economics is composed
of both and is a logical science. But Mises also recognised that we must use empiricism in
economics too. Is that correct?
G: Yes. A key mistake, made particularly by Popper and his followers, is regarding the
Misesian view of empirical knowledge. It doesnt follow that all we mean by empirical
knowledge is something that can be doubted or something that is just a hypothesis,
something always requiring more testing. We can know certain things to be true about the
world - were actors - and these are not just hypotheses or guesses. I frequently find
students make this mistake. Its of course right that Mises was very interested in the
philosophical foundations of economics and was much more philosophically well-informed
than almost any other economist, but we shouldnt confuse Austrian economics with
philosophy. There is the problem of scepticism with philosophy. Something very sceptical
might be, how do I know right now that Im not a brain in a vat and all of the things that

Im experiencing and that I think Im experiencing, Im really not. There is a scientist

plugging various things into my brain so that Ill have to experience them. Another
sceptical problem is that, even if I know there is a world out there I can experience in my
own thought, how do I know that youre thinking? Maybe Im the only mind. Now these
are very interesting philosophical problems but theyre not problems of Austrian
economics.
Suppose somebody said Are we going to have a recession next year? It wouldnt be a
good answer to say well youre talking about a recession but we havent even established
there are other people yet, how can you talk about a recession? In the sciences, and
economics is one of the sciences, were taking for granted that the world exists, that people
exist, were taking for granted the ordinary world of common sense because, in physics,
you wouldnt say, Weve got all these electromagnetic waves and various things showing
up on our instruments but how do we know that there actually are instruments? How do
we know that anything really exists? So when students see these philosophical terms like
a priori, they tend to put the bar too high and ask, How can Mises establish that people
really exist? But, Mises wasnt trying to do that, he was just taking a basic common sense
view of things. We know that we act and what follows from that within the ordinary world
of common sense.
R: I think thats why Austrian economists or philosophers who may follow Mises and his
epistemological dualism would then be accused of making metaphysical statements or things of
that nature. But, Mises wasnt setting out to show that the universe exists necessarily or anything
like that, rather he was just trying to use logical science to determine those irrefutable axioms
that we use as concepts, which then help us to make sense of the data we acquire with our senses.
Similarly, learning a language enables us to both understand and to communicate with others.
G: Yes, I think thats exactly right. We know that the concepts apply to the world because
were in the world, were actors ourselves so we know that there are actions. There isnt
just, as the positivists might say, a concept implied by certain definitions, but that we dont
really know about the true world. Let me give you an example of a positivist criticism of
Mises. One of the propositions you get in praxeology is that we always choose our most
highly valued preference; if you preferred something else to talking to me right now, you
would be doing that rather than talking to me, so if youre talking to me thats your most
valued preference. Felix Kaufmann suggested we are just defining the most highly
valuable preference as the one we choose. But, Mises isnt defining your highest
preference as the one you actually choose, just taking preference in the ordinary sense. For
example, there are people in philosophy who say there can be cases like weakness of will,
accuracy, and where you want to do something that is your most highly valued preference
but youre overcome by weakness and you choose something else, I really dont want to
inject myself with heroin but Im overcome to do it. But, Mises pointed out that this is

just a person having a change of preference, to inject themselves with heroin a number of
times.
R: Returning to the subject of axiomatic concepts, Rothbard seemed to
disagree with Mises who viewed these concepts as a law of thought.
Rothbard said I would stand more in the Aristotelian camp in viewing
them as a law of reality in that theres something objective about them,
and he thought that Mises was viewing them very subjectively. Roderick
Long wrote on this and he wanted to refine the thinking of Wittgenstein,
showing how Wittgenstein sought to transcend this debate, saying that if
our ability to apply logic or mathematics, or praxeology, for that matter,
were to break down, its not a particular style of thought that weve lost
but the ability to think all together. Does that make sense?
Murray N. Rothbard

G: Well, if I have thoughts, I hope they dont break down all together! I know Roderick
very well; I think the point he was making can be illustrated with this question: Do our
concepts apply to reality? He thinks if youre asking this question, youre assuming there
is some kind of separation between the picture we have of concepts inside our minds and
the reality out there, but he says its not the case that the concepts are somehow constitutive
of the world theyre in because they cant be separated from the world. For example, logic
isnt a set of psychological laws of our thought (how we should think) but, rather, logic
applies to the world; theyre not separate. He thinks there is a kind of conceptual
grammar we get through studying praxeology and I think that is a very useful way to think
about it and its very similar to what Mises was thinking. We do need to have certain
concepts in order to understand reality but that is not to say theres some reality that exists
apart from the concepts that is ungrasped, some kind of luminal world that exists without
these concepts. No, this is the world to which our concepts apply - it is the world. Theres
a very interesting German philosopher, Sebastian Mller, who says this was Kants view
too; he wasnt postulating some other world with applied concepts that we dont know
about, this is the way were grasping things.
Now Rothbard, he was an Aristotelian, as you say, viewing concepts as abstracted from the
world. But, he thought that when we do this, when we abstract and get the concepts, were
not limited only to certain continued propositions - ones that could be true but need not be.
Suppose I say, again, that Im talking to you now on Skype; that could have been false, I
could have forgotten about the call and gone out, given that Im an old man and very
absent minded and sometimes do such things. But, Rothbard thought there were certain
propositions we could grasp about the world that are necessary, that couldnt be false and
so he would talk more about necessary truths rather than a priori truths, and that sums up
the difference here. Nevertheless, these two views are very similar in what they get from
the axiom of human action; its just they have a slightly different philosophical argument.

R: Roderick Long points to Rand, saying she would agree more with Aristotle and Rothbard.
Her view was that there is a unity to these things and, so, to have both the concept and the ability
to garner data from the world around us is a whole, one unit, and not something that is divided
up, as people at one time would have thought that the body and soul were two parts of one
whole. Rand says its more like a computer; you have all the components and parts in order for it
to perform a function, just as we need to have both our logical science and our empirical data.
Do you think theres a flaw in that thinking?
G: Rand had a very unusual view of the idea of concepts. You see, she thought that all the
properties of an object were part of the concept so that if I have a concept of a table, it isnt
just a table as an item of furniture which we put things on, it is
a sort of good rule of thumb definition. But, the concept
includes every property of every table so it turns out that, if you
could involve the properties in the definition, then all
propositions turn out to be necessary (but, Rand made an
exception for human free will). Suppose I say, light travels at
186,000 miles per second or something like that, thats part of
the definition and the concept of light, that it has that speed.
So, if I can imagine a possible world in which light could travel
faster or slower, Rand would say thats how we determine
whether its part of the concept of light. A lot of philosophers
would call this a distinction between logical necessity and
metaphysical necessity, but Radians dont accept this. Now, I
dont think its very difficult to show that their view is logically
false; it just strikes me as a very implausible view that nothing in the physical world could
have been otherwise, that the laws of physical nature are ones that hold with absolute
necessity. I think it would be a mistake for Austrian economics to saddle itself with that
sort of metaphysical language.
R: What would you say are the best arguments against the a priori, as Mises defined it, and as it
is applied by Austrian economists and philosophers like yourself? And how would you respond
to those arguments?
G: Probably the best criticism of a priori truth is one derived from the philosopher, Willard
Quine, who was very influential. His basic argument was applied to analytic and synthetic
truth but would also apply to a priori and a posterior; he said that we dont have any real
way of coming up with non-circular definitions of analytics and synthetics. We could say
that an analytic statement is true just by the meaning and the term. Alright, but what is
something thats true by its meaning and if we dont have some way of understanding, we
just get a circular thought process; we cant say something is true by its meaning if its
analytic because we dont have a fixed way of understanding this. Related to that thought,

he thought that all of the propositions we have are

connected in some way so that were not testing an
individual proposition by experience, its the whole body
of knowledge that is tested by experience. For instance,
if I dont understand something, it isnt that I would have
to reject one particular proposition, I would adjust
various things in this structure of mind beliefs to restore
coherency. It isnt that each proposition is tested
separately, there are some that cant be false and others
that are; so, all are propositions and confront the world
together so that we can adjust one to the other.
Therefore, you cant make a strict separation between a
priori and a posteriori which just means ones that are
known by experience and ones that are true and could
never be revised. Quine disagreed and declared all are
propositions, at least in principle, and revisable - there are
some that are very unlikely to be revised that others are, but anything could be revised.
My response to this would be to go back to the point I made about Austrian economics and
praxeology it is not a philosophical discipline, it is part of science. We know in a very
ordinary language sense that we act and various other truths, we have grasp on them;
seemingly these are not going to be shown to be false by future experience. For instance,
lets say Quine was right and there are propositions that we think are true which could turn
out to be false in another part of the universe or at a future time. Then one of his students
asks, Do you think it could ever be the case that two plus two doesnt equal four? My
answer would be: not for a long time! If Quine is right (and Im not convinced he is), we
can still say from the point of view of Austrian economics, we do know for all practical
purposes that there is a truth and on the basis of that truth we can think about whats
involved in it deductively and thats how we proceed in Austrian economics; we dont
judge whether thats right, we only have to look at whats involved in Austrian economics
to see whether this tells you important truths about the world.
R: So, were not really saying that the axiomatic a priori concept of human action is necessary,
that is, it has to be true in all possible worlds necessarily. Were simply saying that its all that we
can determine now. Its something that we simply cannot revise - in attempting to revise the
concept of human action you are what? You are a human acting; it would be a performative
contradiction for a scientist to attempt to defy human action, praxeology. Is that right?
G: Yes, that seems right to me. Im not committed to rejecting the view that axioms are
true in all possible worlds where people exist but I think we dont have to adopt that view,
as you say.

R: Final thoughts from you, what recommended reading would you give if someone wanted to
learn more and develop a good understanding of the Misesean a priori, and not just parrot these
words, such as synthetic a priori without really understanding the philosophical foundations?
G: I think Hans-Hermann Hoppe has a very good short pamphlet on the basic principles of
praxeology titled, Economic Science and the Austrian Method. I would say of course the
thing you have to read if you were going to understand it is the first part of Human Action,
about the first 130 or so pages of Human Action. A lot of people find this difficult but if
you wanted help to understand this I have an online course thats available from Mises
Institute which is a series of lectures I gave on this first part titled, Human Action: Part
One.
R: Im very grateful to have spoken with you today. I still dont think I understand everything
but Im in a far better position than before I spoke to you.
G: Well thanks very much for having me, it was a great pleasure talking to you. You seem
extremely well informed and I wish you a lot of success in your future.
R: Well, coming from you, thats very encouraging! And I just want to say to the audience, I
cannot see Dr. David Gordon at the moment so I have absolutely no way of determining whether
he is in fact a head in a jar, but Im sure time will tell.
G: Im at least a jar!