Logic, logos in classic Greek, has a kind of intrinsic compulsion; the notion of identity. Aristotle spent much of his discussion in the Metaphysics1 on the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). He thought that any claim of knowledge was essentially bound to PNC. Therefore, knowledge itself is not absolutely relative to personal belief. It must continually prove itself in the foundry that separates iron from slag, the true from the false. Truth is never complete but existentially contingent upon contradiction and error. However, “It is impossible to hold (suppose) the same thing to be and not to be (Metaph IV 3 1005b24 cf.1005b29–30).” If I make a claim that x is universally true then I also make the corollary claim that all particular cases of x will demonstrate the universality of the claim. Therefore, for example, if I suggest that large government leads to more corruption and am faced with significant examples of large government and less corruption, I must either modify my original universal premise to account for this discrepancy OR give up the claim IF the PNC is given essentially and intrinsically in the identity of universality2. This is not a matter of civility or incivility, opinion or fact, relativity, etc., it must necessarily always come along with any claim of knowledge. Of course, I agree with Jeff that civility is very important especially in light of the fact that PNC is existentially contingent and no one can lay claim to having arrived finally, teleologically (telos-completion, wholeness and logos), at universal truth. We are all paupers in the face of the richness of PNC. Yet, non-contradiction does remain in a non-relative assumption, always already implied every time we make a universal claim. We can only deny this in bad faith.
Bad faith is a claim to knowledge that violates PNC while maintaining PCN. As Aristotle stated, something cannot be and not be. A cannot be both A AND NOT A in any sense without violating PNC. If identity is taken as a singularity, an ontological (ontos, being, isness) unity then, it cannot be itself and not itself. This would be nonsense. Yet PNC is not the whole story. I will deal with that in my upcoming philosophy series. However, for now, I would like to take particular example in which the question of PNC is a concern. Bad faith is what Aristotle would have referred to as a logical fallacy. Aristotle cited formal fallacies in the form of logical syllogism. One form of a necessarily, tautologically, true syllogism is:
All humans are mortal.
All Greeks are human
∴ All Greeks are mortal.
The middle term, human, establishes an identity between the major term, mortal, and the minor term Greeks and, on the basis of this identity, truthfully concludes that the major term and the minor term are identical in the universal sense of Greeks and mortality. They are bought together under the rubric of the same (mortality applies to all Greeks). This is necessarily so or tautologically true. If I maintain that,
All large governments are over regulated
All over regulation (necessarily leads) to corruption
∴ All large governments are corrupt
the existential fallacy here would be demonstrated by use of the terms “all” and any particular case that could be cited in which the conclusion is false. The way to fix this argument would be to make a contingent claim by replacing “all” with “some”. However, to maintain a universal generalization it must include existence as a necessary component of the “universal”. Another way to avoid contradiction would be to qualify what “large” is such that we are not referring to a linear relationship of ever larger governments and corruption but some critical mass wherein the stated universal relationship to corruption applies. Additionally, to simultaneously cite data that both proves and contradicts the conclusion, the universality of the claim, is a bad faith argument. Perhaps another way to avoid this would be to question the validity of the existential data but that cannot be laid hold of if one maintains the veracity of the data in some cases and not in other cases (using the same criteria for establishing the data as “true”).
There is another particular form of a bad faith argument that I really want to address, more as an imposing question, than a proven case. In order to do this I will put it in its most radical form. If I maintain that public debt is not a stimulus and economic stabilizer over the long run but a recipe for endless boom and bust WITH a correlation of the magnitude of public debt to the magnitude of the boom and the bust then we have a recent existential example that should at least pose a valid question. How is it that Europe and the European Central Bank (ECB) which has followed a policy of public frugality and reduction of public debt has seen higher unemployment and social upheaval while the US which has pursued a more Keynesian route, using the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy with more public debt in the form of public bonds, has seen a lower unemployment rate and economic recovery?
It seems to me that one way to address this by the Austrians would be to appeal to an order of magnitude in which the correlation occurs that is not linearly related as in the previous example (magnitude of public debt to bust). Historical examples would be more pertinent in this tact. Another fallacious way to address the issue is to perpetually push off the final proof of this to the future. In other words, the BIG bust will come and that will prove our case. If a small bust would occur, even for a very large public debt, then the claim to correlation with magnitude of public debt and magnitude of bust could not be claimed as “universal” but perhaps only contingent. A non-correlation to magnitude of public debt to economic calamity is tantamount to saying nothing about public debt. There will always be larger and smaller economic busts at some point in the future unless one is a utopist. In order to draw a conclusion it must have a universal quality that is shown in the micro-economic, existential case. In fact, all historical existential cases must prove the case and not defer the case to an ever looming future.
I know the Great Depression has been the subject of much revisionism but the policies of FDR and the World War did greatly increase public debt and there was a recovery that followed this expenditure. It was not public austerity that was the catalyst for the recovery. Austerity prolonged the Great Depression and created unemployment and soup lines. Economic stimulus appears to have been a necessary and historically accompanying factor that changed impoverishment to recovery. Please note that I am not recommending throwing tax payer dollars indiscriminately at an economic crisis but selectively using the advantages of public resources to create jobs and build infrastructure as a historically proven stimulus when the private sector is imploding economically. I am aware of how the Austrians process the lessons of the Great Depression but am not convinced by their arguments yet. It appears to me to be a bit of revisionist history but I would not argue that all history may be essentially revisionist as Marx and Nietzsche noted.
Aren’t we seeing the same thing today with real world examples of Europe and the US? Here we have two different economic philosophies in concurrent existential laboratories and the apparent winning philosophy seems to be on the side of the Keynesians. I know we can make the claim that the big bust is coming and scare the bejesus out of everyone as they prep for the apocalypse but that may only be a futile exercise of an overactive amygdala3 and not a claim to universal knowledge. If existential import is minimized, denied or put off indefinitely, the claim can only remain as hypothetical and not a claim of knowledge.
In any case, it does appear to me that this subject has gotten bogged down in the endless ‘circle of hermeneutic’ discussions where evidence remains in the eye of the beholder and not in the logical claims that either hold up to their universality OR become a continent claim that may or may not be the case. It is the “faith” part of Austrian economics that appears to get cloaked in endless interpretation and apocalyptic vision that is a disservice to the logical truth claims against macroeconomic, brute historical results. It is as if we are all Alice in the rabbit hole trying to decipher if what we see is a big or small Armageddon while holding a tea party to debate the intimacies of our upcoming oblivion. If we separate and isolate the logic of the claims to see if they are contradictory in themselves we may get further than endlessly “re-stating” the claims to obfuscate and diminish the universality the Austrian school is trying to lay hold of in economic theory. As such, I would love it if someone could provide a relatively simple argument that does not appeal to the true, complicated, scholarly arguments that take years to understand and merely highlight the logical principles of the Austrian school that cannot be diminished without losing its integrant veracity to itself. I am not asking for over-simplification, only logical arguments that do not get lost to further “clarifications”.
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1 See link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradiction/
2 See link: http://critical-thinker.net/?p=1929#comments
3 See link: http://critical-thinker.net/?p=1074
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