I hope to write an article about this soon.

David Gordon, ” Hermeneutics Versus Austrian Economics”
http://www.mises.org/etexts/hermeneutics.asp
Murray Rothbard, “The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics”
http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae3_1_3.pdf.

I don’t think that methodological individualism has to involve a commitment to a subjectivist methodology. The sociologist George Caspar Homans combined methodological individualism with behaviorism.

Review of O’Driscoll and Rizzo by Charles Baird: http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae1_1_11.pdf

“Austrian Economics as the Middle Ground” by Garrison: http://www.auburn.edu/~garriro/j5loasby.htm

“From Lachmann to Lucas” by Garrison: http://www.auburn.edu/~garriro/j6lachlucas.htm

“On Certainty and Uncertainty” by Hoppe: http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae10_1_3.pdf

“The Present State of Austrian Economics” by Rothbard: http://www.mises.org/etexts/presentstate.pdf

Not sure what’s the best Kirzner reference, perhaps readers can suggest….

Of course one should not extrapolate a statement like Hayek’s too far, especially since Hayek was looking back and not ahead. But still, did not both Mises acknowledge the inseparability of time and knowledge (i.e. acknowledge Knightian radical uncertainty). And would then not a logical application of the subjectivist (and methodological individualist) position mean that individual choices are fundamentally free (more specifically, free from the historical and social forces that the historicist and methodological collectivist would stress)?

To then conclude, like Kirzner, that a subjectivist response to an uncertain future is the notion of alertness – i.e. to conclude apodictically, as it were, that people have a tendency not only as individuals but as a group, to make correct ‘equilibrating’ decisions – comes a cross a bit too faith based for my scientific instincts.

To instead conclude, like Lachmann, that the market process is neither equilibrating or non-equilibrating as a whole – that there is in fact no reason to speak of equilibrating tendencies in a radically uncertain world (equilibrating with regard to what?) – comes across as both more scientific and more realistic.

http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae1_1_3.pdf

Complaining that Hayek’s remark “has been quoted ad nauseam,” Yeager adds that it “has had a significance attributed to it that it simply cannot bear.”

I sympathize with Yeager’s frustration, but think he misunderstands Hayek, and the Austrians more generally, in this article, confusing the “moderate subjectivism” of Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, Rothbard, etc. with the “radical subjectivism” of Lachmann, Shackle, and Lavoie.

http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/Anno%20Hayek%20Scientism%201.htm

(With our software, the easiest way to put a link in a comment is simply to copy the URL, like I did above, and it will automatically be converted into a link.)

Here’s the link (hopefully):.

“What is true about the relations of men to things is, of course, even more true of the relations between men, which for the purposes of social study cannot be defined in the objective terms of the physical sciences but only in terms of human beliefs. Even such a seemingly purely biological relationship as that between parent and child is in social study not defined in physical terms and cannot be so defined for their purposes: it makes no difference as regards people’s actions whether their belief that a particular child is their natural offspring is mistaken or not.
All this stands out most clearly in that among the social sciences whose theory has been most highly developed, economics. And it is probably no exaggeration to say that every important advance in economic theory during the last hundred years was a further step in the consistent application of subjectivism. [1] That the objects of economic activity cannot be defined in objective terms but only with reference to a human purpose goes without saying. Neither a “commodity” or an “economic good”, nor “food” or “money”, can be defined in physical terms but only in terms of views people hold about things. Economic theory has nothing to say about the little round disks of metal as which an objective or materialist view might try to define money. It has nothing to say about iron or steel, timber or oil, or wheat or eggs as such.”

In terms of using the quote to criticize the ‘mainstream’ it may be revealing to note that the footnote in the text refers to Mises, including his “views about mathematical economics in general and the measurement of economic phenomena in particular”.