Entries by Barry Linetsky

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 15: Ah, You Don’t Believe We’re on the Eve of Destruction?

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. Identifying valid methods of human thought in pursuit of life-sustaining human action through sensory perception, observation, reason, and logic is itself a science. Built into the human mind is the structure and latent capability to identify causality, to value profitable outcomes, and to differentiate success and failure, […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 14: The Marginalization and Destruction of Epistemology

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. Dr. Edwin Locke notes in The Illusion of Determinism: Why Free Will is Real and Causal that to construct an experimental method while at the same time acting consistently with the belief that human beings lack free will and that volitional consciousness and human agency is always and […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 13: Volitional and Mechanistic Causation: Science or Sciences?

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. The question of whether social science or any study of reality having to do with human action can be accepted as valid and legitimate science remains contentious amongst intellectuals. Human action and the study of those disciplines serving human values and interests don’t fit neatly into the […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 12: A Science of Two Parts Forms a Whole

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. Ludwig von Mises drew a sharp distinction between two types of study, one being non-teleological events in the world of inanimate matter, and the other being teleological human events that rest on the “human faculty of thinking, cognizing, and acting” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, 11). […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 10: The Unique Qualities of the Human Mind

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. In his life-long search for truth in, and exposition of, economic science, Mises recognized that “it is not possible to question the real existence of matter, of physical objects and of the external world.” In building an inductive scientific basis for a science of human action (and […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 9: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. In 1962, after a career as one of the most important and distinguished economist of the 20thcentury, Ludwig von Mises, author of the 1949 classic Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, published his final book, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method. Mises had […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 8: The Siren Call of the Determinist Paradox

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. A logical implication of mechanistic materialism is that everything has been set in motion by that first cause and is inevitable, and if not for our limited human computation power and limited knowledge, we would be able to predict every future outcome – that what comes after is metaphysically […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 7: In the Land of Blind Science, Volitional Consciousness is King

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. When it comes to human actions, notes Hayek in his aptly titled book The Counter-Revolution of Science, “things arewhat the acting people think they are” (44). For example, a hammer is not a thing in itself or an objective fact of Science, but rather a means to […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 6: Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris: A Clash of Scientific Worldviews?

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. F.A. Hayek, winner of the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, expressed concern that science has morphed into a “prejudice” or ideology that places the physical and biological sciences at the pinnacle of discovering and validating what is real, what is knowable, and what is true. […]

Science, Human Action, The Search for “Truth”, and Consequences | Part 5: Hayek’s Fallacy of Scientistic Prejudice

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© 2018, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved. The consideration of the existence of a single scientific method – a prejudice towards a methodology for studying the world of human action using a scientific method developed for the study of a mechanistic world of natural laws – was referred to by economist F.A. Hayek as […]