Were educational institutions to begin offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees in General Systems Approach to Policy Making, what should students be required to know to pass a comprehensive examination, in addition to their chosen field of specialization?
I would venture the following list as a starting point for thinking about this.
- General systems theory and systems analysis
- Cybernetics & system dynamics
- Analytic philosophy and symbolic logic
- Philosophy of science
- History of science
- Mathematics
- Natural science
- Life science
- Social science
- Engineering
- Economics, finance and accounting
- History of Economics
- Ethics and social & political philosophy
- History of Philosophy
- Law & Government
- World History
- Management
- Strategy
- ???
37 comments:
Praxeology and catallactics are missing from your list, as expected.
As Mises pointed out 100 years ago, the state theory of money is acatallactic and thus worthless.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msTApp.html
As I constantly point out, MMT avoids (recoils from) the topics of human action and catallactics. There are no human beings doing what they do in MMT, which is acting in a state of ignorance, making stuff, becoming skilled, planning, trading and exchanging.
Bob, Lord Keynes has answered that in blogs posts at his place and also in comments here. I don't know why you keep bringing it up when our position rejecting your position is clear. If you want to mount an argument against what Lord Keynes has written, you are welcome to do so either here or there.
But just citing something over and over that we have dismissed is tedious.
But of course. Lord Keynes always discusses the terms catallactic, catallactics and acatallactic.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/search?q=catallactic
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/search?q=catallactics
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/search?q=acatallactic
After thousands of words fussing about the term “praxeology”, LK finally decides:
The human action axiom is a trivial observation that can also be held by Marxists, communists, Keynesians, neoclassicals, monetarists, or any other economist you care to name.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/02/limits-of-human-action-axiom.html
Yes, everyone really does understand the concept of human action and its universal nature, but no, it’s not a trivial observation. The human action axiom is self evident and everyone knows it. Further, people act in a state where they cannot read other people’s minds. That’s what I would call the “lack of knowledge” axiom or the “state of ignorance”. That “axiom” is central to Mises’ book “Theory of Money and Credit”. That’s the core concept too of Hayek’s paper “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. I don’t see how either of those propositions cannot be considered as other than self evident and essentially untestable. The ignorance axiom may be more important than the action axiom.
The implication of the “lack of knowledge” axiom is that Keynesian planning bureaucrats lack knowledge just as much as average people. Regarding the economic wants of the great mass of strangers, the only way to have a clue as to what they might desire and how much of what they might exchange for their wants and desires is from free market prices. That’s the very non-trivial observation of human action. That’s the essence of the socialist calculation debate which has the same devastating impact upon Keynesian and MMT “solutions” which impair but do not completely eliminate prices.
"The Use of Knowledge in Society" met with a poor reception from fellow economists because of the contemporary political climate and its perception as being overly trivial in its critiques. Partly as a result of this disappointing outcome, Hayek had by the end of the 1940s ceased to target his literature at the established economic community. In the 1960s, these ideas had become more tolerable;[4] today, several are accepted as basic economic tenets. Specifically, the essay's central argument that market price fluctuations promote efficient distribution of resources is embraced by most modern economists.[6] In 2011 "The Use of Knowledge in Society" was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society
The "human action" axiom is trivial because it applies to all organisms down to one celled.
"Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego's meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person's conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life. Such paraphrases may clarify the definition given and prevent possible misinterpretations. But the definition itself is adequate and does not need complement of commentary."
Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, p. 11, I. ACTING MAN, 1. Purposeful Action and Animal Reaction
"Human action is purposeful behavior" Straight out of Aristotle and rejected by modern science as teleological.
Analytic philosophy would say it is tautological because man is defined as belonging to the genus animal and the species rational. Purposefulness is a property of rationality. So it says nothing more than "man is defined as rational animal."
That is a philosophical definition rejected by modern science as being inconclusive. It defines animals into rational and non-rational, and we know from scientific study that this is false dichotomy. There is no sharp line between rational and non-rational animals, especially among primates.
Now you may disagree, but you will have to convince scientists that the scientific method they are using is wrong. Good luck with that.
Onto more useful coursework:
1. Proofs
http://mathbabe.org/2012/04/12/how-to-teach-someone-how-to-prove-something/
2. Data Science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science
3. Fine Arts/Design Management
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_management
4. Communications
http://www.dontbesuchascientist.com/
5. Meditation
For "Firmness without Anger" & "Patience without Strife"
and
6. Urban Design
I don't want to diss Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" since I think it contains many points that are well taken. I use it, for example, in my opposition to cb interest rate setting. CB interest rate setting has become a command system controlled by a small groups of unelected and unaccountable technocrates that is used for micro-managing the economy using monetary policy. No surpris it has been unsuccessful.
What I will focus on instead is this quote about Hayek's paper. Specifically, the essay's central argument that market price fluctuations promote efficient distribution of resources is embraced by most modern economists.
This confounds ends and means. In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker makes the point that efficiency is doing things right and effectiveness is doing the right things. Drucker calls the book The Effective Executive to emphasize that getting the job done involves setting objectives and producing outcomes. The means are the path and tools not the objectives aimed or the goals achieved.
Markets are distributional tools that are means to the end of distributing scarce resources. Markets are brutally efficient and care not at all about effectiveness. Through markets an elite can end up with control of most of the resources and the result can a failed society. Every child that has played Monopoly™ knows how this works through the accumulation of rent, for example.
One the chief flaws of most economics lies in confounding efficiency of means with effectiveness of ends. Markets are distributional tools not human ends, either individual or social.
jeg3 Urban Design
Yes, I would include under Engineering, Design Science (Bucky Fuller) and Architecture.
I should probably have included Ecology as a separate field of study, since it unifies the approach to many sciences.
Risk analysis and statistics. Indispensable tools for any policy maker.
I'd include risk analysis under finance, probability under logic, and stats under math. All key for an understanding of policy making.
ROTC basic course (either two years of coursework or a month long summer camp, doesn't carry a service obligation). I believe the Philippines requires this for every male college student, not a bad idea.
http://www.goarmy.com/rotc/courses-and-colleges/curriculum/basic-course.html
I agree, beowulf. I included this under Strategy for lack of a better cover term. Policy studies are highly developed in the military which, I think, is the only institution actually focused on this. Officers are sent to grad school to acquire the knowledge of the many of the disciplines mentioned above, and they, of course, use this knowledge day to day in operational planning and exercises in preparation for actual use.
I was assigned to the operations department on a naval ship and part of my duties was to be familiar with the operations manuals that set forth policy, strategy and tactics under ComCruDesPac (Commander, Cruisers Destroyers Pacific (US Navy), which is where I first got introduce to this type of thinking.
I was also in Air Force ROTC and planned to take flight training. But by the end of the program they had upped the active duty requirement for pilots from three to five years and I did not want to commit for five years. I had the chance to opt out, so I did.
Overall I rate my military training as a plus, although it also made a political radical out of me when I figured out what was really up.
Overall I rate my military training as a plus, although it also made a political radical out of me when I figured out what was really up.
Care to elaborate?
-- Complexity Science
-- Cultural Anthropology
-- Cognitive Science
-- Neural Science
-- Knowledge Management
-- Artificial Intelligence
Overall I rate my military training as a plus, although it also made a political radical out of me when I figured out what was really up.
Well, I discovered that the actual reasons for US involvement were not the ones that are put out to the public. They are geo-strategic chess moves that don't care much about "collateral damage."
This discussion reminds me that Plato would have demanded about 20 years for someone of the pre-selected guardian class to be considered competent in terms of 4th century BC knowledge to take on administrative roles. I remember encountering the term "comprehensive knowledge" from one of Buckminster Fuller's books. Bucky wanted to distinguish this from the usual assumed dichotomy of specialist vs. generalist. The only institution that came close, according to Fuller, to offering a comprehensive education was the US Navy. Comprehensive knowledge was needed in the US Navy because of the necessity of being totally self-sufficient on a vessel for months at a time. I imagine Plato has been quite influential in western military thinking, but I don't know for sure. How much time would Plato require to develop a competent policy minister were he alive today?
Another issue is that of lost knowledge. One of the themes that cuts through historian Alexander del Mar's books is that we (19-20th centuries) are in many ways living in a "dark age." For example, at the same time that Political Economy emerged as a modern discipline, Adam Smith held a view of money that was extraordinarily primitive with respect to what was once comprehended about it in Greco-Roman times. Ricardo, Mill, Marx, the American founders, etc. followed Smith which is part of why a competent modern macro-economics has yet to be developed (or become institutional knowledge) in most of the West. How much effort should be invested in "disciplines" that are fundamentally stunted?
Another interesting systems thinker was Gregory Bateson. He mentioned in one of his books that his best students tended to be Marxists or Catholics. That sort of stuck with me even though Bateson never really explained what he meant. The only answer I've been able to come up with is that Marxist and Catholic students, as compared to the average American protestants students, had developed a more comprehensive worldview and had therefore a better foundation for understanding the "whole systems" ideas Bateson was trying to develop and stimulate in them.
"Adam Smith held a view of money that was extraordinarily primitive with respect to what was once comprehended about it in Greco-Roman times. Ricardo, Mill, Marx, the American founders, etc. followed Smith which is part of why a competent modern macro-economics has yet to be developed "
this is confirmed in view of the Greek scriptures coupled with the emerging archeological records...
And right when you read Hamilton in Federalist 12, it appears he believes that "money" (a term the ancients apparently werent stupid enough to even use) would somehow just magically appear in circulation, somehow the silver and gold would just jump up out of the ground I guess.
This is imo even LESS than primitive thinking, even if there were "cave men" back then, they would realize that some sort of mining operaton would have to have been put into action.... Hamilton in Federalist 12, makes no reference to domestic sources of gold and silver... yet he makes the point that the new govt would be able to obtain revenues of these substances... where did he think the people would get the metals in the first place??
Yes VERY primitive but this may be an insult to "cave men"...
rsp
And I might add that Hamilton was highly "educated" in many of the topic areas that Tom has listed here... yet he still managed to display the actions of a moron in regards to "money", and was apparently very much "in love" with gold and silver.... hmmmmmm ... correlation or causation?
rsp,
I am not sure that Hamilton was ignorant about money, Matt. He is regarded as the greatest Tsy sec they US has produced. He wanted to model this US system on the English system and set up a central bank on the model of the Bank of England in order for a strong federal union to fit into the global economy at that time. Of course, that was just fine with his friend Robert Morris, the J. P.Morgan of that period. as usual, there is an agenda and a hidden agenda. The hidden agenda was not lost on Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who represented Southern agricultural interest in contrast to the Northern industrial and financial interests of Hamilton and Morris. This would eventually lead to the Civil War and the victory of industry and finance over agriculture. Fairly soon after, agriculture began to be mechanized too.
Tom,
From Fed 12: "The hereditary dominions of the Emperor of Germany contain a great extent of fertile, cultivated, and populous territory, a large proportion of which is situated in mild and luxuriant climates. In some parts of this territory are to be found the best gold and silver mines in Europe. And yet, from the want of the fostering influence of commerce, that monarch can boast but slender revenues."
So Hamilton points out that in Germany, even tho they had great agriculture, they couldnt for some reason get the gold and silver out of the ground.
Then goes on to propose in effect that if we promote commerce, somehow the gold and silver will magically levitate out of the ground and into circulation..... whaaaaaat?????
Hey Hamilton, how about starting a gold and silver mine you moron!
Tom, there is no mention of gold and silver extraction via mining operations in his writings. This is magic thinking, not a conspiracy imo.
rsp,
Matt, here is a timeline of the history of gold. There wasn't any gold mining in the US to speak of at that time and not a lot in the world. 75% of present global gold stock was produced since 1910. Gold was "found" or mined in surface pits rather than deep mined pretty much until the industrial age, although the Roman developed hydraulic mining. Gold was obtained by trade (mercantilism) and conquest (euphemism for stealing).
1511 A.D. — King Ferdinand of Spain says to explorers, “Get gold, humanely if you can, but all hazards, get gold,” launching massive expeditions to the newly discovered lands of the Western Hemisphere
Tom,
I dont think you need a degree in Mathematics to understand that "to do a reserve drain, you first have to have done a reserve add".
These are just basic logic issues that infant babies are able to discern...
rsp,
Matt,
Maybe this all is related to 'common wisdom' (acquired in later stages of life) that 'money does not grow on trees'. Once you equate money to work and risk (investment) you destroy the logic chain that indeed money does grow on trees (or in mines, whether is the private or the public sector that produces it is irrelevant).
Note that even trained economists in high financial institutions have this issues! Maybe the argument is more sophisticated or convoluted but it's reducible to the 'common wisdom' argument of 'money does not grow on trees.
Addition and subtraction eventually don't matter and do not matter to such individuals, it's a moral question and logic does not necessarily apply to morality questions.
It's actually pretty similar to the need of taxes for the government to pay for something. As if actually taxes were necessary to pay in the money you can print!
Rational thinking (logical cognitive processing) is superseded by cognitive biases and emotions. No easy solution for this except education early in life and 'destroying' harmful social memes (good luck with that).
Lev,
"Note that even trained economists in high financial institutions have this issues! "
Right this is bad... even Hamilton at core looks like thought this way.
Tom points out that there were no gold and silver mines in the east coast of North America... OK, right.... but then why is Hamilton, who is setting out to design a monetary system for the new US on the east coast of North America, basing this system on materials that are not even available within this geographic area????
Then he points to Germany which I guess had some proven reserves of gold and silver, but couldnt figure out how to dig them out, then Hamilton says instead of Germany just mining these materials, NOOOOOO, not that, what they need to do is establish commerce and the "invisible hand" will magically go subterranean and bring up the gold and silver...Whaaaaaaat???
This is NOT a rational thought process we are witnessing... though very "educated".
rsp,
Good start Tom. You could whittle the list down significantly by just requiring actual, operational practice in Outcomes Based Team Training. i.e., recruiting, mobilizing & leveraging agile teamwork.
Everything else after that is just a context-dependent detail, including praxeology and catallactics.
One, simple rule would do it. If they can't make complex teams work better/faster/leaner .. then they can't be allowed to work in policy.
"He is regarded as the greatest Tsy sec they US has produced."
"Impressed by Hamilton's abilities, Knox and Greene recommended the young officer to Washington's personal attention. In March he received appointment as an aide to the Commander in Chief, along with a promotion to lieutenant colonel [he was 20 years old]..."
He actually went back into the service after his tenure at Tsy,
"He was back in federal service three years later when the nation expanded the Army to prepare for a possible war with France, serving as a major general..."
http://www.history.army.mil/books/RevWar/ss/hamilton.htm
Hey I didn't know this, after retirement both Hamilton AND Washington rejoined the Army...
At his death, Lt. General Washington was "Senior Officer" of the US Army [what we'd today call Chief of Staff]. Upon his death in 1799, that job was assumed by his stalwart deputy, Major General Hamilton. Now that's damn interesting.
http://www.armyhistory.org/ahf2.aspx?pgID=877&id=144&exCompID=56
beo,
I'm a card carrying member of the A Hamilton fan club, in fact I still consider myself the President of the Central Maryland chapter...
that said it looks like he was blinded by his love for gold and silver and misled in this regard. (we are all corruptible)
He set up a system for failure.
Basing his system on metals that were not generally available ie scarce in the would be US. When he had as an example the Greek and Roman govts of probably 2,ooo years previous which had figured out how to run a system of state currency correctly... he f-ed up big time.
We could have and still can use ANY metal (platinum anybody?) and strike the image of a human on it and denominate it in a unit of $1 or $1T.
Hamilton could not see this path due to his love obsession with weight measures of gold and silver looks like... what the Apostle called "philargurion".
Perhaps Hamilton should have read more Paul and less Plato....
rsp,
Fantastic find, beowulf. You the sleuth.
Tom Hickey:
Bob, Lord Keynes has answered that in blogs posts at his place and also in comments here.
What? Where? I see talking about and around the Austrian theory, but I see no engaging nor understanding of the Austrian theory.
The "human action" axiom is trivial because it applies to all organisms down to one celled.
That is false. Human action is purposeful behavior, which requires consciousness. At best, you could only say action applies to apes, dolphins, and other "intelligent" organisms. Certainly not one celled organisms.
"Human action is purposeful behavior. Or we may say: Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, is aiming at ends and goals, is the ego's meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person's conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life. Such paraphrases may clarify the definition given and prevent possible misinterpretations. But the definition itself is adequate and does not need complement of commentary."
Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, p. 11, I. ACTING MAN, 1. Purposeful Action and Animal Reaction
"Human action is purposeful behavior" Straight out of Aristotle and rejected by modern science as teleological.
Rejected by modern science? Fallacy of authority.
Teleology is presupposed in modern science.
Analytic philosophy would say it is tautological because man is defined as belonging to the genus animal and the species rational. Purposefulness is a property of rationality. So it says nothing more than "man is defined as rational animal."
Analytic philosophy would also hold the Pythagorean theorem as tautological, because the theorem is already tied up with the concept of a right triangle. But it still expands our knowledge because it's not immediately understandable.
Action should not be something arcane, incoherent, or meanigingful to only a vanguard of elite ivory tower intellectuals. Human action is supposed to be able to be grasped by even the most dimwitted MMTer.
That is a philosophical definition rejected by modern science as being inconclusive.
Modern science disagrees with you. Modern science is not what you say it is.
And citing modern science as a premise for a refutation is an argumentative fallacy.
It defines animals into rational and non-rational, and we know from scientific study that this is false dichotomy. There is no sharp line between rational and non-rational animals, especially among primates.
False. Rationality to Mises is NOT, as I have mentioned this before to you, the same rationality as understood by analytic philosophers. Rational to Mises is just another word for goal seeking.
Now you may disagree, but you will have to convince scientists that the scientific method they are using is wrong. Good luck with that.
Nobody has to convince anyone before a true proposition becomes true.
The positivist-empiricist method was already beautifully and trenchantly refuted as self-contradictory by Austrian philosophers of science.
Analytic philosophy would also hold the Pythagorean theorem as tautological, because the theorem is already tied up with the concept of a right triangle. But it still expands our knowledge because it's not immediately understandable.
Shows you know nothing about the technical definition of the terms involved in the professional debate that has been going on for the last hundred years.
The Pythagorean theorem is tautolgical because it is a THEOREM that follows deductively, just like axioms are tautological as stipulated criteria. They are about symbols not experience. They may be applied to real world events but say nothing about the real world themselves, which is only known through experience.
Lobachevskian and Riemannian geometry
geometries were developed as notations before anyone suspect that they had applications in scientific explanation.
"False. Rationality to Mises is NOT, as I have mentioned this before to you, the same rationality as understood by analytic philosophers. Rational to Mises is just another word for goal seeking."
As I have said, that also applies to organisms down to the one-celled. Mises want it to say more than that so he brings in a whole philosophy to do so. If you want to believe in his philosophy, fine. Self-evident? No. Irrefutable. If it is irrefutable in depends on either deduction form axioms that say nothing about the world and are purely formal, or else it depends on premises that are knowledge claims expressed as hypotheses.
Mises claims a third way. His own mind. It's either religious revelation and his work is theology, or else it is fiction, based an an active imagination. It's neither math nor science.
What lies between the formal (logic, math) and experiential (observation, science) is philosophy and literature. Take your pick between these two.
If you say philosophy show me absolute criteria for deciding the truth claims of competing systems, If there were one, there would be one philosophy that is logically compelling. There isn't because criteria are relative to systems, and humanity has not yet discovered an overarching system that is inclusive.
"I'm a card carrying member of the A Hamilton fan club, in fact I still consider myself the President of the Central Maryland chapter..."
You are swimming in deep waters, my friend.
"A flustered Abigail Adams once wrote to her husband that Hamilton represented “lasciviousness itself.” Or, as a woman named Breanna Lynn more recently put it on Facebook (FB), “I’d tap that.”
Lynn posted this message on the Facebook group “Alexander Hamilton Was the Foxiest of the Federalists,” just one of a string of Hamilton fan pages that have cropped up on the social network. Others have names such as: “I love Alexander Hamilton,” “Alexander Hamilton … The Hotness Never Dies,” “Are you Treasurer Sexy?” and “Alexander Hamilton: Too Hot For Your Wallet.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-31/alexander-hamilton-federalist-hunk
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Tom Hickey:
"Analytic philosophy would also hold the Pythagorean theorem as tautological, because the theorem is already tied up with the concept of a right triangle. But it still expands our knowledge because it's not immediately understandable."
Shows you know nothing about the technical definition of the terms involved in the professional debate that has been going on for the last hundred years.
Shows you know nothing about the foundations of the technical terms.
The Pythagorean theorem is tautolgical because it is a THEOREM that follows deductively, just like axioms are tautological as stipulated criteria.
False. The theorem is a tautology because it is analytic, that is, because the concept of a right triangle already contains the Pythagorean relation.
They are about symbols not experience. They may be applied to real world events but say nothing about the real world themselves, which is only known through experience.
False. The truth of the Pythagorean theorem is a priori true. No experiencing of any right triangle can ever falsify it.
Lobachevskian and Riemannian geometry
geometries were developed as notations before anyone suspect that they had applications in scientific explanation.
Both Lobachevskian and Riemannian geometries presuppose Euclidean geometry. They are annotated as non-Euclidean, but they are not independent.
"False. Rationality to Mises is NOT, as I have mentioned this before to you, the same rationality as understood by analytic philosophers. Rational to Mises is just another word for goal seeking."
As I have said, that also applies to organisms down to the one-celled.
As I have said, that is false. Human action is purposeful behavior, which requires consciousness. At best, you could only say action applies to apes, dolphins, and other "intelligent" organisms. Certainly not one celled organisms.
Scientists for example do not treat cells as purposeful actors. They treat them as automatically behaving entities that operate according to constant causes. They presume the same stimuli will have the same effect all the time. This constancy is not applicable to human action however, precisely because the scientist himself has to logically presuppose himself to learn in a priori unpredictable ways, over the course of his study.
You're confused because you don't know what you are.
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Tom Hickey:
At any rate, it doesn't matter whether or not action takes place in other creatures. It takes place with man, and that is enough for the study of economics. Economics is the study of human action. Biology and other fields of inquiry are for cells and lower animals.
There is no significance whatsoever in playing show and tell and pointing to other creatures that may be acting. It doesn't in any way reduce the significance of human action.
Mises want it to say more than that so he brings in a whole philosophy to do so.
Action IS more than behavior. It IS more than cell-level phenomena.
If you want to believe in his philosophy, fine.
It's not a matter of mere belief. It's apodictic knowledge.
Self-evident? No. Irrefutable. If it is irrefutable in depends on either deduction form axioms that say nothing about the world and are purely formal, or else it depends on premises that are knowledge claims expressed as hypotheses.
False. Irrefutability does not depend on propositions that say nothing about the real world. Action is a real world phenomena.
Mises claims a third way. His own mind. It's either religious revelation and his work is theology, or else it is fiction, based an an active imagination. It's neither math nor science.
Math and science are tools for actors. Action is primary.
What lies between the formal (logic, math) and experiential (observation, science) is philosophy and literature. Take your pick between these two.
The proposition that knowledge can only be formal or experiential, is itself neither a formal nor experiential proposition.
If you say philosophy show me absolute criteria for deciding the truth claims of competing systems, If there were one, there would be one philosophy that is logically compelling.
Praxeology is logically compelling.
There isn't because criteria are relative to systems, and humanity has not yet discovered an overarching system that is inclusive.
False. There is one. The proposition that "criteria are relative to systems" is a non-empirical proposition.
You keep claiming that the validity of propositions as having to fall outside of the propositions themselves. But that is itself a proposition that has no external foundation.
You keep contradicting yourself and you don't even know it, because you believe truth can be found by playing follow the leader.
You're not identifying yourself as an actor.
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