EconoWeirdness

Exposing the madness wehind current economic thought

Friday, September 21, 2012

Ludwig von Mises on logic and polylogism

In Omnipotent Government, on page 143:

We can speak to each other only because we can appeal to something common to all of us, namely, the logical structure of reason.

In Theory and History, on page 313:

Polylogism denies the uniformity of the logical structure of the human mind. Every social class, every nation, race, or period of history is equipped with a logic that differs from the logic of other classes, nations, races, or ages. Hence bourgeois economics differs from proletarian economics, German physics from the physics of other nations, Aryan mathematics from Semitic mathematics.

In Omnipotent Government, on page 147:

Polylogism is not a philosophy or an epistemological theory. It is an attitude of narrow-minded fanatics, who cannot imagine that anybody could be more reasonable or more clever than they themselves. Nor is polylogism scientific. It is rather the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. It is the characteristic mentality of an age of chaos.