Classical, neoclassical and Austrian philosophy of economic science

In this paper apriorism has been examined, the main-stream philosophy of economic science. An essential element in apriorism is the idea that the economist should always start his analysis from a hard, solid core of assumptions, in which he can have great confidence. Since most aprioristic thinkers reflect to some extent the insights of Robbins, Menger and Mill, the latter have been considered rather extensively. Menger and Mill have virtually the same arguments for their almost identical hard core assumptions. It is partly a methodological argument: for a knowledge of the consequence of the various motives influencing human action, we must first know the consequences of each of these motives separately. Observation and/or introspection reveal to us what these motives are. In economics this amounts to the hard core assumption of an economic man striving efficiently towards his economic end. Robbins argues in a fundamentally different way, since his hard core contains almost universal facts of experience, present whenever human activity has an economic aspect. On the other had Mill and Robbins have almost identical views concerning the confrontation of deduced results with reality and the value of economic predictions. The aprioristic approach is said to disapprove of the usual practice of econometrics mainly because the latter does not base its theory on a set of assumptions that can be considered as a hard core within apriorism. The views of Robbins van Von Mises appear to confirm the idea that apriorism is incompatible with this usual practice.