Conjecture and criticism
I heard about this epistemological method conjecture and criticism in this video. Oddly, it was portrayed as something that goes against the Austrian method by Paul Sztorc, while the other guy, JW Weatherman, was championing the “praxeological” method of pure logical deduction from first principles as the basis of all economic knowledge.
It has always seemed to me that this pure logical reasoning was somewhat weird, specially in light of Carl Menger’s empiricism (which is not the same empiricism from modern sciences).
Conjecture and criticism seems to fit better with Menger’s method and whatever Austrians actually do. No one really reasons with pure logical deduction. What people do is spot something in the real world and try to come up with a reasonable explanation that is logically consistent. The entire logical impenetrability of every Austrian theory comes after the theory is conceived (conjected?) by a human mind, not – like some praxeological claims would imply – deducted as if by a computer.