This article is really creating a buzz (sorry!!) The idea has some resonance to an aspect of Hayek’s social epistemology (see the article that I just today uploaded).
In much the same way that synapses are strengthened while unused linkages weaken and wither away, so too are paths to salient social knowledge strengthened or weakened – “social connectionism,” if you will.
Here is a draft of my entry for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.
Here is an uncorrected proof (do not cite) of my introduction to Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Further details will be made available just as soon as the publisher has updated the webpage for this book (according to Amazon the book will be made available on December 13th). A dedicated website to the volume can be found here.
Here is the table of contents for my forthcoming (in press) edited volume focusing on The Sensory Order – this is the first salvo of shameless promotion.
CONTENTS
“SOCIALIZING” THE MIND AND “COGNITIVIZING” SOCIALITY
Leslie Marsh
“MARGINAL MEN”: WEIMER ON HAYEK
Walter Weimer
PART I: NEUROSCIENCE
HAYEK IN TODAY’S COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Joaquín Fuster
THE NON-CARTESIAN VIEW AND THE BRAIN
Erol Başar
PART II: PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
HAYEK’S QUESTION: HOW CAN PARTS OF THE WORLD COME TO MODEL THE REST OF THE WORLD
Joshua Rust
HAYEK’S SPECULATIVE PSYCHOLOGY, THE NEUROSCIENCE OF VALUE ESTIMATION AND THE BASIS OF NORMATIVE INDIVIDUALISM
Don Ross
HAYEK, POPPER AND THE CAUSAL THEORY OF THE MIND
Edward Feser
PEIRCE AND HAYEK ON THE ABSTRACT NATURE OF COGNITION AND SENSATION
James Wible
HAYEK’S POST-POSITIVIST EMPIRICISM: EXPERIENCE BEYOND SENSATION
Jan Willem Lindemans
A NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF MACH’S PSYCHOLOGY IN HAYEK’S PSYCHOLOGY
Giandomenica Becchio
PART III: MIND AND SOCIALITY
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIND: HAYEK’S ACCOUNT OF MENTAL PHENOMENA AS A PRODUCT OF SPONTANEOUS PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ORDERS
Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo
HAYEK’S SELF-ORGANIZING MENTAL ORDER AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE MIND
Chiara Chelini
BEYOND COMPLEXITY: CAN THE SENSORY ORDER DEFEND THE LIBERAL SELF?
Chor-yung Cheung
COGNITIVE OPENING AND CLOSING: TOWARDS AN EXPLORATION OF THE MENTAL WORLD OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Thierry Aimar
GETTING TO THE HAYEKIAN NETWORK
Troy Camplin
Having just delivered an edited volume entitled Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology to the publisher, this is an opportune time to make widely available, for the first time, some photographs so generously sent to me by Walt Weimer (contact made through the good offices of a few of his students, some featured in the photos below). But before that, the first shameless plug for the volume which amazingly includes a contribution from Weimer himself!
Hayek’s philosophical psychology as set out in his The Sensory Order (1952) has, for the most part, been neglected. Despite being lauded by computer scientist grandee Frank Rosenblatt and by Nobel prize-winning biologist Gerald Edelman, cognitive scientists — with a few exceptions — have yet to discover Hayek’s philosophical psychology. On the other hand, social theorists, Hayek’s traditional disciplinary constituency, have only recently begun to take note and examine the importance of psychology in the complete Hayek corpus.
This volume brings together for the first time state-of-the-art contributions from neuroscientists, philosophers of mind, economists, and social theorists to critically examine many aspects of Hayek’s philosophical psychology.
Weimer was the co-convenor along with the late David Palermo of The Second Penn State Conference on Cognition and the Symbolic Processes. Weimer was so instrumental in rehabilitating (or perhaps more accurately, resuscitating) Hayek’s philosophical psychology. Here are my two previous Weimer posts. The photographs below are annoted precisely as Walt did in the hardcopy he sent me. (I have held back a couple of photos of Hayek since there is a dearth of good shots and I would like to have first dibs at using them should the occasion arise.)
Hayek, Mike Mahoney, Karl Pribnam
H. answering a question during the discussion –
since he was “deaf to the left” I moderated the session to make sure he heard the questions correctly.
At the “social” in the cabin-in-the-woods.
Bill Butos and H.
Obviously my best side.
Here is the flyer from the legendary conference convened by Walt Weimer - the other notables included Gibson, who I’m told snubbed Hayek despite so warmly receiving The Sensory Order and Eleanor Rosch later to find fame as co-author of The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. It is amazing that Weimer had (still has I might add!!) such balls and foresight to see Hayek’s genius - after all – Hayek was a rank outsider. Doff of hat and raised glass to Walt Weimer! Weimer was, by the way, interviewed by Bernard Baars some years ago but there was no mention of Hayek. Many thanks to Jim Wible, a student of Walt Weimer, who so kindly dug out this flyer out. Also thanks to Walt’s other students (Bill Butos, Harry Heft, Denny Proffitt and John Johnson) who came forward with such vivid memories of this amazing character – here are some photos from that conference. Last, but by no means least, it was my late chum Rob Haskell who, when I innocently asked if he knew Weimer, got very animated (this was in mid-winter at a nondescript bar in the Maine Mall). He had much he wanted to chat about at some later date - it wasn’t to be.
Here are some fuzzy but nevertheless recognizable Polaroid photos taken at the now legendary conference convened by Walter Weimer. Weimer was so crucial to bringing Hayek’s The Sensory Order back to life after it had “fallen still-born from the press”. In attendance was also J.J. Gibson who, though was favorably disposed towards TSO in the early 50s, pretty much snubbed Hayek at this conference (put down to his [Gibson's] politics). Thanks to Bill Mace for this info and the conference link. Thanks to John Johnson for documenting and posting these snapshots.
Walt, by the way, was interviewed by Bernard Baars some 25 years ago in The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology but, so far as I can see, with no mention of TSO. I have been in touch with a few of Weimer’s students – in many ways his legacy is assured through their interests and respect for the man. Walt must have had the most amazing foresight to back a outsider such as Hayek.
Here is the recently published book by my chum Erol Başar who as it happens is also contributing to my forthcoming edited book entitled Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Not surprisingly, there is much reference to Hayek’s The Sensory Order peppered throughout Erol’s book most notably in section 2.12 (pp. 39-41). Other distinguished neuroscientists who appreciate the virtues of Hayek’s prescient insights include of course Fuster and Edelman. Erol writes:
The writing of a monograph on brain-body-mind is extremely ambitious. This is because I think that Friedrich von Hayek was correct when he stated (1952), “The mind must remain forever in a realm of its own, which we shall never be able fully to explain.”
I unfashionably argue for this view in a forthcoming paper borrowing Colin McGinn’s phrase “Cognitive Closure.”
Rumelhart was enormously important in the 1980s in reviving this neural network approach to language and cognition
Steven Pinker
Seeing What You Mean
Knowledge Has Always Been Networked
Behaviourism vs. Phenomenology
The metaepistemology of knowing-how
The New Theories of Moral Sentiments
Nature, nurture and liberal values
Andy Clark – “Do Thrifty Brains Make Better Minds?”
The neuroscience of happiness
Patricia Churchland
Enaction and Dance
