My chum David Emanuel Andersson has just had this edited collection published. Here is an excerpt from his intro:
In what is perhaps the best-known article in the history of the Austrian school, Friedrich Hayek (1945) asserts that market prices distill and thus reflect the unique local knowledge of a multitude of individuals, each of whom resides and works in a particular place. Because only an autonomously acting individual can take advantage of her unique creativity, skills, and personal connections to others, centralization of economic decisionmaking guarantees that much useful local knowledge is irretrievably lost. It is impossible to communicate the totality of all local entrepreneurial ideas and tacit knowledge to a small group of top-down planners; their cognitive limitations guarantee substandard economic performance (Hayek, 1952). We should therefore not be surprised that it is valuable to possess ‘‘knowledge of people, of local conditions, and special circumstances’’ (Hayek, 1945, p. 522). Given the great number of citations to Hayek (1945) in the general economics literature, it would require no great stretch of the imagination to imagine that Hayek – and by extension the Austrian school – had set in motion a way of theorizing about economic phenomena that later gave rise to theories about knowledge spillovers, urbanization economies, and local social networks. But this was not to be. There are virtually no references to Hayek or any other Austrian economist in the spatial economics literature prior to the year 2000. The lack of interest in Austrian economics among spatial economists was reciprocated by a similar lack of interest in spatial economics among self-professed Austrians. To my knowledge, Pierre Desrochers (1998) wrote the first explicitly Austrian contribution that deals exclusively with spatial economic phenomena. In spite of this historical disconnect, Austrian ideas have entered the spatial economics, economic geography, and urban planning literatures because of the close parallels between the influential ideas of the urbanist Jane Jacobs and Austrian market process theory. While Jacobs (1961) does not refer to Hayek or any other Austrian, her Death and Life of Great American Cities at times reads like an Austrian theory of urban planning: [N]obody, including the planning commission, is capable of comprehending places within the city other than in either generalized or fragmented fashion. They do not even have the means of gathering and comprehending the intimate, many-sided information required, partly because of their own unsuitable structural inadequacies in other departments. Here is an interesting thing about coordination both of information and of action in cities, and it is the crux of the matter: The principal coordination needed comes down to coordination among different services within localized places. This is at once the most difficult kind of coordination, and the most necessary. (Jacobs, 1961, quoted in Ikeda, 2006, p. 22) With her emphases on (implicit) methodological individualism, the importance of local knowledge, and complex evolving orders, Jacobs provides a rich source of insights for those who wish to combine Austrian economic theory with a dynamic approach to agglomeration economies. Such a dynamic approach focuses on entrepreneurial processes rather than on idealized equilibrium states. Unsurprisingly, both Hayek and Jacobs figure prominently in this volume. But they are far from the only influences. This book is a collection of 13 essays that address spatial aspects of the market process from refreshingly diverse approaches. They range from the extension of Austrian theory to spatial phenomena over hybrid combinations of ideas from distinct traditions to state-of-the-art spatial models that integrate Austrian concepts such as ‘‘roundaboutness’’ or entrepreneurial innovation.
June 22, 2012
Short URL Austrian School, Friedrich Hayek, Hayek, Jane Jacobs, Social Sciences complex adaptive systems, complexity, David Emanuel Andersson, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, individualism, liberalism, philosophy of economics, philosophy of social science, social epistemology, spatial economics, spontaneous orders
The second paper co-authored with Dave Hardwick has now been published in Studies in Emergent Order:
Abstract: In a recent paper (Hardwick & Marsh, in press) we examine the recent tensions between the two broadly successful spontaneous orders, namely the Market and Science. We argued for an epistemic pluralism, the view that freedom and liberty (indeed the very concept of liberalism and civil society) exists at the nexus of a manifold of spontaneous forces, and that no single epistemic system should dominate. We also briefly introduced the concept of “iterative” knowledge to characterize the essentially dynamic nature of scientific knowledge. Herein lies a tension. The Market (and perhaps the prevailing culture at large) sees scientific knowledge in cumulative terms, that is, progressing to a conclusion in a linear fashion. This relatively static understanding of medical science as it relates to pharmaceutical studies can have a corrosive effect on the practice of medicine and ultimately, we believe, on the proper functioning of the market itself. In this paper we examine this tension in much closer detail by focusing upon the demands of the market, specifically the pharmaceutical industry, and the science upon which it is based. In other words, we expound upon a clash of epistemic value – one (science) that sees knowledge as essentially iterative (dynamic yet tentative) and the other (the Market) that harvests conclusive scientific knowledge (ostensibly as a fixed and firm commodity) functional to its own interests. Clinical Trials that are sharply focused with precisely determined deliverables often manifest this tension in the sharpest of relief. As a means of recovering drug development and testing costs, conclusive assessment is required to avoid creating serious financial problems for the companies themselves not to mention issues in the public interest.
May 24, 2012
Short URL Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, Business, Civil society, Clinical trial, Drug development, Epistemology, Free market, Knowledge, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals adam smith, collective knowledge, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, epistemology, hayek, incommensurability, individual, individualism, liberalism, libertarianism, liberty, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, political philosophy, science, social epistemology
Here’s the opening paragraph of Don Ross’ paper from Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology.
Philosophers of mind who re-visit Friedrich Hayek’s The Sensory Order almost sixty years after its publication should feel humbled, perhaps sheepish, on behalf of their discipline. The book is essentially an exercise in abstract speculative mental architecture construction, the kind of project that has dominated the philosophy of mind since it began to reflect the rise of cognitive science in classic texts such as Dennett’s Content and Consciousness (1969) and Fodor’s Language of Thought (1975). Remarkably, Hayek’s effort is less in need of revision today, despite the mountain of intervening empirical work and technical refinement, then any of these works in its most obvious comparison class that were written by philosophers.
March 8, 2012
Short URL Cognitive science, Don Ross, Friedrich Hayek, Hayek, philosophical psychology, Philosophy, Philosophy of mind cognitive science, Daniel Dennett, don ross, hayek, individualism, Jerry Fodor, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science, the sensory order
Here is a draft of my entry for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences.
December 8, 2011
Short URL Hayek, use of knowledge in society austrian economics, bounded rationality, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive ecology, cognitive science, cognitive systems, Colin McGinn, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, connectionism, cybernetics, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, Economics, Embedded, embodied cognition, embodiment, emergence, enactivism, epistemic systems, epistemology, evolutionary psychology, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism, freedom, individualism, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, self organizing systems, self-referentiality, self-synchronizing systems, situated cognition, social cognition, social connectionism, social epistemology, social networking, social ontology, social psychology, socialism, sociocognition, sociology, spontaneous order, spontaneous orders
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
September 8, 2011
Short URL behaviorism, brain, brain reading, brain science, Chiara Chelini, Chor-Yung Cheung, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, cognitive systems, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, concept of mind, connectionism, consciousness, constructivism, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, don ross, dualism, edward feser, Embedded, embodied cognition, embodiment, emergence, enaction, enactivism, epistemology, erol basar, evolutionary psychology, folk psychology, francesco varela, friedrich hayek, functionalism, Fuster, gerald edelman, ghost in the machine, Giandomenica Becchio, Gilbert Ryle, Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo, group cognition, hayek, individualism, James wible, Jan Willem Lindemans, joaquin fuster, joshua rust, knowing how knowing that, liberalism, mirror neurons, network theory, networks, neural correlates, neural networks, neurobiology, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phenomenology, philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, physicalism, Popper, quantum brain, reductionism, representationalism, self-referentiality, self-synchronizing systems, situated cognition, social cognition, social connectionism, social constructivism, social epistemology, social ontology, sociocognition, spontaneous order, stigmergic cognition, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, the sensory order, Thierry Aimar, Troy Camplin, walter weimer
Here is an excellent website I’ve come across called New Books in Philosophy. One of the people behind this enterprise is Robert Talisse whose work I know from two articles in EPISTEME. Robert interviews Sandy Goldberg about his new book.
Here’s an hour long audio discussion.
August 5, 2011
Short URL alvin goldman, cognition, collective intentionality, episteme, epistemology, evidence, extended mind, externalism, individualism, memory, new books in philosophy, philosophy of mind, Putnam, Reliabilism, relying on others, Robert B. Talisse, robert nozick, sandy goldberg, social epistemology, testimony