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The Spatial Market Process

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…

“MARGINAL MEN”: WEIMER ON HAYEK

Here is Walt Weimer’s brief but valued contribution to Hayek in Mind. Wiemer did so much to bring Hayek’s philosophical psychology to the wider world – and for that we are deeply indebted to him. It’s still really worth checking out Weimer’s work. Occasionally I am asked how I came to the work of Friedrich…

Clash of the Titans: When the Market and Science Collide

Coming soon the first of three papers I’ve co-authored with Dave Hardwick, this one due in Advances in Austrian Economics, Vol. 17 ABSTRACT Purpose/problem statement – The two most successful complex adaptive systems are the Market and Science, each with an inherent tendency toward epistemic imperialism. Of late, science, notably medical science, seems to have…

Cognitive Opening and Closing: Toward an Exploration of the Mental World of Entrepreneurship

Here is Thierry Aimar’s intro to his paper for Hayek in Mind. Contemporary analysis usually divides games of chance into three dimensions. In Machina and Schmeidler’s (1992) terms, this division can be viewed based on the example of an urn containing 90 balls of different colors, out of which an agent pulls a ball, of…

Global Brain

Programming the Global Brain Considering how we can improve our understanding and utilization of the emerging human-computer network constituting the global brain. (Here’s a previous post on this topic) Abraham Bernstein, Mark Klein, Thomas W. Malone New ways of combining networked humans and computers—whether they are called collective intelligence, social computing, or various other terms—are…

Hayek’s Post-Positivist Empiricism: Experience Beyond Sensation

The intro from Jan Willem Lindemans’ paper: The philosophical foundations of Hayek’s works are not beyond dispute (Gray, 1984, Kukathas, 1989, Caldwell, 1992, Hutchison, 1992): was Hayek a rationalist or an empiricist; did he follow Kant or Hume, Mises or Popper? Difficulties arise because these questions touch upon social theory, political philosophy, methodology and epistemology.…

Beyond Complexity: Can The Sensory Order Defend the Liberal Self?

My chum Chor-yung Cheung who like myself is both an Oakeshottian and a Hayekian introduces his paper below: Friedrich Hayek’s social philosophy is one of the most systematic and sophisticated among the contributions made by 20th-century liberal thinkers. His defense of the free market and individual freedom and his critique of collectivism of various kinds are…

A Note on the Influence of Mach’s Psychology in the Sensory Order

Here is the intro to Giandomenica Becchio’s paper: In the Preface of The Sensory Order, Hayek stated that this book was based on his readings in psychology during 1919–1920, when he was still a young student in Vienna interested in both psychology and economics. Among many others, Hayek explicitly cited Mach’s influence on him. Hayek’s contacts…

The Emergence of the Mind: Hayek’s Account of Mental Phenomena as a Product of Spontaneous Physical and Social Orders

Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo’s intro from her excellent paper. Friedrich Hayek’s social theory is well known for his articulation of the paradigm of spontaneous orders that challenges the traditional distinction between what is natural and what is artificial. The problem that Hayek saw is that language and other social objects do not fall under either…