1. Sensory Order and Methodological Individualism Francesco Di Iorio Southeast University (Nanjing) 1

2. As understood by Hayek, MI uses two assumptions to explain these phenomena: (i)Human actions must be explained taking into account the meanings that individuals attach to them (interpretative approach / Verstehen) (ii)Social phenomena must be (largely) explained in terms of unintended consequences of human actions (e.g. traffic jam) 2

3. MI vs HOLISM According to Hayek, since MI is based on an interpretative approach, holists and individualists disagree about the explanation of action: AUTONOMY vs HETERONOMY AUTONOMY = the causes of action must be sought inside the individuals (what matters is the meaning the individuals attach to their actions) / HETERONOMY = the causes of action must be sought outside the individual (human action must be explained in terms of social determinism) 3

4. My book investigates the concept of autonomy as understood within MI, i.e. the idea that action must be explained through the understanding of its meaning to an agent (Interpretative approach / Verstehen approach) One of the goals is to demonstrate that Hayek’s cognitive psychology includes a very original argument in favor of the interpretative approach of MI (an argument that has been rather neglected within the philosophy of the social sciences) Hayek’s reflections on the concept of autonomy are less well known, but they are remarkable 4

5. “How Consciousness Develops” (1920s) / The Sensory Order (1952) Hayek develops one of the earliest connectionist theories of mind (proto-connectionism) He used refined arguments regarding the complexity of mind to develop a very original critique of the doctrine of heteronomy defended by holism Among the great theorists of methodological individualism, Hayek is the only one who attempted to undermine the holistic concept of heteronomy by using the idea that the mind is a complex, self-organizing system – a system that, because of its functioning logic, is endowed with autonomy 5

6. The purpose of my book is not simply to analyze Hayek’s theory of action: its further goal is to use Hayek as a starting point to defend the autonomy of the actor from a more general perspective To do so, Hayek’s analysis of action is compared with the reflections of other scholars who have defended human autonomy to counter the paradigms of heteronomy. These include philosophers (phenomenologists such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty / epistemologists such as Popper and Hempel), cognitive scientists (such as Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela), Weberian sociologists such (as Boudon and Crozier), economists (such as Ludwig Lachmann and Mises). 6

7. Chapter 2: Hayek and Gadamer Chapter 3: Hayek and Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology (Husserl) Like Hayek, Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty are supportive of Verstehen and Autonomy 7

8. Hayek and Gadamer Gadamer Hermeneutics (Hermes) Austrian hermenuticians (e.g. Lavoie, Lachmann, Boettke) Hayek and Gadamer’s philosophical views on knowledge were identical (all is interpretation) 8

9. All is interpretation because of 2 reasons: (i) knowledge is dependent on a selective standpoint (what Gadamer called a “horizon”) As a consequence, a fact cannot be known in itself (i.e. as an essence): we can only know some specific aspects of it (among infinite others) E.g. historical facts are built selectively on the basis of the historian's values and interests Historians’ values and interests enable him/her to select an object of study among infinite others (we can study the Middle Ages from infinite standpoints: food, politics, love, architecture, art, a specific individual personal life…) 9

10. (ii) Any viewpoint (any horizon) is always shifting because it is temporally conditioned: it is the product of history and changes over time This depends on two reasons: (A) Knowledge (including science) is based on metaphysical (non-scientific) shifting a priori categories : like values and interests (these a priori are influenced by the historical and circumstantial context: e.g. feminism and history) (B) The interpretation of the world also depends on empirical (or scientific) concepts that are fallible in Popper’s sense 10

11. Hayek and Gadamer: all is interpretation and all interpretations are historical This is because our interpretative standpoint is the product of a specific history (both the non empirical a priori categories and the scientific categories are historical) History and knowledge are the same thing in a sense 11

12. According Gadamer and Hayek, the interpretative dimension is first and foremost a feature of perceptive knowledge The interpretative skills that build the sensory order are largely tacit (in the sense that they cannot be fully articulated linguistically) Perceptive knowledge is historical: e.g. the way our minds build colors depends on history – on the biological history of our species (flies see colors in a different way than we do). TSO is built selectively: e.g. the existence of ultrasound – a sound that dogs, for example, can hear but humans cannot – demonstrates the selectivity and interpretative nature of the phenomenal world 12

13. To interpret the world mind uses both biological and cultural categories (which are both historical) Hayek: “Every sensation must … be regarded as an interpretation of an event in the light of the past experience of the individual or the species” Hayek and Gadamer agreed that sensory knowledge is created by the memory; moreover, it affects memory and partly changes it on the basis of a loop-back mechanism. Hayek: the sensory order “is not a stable, but a variable order” 13

14. Sensory Order and Subjective Theory of Value Since the individual presuppositions of knowledge are historical and not stable (our horizon is continuously shifting), and since different individual histories are not identical, every consciousness is endowed with characteristics that are partly unique. Hayek: a complete and specular correspondence of the interpretative sensory presuppositions would be impossible; it “would presuppose not only an identical history of the different individuals but also complete identity of their anatomical structure” Hayek: the mere fact that, for each individual, mental categories “will be subject to constant changes practically precludes the possibility that at any moment” the sensory orders “of two individuals should be completely identical” 14

15. Cubeddu: this view matches the assumptions of Austrian marginalism, i.e. the subjectivism of values Hayek defended the subjectivism of values from a neurophysiological viewpoint, for two reasons First, Hayek’s cognitive psychology supported the epistemological presupposition of marginalist economics that value is not an objective feature of things, but a mental construct Second, it explained its individual variability. It clarified why value-choice is based, as the marginalists maintain, on interpretative presuppositions that change with the individual. 15

16. Sensory Order and Distributed Knowledge Understanding Hayek’s theory of the variability of the sensory horizon clarifies his idea that knowledge is socially distributed Hayek contended that the information linked to “circumstances of the fleeting moment” and known to different individuals cannot be centralized The dispersion of knowledge in society depends not only on the continuous and unpredictable change in the situations in which human action takes place, but also depends on another relevant factor: each temporary circumstance is interpreted by the individual who knows it – it is interpreted in the light of a horizon (i.e. of a standpoint) that is unique and in turn variable. 16

17. Consequently, the information that cannot be centralized or catalogued is not relative to a pre-given environment, but is related to a hermeneutical dimension. The social distribution of knowledge depends on two inextricably linked factors: (i)the existence of circumstantial knowledge tied to the fleeting moment; (i)and (ii) the difference and variability of the mental presuppositions on which the interpretation of circumstantial knowledge is based The distribution of knowledge is created by both the change of local circumstances and the change of the interpretative presuppositions of knowledge The change in the interpretative presuppositions of knowledge is connected to the continuous and unpredictable change of the circumstances: because of the interaction between memory and experience, the continuous change in the circumstances affects mental categories 17

18. Sensory Order and Autonomy Gadamer and Hayek also agreed that, since the human being is an interpreter, he/she is hermeneutically free; that is, autonomous from his or her environment Unlike Gadamer, Hayek did not defend AUTONOMY only from a philosophical standpoint. Rather, he went beyond hermeneutics and did something original: he combined the concept of the individual as a free being because he or she is an interpreter with a theory of mind expressed in terms of a complex self-organizing system 18

19. Hayek’s standpoint can be clarified using the words of the advocates of enactivism (enactivism criticizes the mind- computer analogy and merges connectionism and phenomenology/hermeneutics) Varela: since a logical machine functioning as a computer does adapt itself to “a picture of the relevant surroundings”, the cause of its behavior is outside of it. It works according to a principle that can be called “allonomy or external law”. Varela: the mind is, by contrast, an interpretative apparatus; autonomy “means, literally, self-law”. It is the reverse of control, predetermination, mechanical adaptation, programming and instruction. Rather, it connotes “generation, internal regulation, assertion of one’s own identity: definition from inside” Varela / Maturana / Thompson: Consequently, the cause of the behavior of a system endowed with autonomy is inside it. It depends on its interpretative skills 19

20. The Hayekian mind does not work as a compute does One of the reasons is that it is not endowed with a central processing unit (CPU) – a unit that directs and controls all mental components according to the explicit rules of a program According to Hayek, the mind is made up of billions of components – neurons – whose activity is not pre-programmed but self-determined. The neurons do not follow specific instructions, but work in a sense in an independent manner. They build up the perceptive categorizations by connecting spontaneously to each other. They create complex chains of impulses that correspond to the different kinds of “patterns” humans are able to recognize. This self-organized cooperation between neurons is made possible because their activity is governed by general and abstract rules. A general cooperation spontaneously emerge 20

21. Hayek uses the idea that mind is both an interpretative device and a self-organizing complex system to criticize heterenomy In TSO Hayek criticize behaviorism The original version of behaviorism assumes that action is explainable on the basis of a monocausal schema: it presupposes a single stimulus, meant as a neutral datum, triggering a specific and forecastable effect. The idea of the perfect predictability of action is incompatible with the self-organizing mind Hayek criticized this idea for three reasons: 21

22. (i) The first is that perception never depends on a single stimulus, but is always linked to groups of stimuli (ii) The second reason is that the use of monocausal schema of explanation is incompatible with the logic of self-organization. Since the activity of every component is self-determined and a global cooperation emerges spontaneously, perception is a function of what the different components of the system do. It is not the product of a single cause, but rather a global, distributed effect. To this it must be added that within the nervous system there is a continual interaction between the local and the global ---by virtue of a circular causality, the whole influences the parts and vice versa. Moreover, the mind is also characterized by an interaction between several sub-systems and the whole 22

23. (iii) The third reason Hayek provided against the deterministic schema posited by behaviorism was that the human mind is a very open system. Action depends on interpretation, and interpretation is temporally conditioned. The way in which humans interpret the world is not based on static presuppositions, but on dynamic ones The mind is an open system precisely because its interpretative categories are constantly influenced and modified by “perturbations” coming from outside. This makes prediction problematic. 23

24. Perfect and detailed scientific previsions are impossible for very open systems such as human mind. They are possible for closed systems because they require a strict application of the ceteris paribus clause ("all or other things being equal or held constant") Perfect predictions are based on the assumption that all the border conditions are stable Any prediction is based on the application of the ceteris paribus clause 24

25. Consider an explanation / prediction based on the law the passage from autarkic production to the division of labor is accompanied by a growth in productivity. This law is valid ceteris paribus. When we apply this law we assume that the system is a closed system (boarder conditions are assumed to be stable) The low is not valid in the sense that the growth of productivity will be entailed unconditionally by the introduction of the division of labor. Imagine, for example, that the inhabitants of a remote part of the earth who live in an autarkical way learn that the division of labor increases physical production. Imagine also that it is decided to introduce a system of the division of labor and together they create a set of rules and institutions, to fulfill this aim. This does not mean that 30 or 40 years later their society will necessarily be – in the sense of unconditionally – richer than before. We can imagine many variations of the border conditions which could impede that. We can imagine, for example, that a war reduces the productivity of the society significantly. We can even imagine that a virus or a meteorite wipes them off the face of the earth. 25

26. In the case of the mind, it is impossible to assume the system as closed because there is a continuous and unpredictable change in the initial conditions of the explanation The openness of the system depends both on the influences deriving from the outside, which affect the mental categories, and on the operative independence of the neurons, which modify their state autonomously and constantly Mind behavior is indeterministic – in the sense of being unpredictable in detail (we can only predict some very general patterns) The system is affected by the continuous and unpredictable change in the initial conditions of the explanation – a change that makes a strict application of the ceteris paribus clause impossible There are similarities between Hayek’s explanation of market in terms of spontaneous order and his explanation of mind 26

27. An explanation Hayek did proffer argued that complexity depends on a high number of variables that determine the behavior of certain systems (see Hayek 1967). This definition neglects to take into account a crucial point stressed by Hayek himself to criticize both behaviorism and the planned economy The problem of the constant and unpredictable change of the initial conditions of the explanation that lies at the core of the theory of complex systems, i.e. the problem of the extreme openness of these systems The point is that even systems made up of a large number of variables can be perfectly predictable. 27

28. Similar arguments concerning the interpretative nature of cognition and the complexity of mind, which Hayek developed against materialistic psychologies, can also be used to undermine the socio-cultural determinism of sociological holism Socio-cultural determinism can be criticized by using the idea that the mind is a self-organizing system Hayek and Merleau-Ponty agreed about this point The Sensory Order (1952/20s) = The Structure of Behaviour (1942) 28

29. Holism considers certain aspects of consciousness – those aspects that can be related to collective beliefs (for example, shared ethical standpoints) – as mere epiphenomena of an external reality (e.g. the economic structure, the socio-cultural system) HOLISM is a sociological variant of behaviorism If the mind is both an interpretative device (which build selectively the world in the light of a shifting horizon) and a complex self-organizing system that cannot be explained in deterministic terms, holism is mistaken Hayek: my explanation of mind “is … of the greatest importance for all the disciplines which aim at an understanding and interpretation of human action” 29

30. In TSO Hayek criticized Marxist sociology of knowledge (which is a form of holism: it explains collective beliefs in terms of economic determinism) Hayek: if my conception of mind is correct, it would appear that the whole aim of Marxist sociology of knowledge is “fundamentally misconceived” Marxist sociology of knowledge, Hayek wrote, “aims at precisely” that kind of heteronomous and mechanical “explanation of mental phenomena … which we have tried to show to be impossible” This kind of criticism can be levelled also agaisnt the cultural variant of Holism (e.g. Durkheim’s socio-cultural determinism). 30

31. Hayek’s analysis of the sensory order implies a defense of what he calls “a ‘verstehende’ psychology” (such a psychology assumes that it is necessary to “understand” the meaning attached to human action) This meaning cannot be determined be the environment: “to us a particular human action can ever be recognizable as the necessary result of a particular set of … circumstances” Hayek: my theory of mind undermines “the belief that we can … possess some … knowledge about how [human beliefs are] conditioned and determined” 31