My subject draws from work in progress.
It is broad and my presentation sets a very wide perspective.
Its title, Reflecting Upon Knowledge, as the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett tells us,
as far as we can tell, man is the only species with the capacity to think about what he is thinking.
The only species to draw values.
My purpose is to show how Hayek's early and highly original work as a research student in psychology in the 1920s
shaped his method for what was to follow a social theory that has considered the nature of originality.
and perhaps I can start with Peter Ustinov and the school report which
stated that he shows greater originality which must be originality is often not
Original ideas by definition they simply emerge in practical terms there is an
infinite regress which is the relevance of my first two citations here the
first from Karl Popper and John Eccles observations themselves would not even
exist if there was no previous knowledge which they could modify and from
From Hayek, we must be able to find all that we can understand in our own mind.
We can understand only what is already familiar.
We can act confidently only when we can take our bearings, when we have a firm touch upon
our base, and this applies as much to oneself in a physical world as to the social interaction
between Individuals, which is the relevant of the third citation also from Hayek.
We all constantly act on the assumption that we can interpret other people's action on
the analogy of our own mind.
We use analogy to understand the behavior of others.
We assume that others are a lot like ourself.
But the use of analogy and metaphor is much broader.
Here I present Jonathan Miller, who draws upon broad experience.
As art historian, comic actor, comedy writer, film director, gallery curator, historian of science, lecturer,
The
Neuropsychologist
Opera Director
Painter
Physician
Sculptor
Television Presenter and Producer
Theater Director and
Historian
I don't know what he did in the afternoons
Here he points to suggested metaphors which he describes as quote the most impressive
evolution provides the most general of metaphors, and arguably it is the biggest idea there is.
to his work as a physician, the pump and the gun turret giving insight into the function
of the heart and muscle movements respectively.
Evolution provides the most general of metaphors and arguably it is the biggest idea there
is.
I give you Richard Dawkins, professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford
University, who asks, if superior creatures from space ever visit Earth, the first question they
will ask in order to assess the level of our civilization is, have they discovered evolution
yet? John Eccles received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1963 for his work on nerve cells,
describes evolution as one of the greatest conceptual achievements of man and Daniel C.
Henry Dennett, Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, the best idea anyone has ever had.
Evolution is the idea that entities adapt to other entities, leaving themselves better placed, more comfortable and more durable.
Henry Plotkin, Professor of Psychobiology at the University College London.
He argues for an alternative to evolution as a descriptive label.
Namely what he calls, quote, universal adaptationism.
This, he argues, better conveys the idea that everything becomes adjusted to everything else
It is clear that everything becomes adjusted to everything else and avoids the Victorian connotation of evolution as advancement.
Universal adaptationism has the neutral connotation of constant readjustment and Plotkin argues that any end-directive adaptive action constitutes understanding, knowledge in the broadest sense.
Plotkin argues that all adaptations are knowledge, the fleshy water conserving cactus stem constitutes a form of knowledge of the scarcity of water in a world of the cactus.
Lacking a brain of any kind, the cactus has its knowledge built upon a less complex structure of genes and development.
Plotkin's terminology is that a primary heuristic instinct handles events that are repeated within the generational dead time.
The generational dead time is the period between conception and reproduction, between receiving and passing a genetic code.
We are programmed to survive.
The secondary heuristic, intelligence, deals with problems of an unfamiliar future.
Intelligence tracks events that are too rapid for the primary heuristic.
And the tertiary heuristic is the guidance we receive from a cultural inheritance.
Now it seemed to me that Plotkin's characterization parallels that made in the opening chapter of Hayek's Fatal Conceit.
The chapter title is Between Instinct and Reason.
And between instinct and reason is located the received wisdom of custom and practice as it's handed down.
as it's handed down.
Of course, my particular focus is Hayek's application of universal adaptationism,
but that is a clumsy word, so I will stick to evolution.
Hayek's application of evolution to a theory of the mind and to a theory of human society.
And the two are linked.
In regard to my own energies, a paper on Hayek's sensory order was published in the journal Theory and Psychology almost five years ago.
And that has become the basis for the first new chapter of a rewrite of my book on Hayek's economics published in 1993.
And that book was published last month, and my publishers, had they been reliable, would have provided some flyers with a discount offer.
But if anybody is interested, they can let me know of their interests and I'll make sure that they receive a flyer in due course.
Hayek's Sensory Order is a seminal work, which is another word for original.
It is a work that only recently is receiving due recognition,
but which is central to understanding Hayek's work generally.
The sensory order anticipates developments in neurology, psychology and in artificial intelligence research and it is relevant to social theory.
Hayek's mind theory contrasts with that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes refuses to clutter what he assumes to be the finite capacity of his brain space.
He has a self-imposed ignorance in order that he should not overfill what he regards as the pigeon holes of his brain.
Sherlock Holmes' concept of the human mind is analogous to the memory store of digital computing.
and computing. The file space is limited.
Sherlock Holmes' theory of the mind invokes the notion of the grandmother cell.
The grandmother cell is a parody for arguments against one-to-one coding,
against the idea that a unique neuron represents a unique object,
that one's grandmother and the memory of her, rather, is stored in a single location in the brain.
That is my grandmother.
On her 18th birthday in 1899.
I don't know what she'll say to me.
Hayek's first crucial insight came in rejecting the notion of the grandmother cell.
And he writes at the beginning of the Sensory Order,
What I had from the beginning been unable to swallow
was the conception that a sensory fiber could carry or a nerve cell store
those distinctive attributes that we know mental phenomena to possess.
Even so, recent work sets a place for grandmother cells of a kind.
as a theoretical limit to what is known as sparseness.
This is the idea that at later processing stages, neurons become increasingly selective to combinations of features.
But I'm going to leave that to the psychologists.
So we might recognize two paradigms.
The Sherlock Holmes Theory of the Mind, Digital Computing, and Friedrich Hayek's Theory of the Mind, two paradigms with mutual compatibility with the former Sherlock Holmes and the Grandmother Cell as a limiting form of the latter.
So we have Hayek's mind theory, which introduced the paradigm which is known as connectionism.
And the idea is that neural connections are strengthened as they are used.
And particular connections are used with greater frequency when they serve a purpose.
in leaving an individual better placed, or more comfortable, or more durable, his survivability.
Connectionism has very wide and general application. Gerald Edelman's work on artificial intelligence is especially notable.
Gerald Edelman acknowledges Hayek's seminal thesis, as he says, the essence of his analysis still remains with us.
Missed my cue there, I apologize.
Edelman's analogy, the metaphor that he chooses to put across the idea, is that memory is more like the melting and freezing of a glacier.
Edelman's Glacier metaphor admits to no distinction between our memory of past events and our continuous mental engagement with present events.
Past events set our understanding of the present and present events alter our understanding of the past.
There is no beginning and there is no end.
And it strikes me that these features are akin to Otto Neurath's metaphor for the development of knowledge.
That it is possible to rebuild a boat whilst it is at sea.
But you can only rebuild that boat one plank at a time.
And there is no hint in regard to the origin of the boat or to its eventual configuration.
It seems to me the analogy is there.
Edelman's description of memory as a form of constructive recategorization during ongoing experience fits Friedrich Hayek's own representation of mental properties as,
as, quote, the place of an impulse in a system of relations between neurons
and Hayek's representation of the central nervous system as, quote, a process of continuous and simultaneous classification and constant reclassification.
The description that Hayek gives, a process of continuous and simultaneous classification,
parallels Edelman's description of a network that, quote,
recreates and revises past and present associations.
The implication that can be drawn from these descriptions is that whenever familiar items are revisited,
The re-presentation is never the same. A thought is always unique. It is never recalled in precisely the same way.
Hayek's Sensory Order was published in 1952 and it originates from a student manuscript,
which I understand is to be published in the next volume of the Collected Writings of Friedrich Hayek.
Hayek explains the circumstances of his work in the introduction to the sensory order.
He found himself working during a period of university shutdown during a bleak winter in the laboratory of a brain anatomist.
And he describes himself as having felt that he'd found the answer to an important problem,
but that he could not explain precisely what that problem was.
25 years later, he identified the problem in the questions,
what is mind and what determines the difference between different sensory qualities.
By Hayek's own recognition and judgment, the sensory order is at the center of his social
theory.
He regarded it as, quote, the most important thing I have yet done.
More important to be among the more important contributions to knowledge, the insights I
So it must have been extraordinarily disappointing to him, as Ralph Harris reports in writing Hayek's obituary, that Hayek should have felt that nobody understands it.
Extraordinarily disappointing to him as Ralph Harris reports in writing Hayek's obituary that Hayek should have felt that
Nobody understands it
The general relevance of the sensory order is
that in psychology and
in social theory
the same metaphor is applied in
in describing the structural processes that constitute the mental order of the mind and the social order of mankind.
And in describing the evolutionary dynamics of neurological processes, the psyche and mutual changes of all kinds, our society.
Both for an individual mind, both for an individual mind and for society, order emerges from interaction between constituent elements.
Order is, quote, determined by the regularity of the actions towards each other of the elements of a structure.
Order emerges from interaction between constituent elements.
The further relevance of the sensory order to social theory shows in Hayek's discussion of scientific method.
Method, publication in the same year as publication of The Sensory Order, The Counter-Revolution
of Science.
Hayek's discussion of scientific method points to the fact that physical science is independent
of history.
The speed of light is not contingent upon historical context.
By contrast, memory is critical to all evolutionary systems, to psychology, to social theory, to all aspects of the human condition.
History is relevant.
I collect cartoons, mostly political cartoons.
I invite their victims to sign their cartoons.
And the general positive response that I receive supports the observation
that it is better to be lampooned than to be ignored.
A good cartoon says a great deal with very little.
This is a good cartoon. It was chosen for a Royal Mail postage stamp.
The cartoonist is a man called Mel Kalman.
Doctor, do you have something for the human condition?
If only it were that simple.
I need to make a brief side comment to take note of the important differences in evolutionary time scales.
Biological evolution is protracted.
Some would argue that it's now stationary. Social evolution is rapid and this means that our deep-seated psychological dispositions are the result of natural selection against events and conditions that are long-pathed, so that our behavioral characteristics are largely atavistic.
They are a legacy of evolved traits that are no longer relevant.
This has been described, Henry Plotkin, as the thesis of ancient provenance.
We have inherited dispositions and phobias whose relevance is long gone,
not only in regard to our fear of open spaces or to dark places,
but also in our natural sense of social justice in terms of outcomes and the practicality of this notion of social justice, as Hayek argues, is limited to small groups and we are no longer actors within small groups.
As Daniel Sidenat says, we notice things that mattered most to the reproductive success of our ancestors.
In this context, Hayek notes that many of our innate psychological dispositions are incompatible with an extended socio-economic order.
And so, those innate dispositions must be constrained.
Although we still share most of the emotional traits of primitive man, he argues,
the obedience to learned rules has become necessary to restrain those natural instincts
which do not fit into the order of the open society.
In focusing upon human understanding in its psychological dimensions and in its social dimensions, Hayek's ontological presumption is that a material world exists, of which the mind is a part.
He describes three orders. There is a physical order, there is the neural order of the brain, which is part of the physical order, and there is the central order, which is the mind, our psyche, who we are.
And drawing upon analogy, I would suggest, and have suggested in the article I referred to, that these three orders might be viewed as analogous to a composer's vision, which we can categorize as the inaccessible truth, only the composer has direct contact with his vision.
Then we have the orchestra with its musical score, which are the media of communication.
And then we have the symphonic performance, which is a subjective experience unique to one listener.
And within this, the instrumental notes might be seen to parallel the individual neural engagement.
For a man, in a society, the basic questions are, how does our knowledge grow?
How do we anticipate the reactions of others?
And how do we decide upon our reaction to others?
So the answers are that we use any method, any method that conveys information.
Just like the melt and the freeze of the glacier, our minds are altered continuously by our
presence in a material world, as sensory phenomena are continuously updated as responses to sensory
Reinformation, as their usefulness is tested by experience and as neurons and the connections
become differentially strengthened through their repeated use.
But there is no asymptote of definitive knowledge.
Although we drive towards the truth, we are constrained by inherent capacities.
We have no way of knowing what it's like to be a bat.
The knowledge of every species is species specific, is relevant to its own survival
in its particular environment.
We cannot know definitively what it's like to be another person, though we have reason
to believe that introspection gives keen insights.
And we cannot know definitively how our mind functions because we have to use our mind
in order to understand our mind.
So our knowledge is necessarily speculative, partial and problematic.
Our knowledge derives from our genetic makeup, from parental guidance, from formal instruction,
from established science and from successful existence.
Human understanding is embodied in an analogous fashion by the mind serving to protect an
individual and by the social framework serving to protect individual.
The mind creates is an individual.
The social framework creates, is, culture and society.
Culture, the social framework, coordinates our decisions, inhibits our decisions and
informs our decisions.
In setting the matrices of spontaneous developments, mutual adaptations shape categorizations and
associations as they are embedded in the mind as its response to sensory stimuli and as
they are embedded in social institutions as they incorporate rules for behavior.
The mind and the social framework are self-organizing, spontaneously involving open adaptations.
A sensory experience is defined, is categorized by neurological relationships.
This is the sensory order.
An individual is defined, is identified by social relationship.
This is the social order.
Both the mind and the social framework economize upon, make best use of, incomplete information.
The mind has evolved to know what it needs to know.
So for example, eating is better than not eating.
Sleeping is better than not sleeping.
Gerald Edelman's explanation is in terms of a deep-seated neurophysiological structure,
which he calls the value system, which he argues projects over the entire cortex.
The social framework has also evolved to make effective use of the partial and dispersed
knowledge of what Hayek frequently refers to as the particular circumstances of time and place.
So we see the general theme in the parallels, in the analogous details
of the respective functions of the mind and the social framework.
So, let me ask you, which of these two citations strike you as the genuine one and which has
been fabricated on the basis of the other one?
Is it the first taken from the sensory order?
Individual neurons are merely the foci in the network of relationships and it is the
There is a multiple interplay of impulses between neurons which forms the recurrent, recognizable and familiar events of the social structure, of the structure.
Now is that from the sensory order?
Or, individuals are merely the folky in the network of relationships.
There are various attitudes of the individuals towards each other which forms the recurrent, recognisable and familiar elements of the structure.
Is that the genuine citation from the Counter-Revolution of Science? Both publications, 1952.
It is only by previous deliberate repetition that I remember that it is the second citation which is genuine.
May be the first.
I assure you one of them is changed.
Hayek's subjectivism is set firmly within this general evolutionary framework.
Understanding is determined by evolved capacities,
by knowing what it is necessary to know in order to survive, by acquiring effective knowledge and by the effective use of knowledge.
In every aspect, what a given species and a given individual of that species needs to know is unique.
There is no definitive knowledge. Moreover, particular material circumstances cannot be matched with particular patterns of behavior.
Hayek's subjectivism recognizes commonalities across individuals that provide us with a rationale for general precepts
for education and for social institutions generally.
Yet there is a uniqueness in each individual and that uniqueness delivers a critical conclusion for a system of justice.
Hayek argues there is no metaphysical self against which we can compare any actual disposition that we have.
and because of that there can be no mitigation of sentencing upon the basis
of extenuating circumstance. Not everyone is brutalized by brutal circumstances. To
admit extenuating material circumstances would, in Hayek's words, destroy the chief
Hayek's subjectivism insists that, in order to understand human behavior, we must understand what an individual thinks about objective circumstances.
Hayek's subjectivism insists that in order to understand human behavior, we must understand what an individual thinks about objective circumstances.
Hayek sets this against what can be known by the objective methods of science.
However, this does raise a problem, because when everything is mediated through a unique brain, everything must be known subjectively.
So there is a difficulty in the distinction between Hayek's an objective fact and Hayek's a subjective phenomena.
between the laws of nature, as they are generally acknowledged in any contemporary society,
and those that figure in the works of the natural scientists.
Hayek writes, if the current scientific knowledge of society which we study
study included the belief that the soil will bear no fruit till certain rites or incantations
are performed. This would be quite as important for us as any law of nature which we now believe
to be correct. But belief in certain rites or incantations does not exclude the possibility
of their Having Material Worth, Action initiated to appease a pagan deity is more likely to
be retained if it is associated with some sign that the gods are pleased, deities might
welcome gifts of fish, subjective belief, fish might enhance soil fertility, objective
in fact, or both, or neither.
The general problem is that there is no objective position.
There is no definitive scientific rigor.
Inescapable problems arise from this absence of definitive criteria for objective scientific
Rigo. Structures and events are accessed through the mind. Objective methods are
corrigible. Data are theory-laden. Theories are creations of the mind. And
there is no sharp distinction between lay and scientific explanation. But this
This is a general issue, it is not a Hayekian issue.
In regard to subjectivism, Hayek's position might be summarized in three parts.
The first is that individuals have a common mental structure.
People perceive the world and each other through sensations and concepts which are organized
in a mental structure common to all of them.
Second, social science must use introspection,
which is irrelevant to physical science.
Social science is different in that it, quote,
can explain human action in a way we cannot
with physical phenomena, with meaning
that is not applicable to physical phenomena.
And thirdly, subjective implies that a common mental structure permits differences of perspective and opinions.
Quote, knowledge and beliefs, while possessing that common structure which makes communication possible,
will yet be different and conflicting in many respects.
Scientism receives particular criticism from Hayek.
Scientism is the misguided belief that social phenomena may be accessed directly.
It is motivated, he argues, by a fear of subjective concepts.
And it succumbs to the collective prejudice of treating social phenomena
Hayek's theory of complex phenomena catches the
The dynamics of adaptive processes as they relate to the human condition, to an individual's
unique understanding and to the social order that exists between individuals.
The spontaneity of adaptive processes allows inconsistencies to be reconciled so that interaction
is coordinated in respect of the sensory impulses of the mind and of individuals in mutual engagements.
You talked about subjective versus objective fact and it seemed to be that you were talking about fuzzy borders but I wonder if you maintain the position that a fuzzy border means there's no border or just that there is a border?
The question is, is there a distinction between objective and subjective knowledge?
Is that my understanding of what you're saying, or whether the border sort of exists, but cannot be...
I guess my question concerns fact, perhaps, and I know you're using the term knowledge.
I have another collection, which is citations, and I will answer you with one that I cite often from that collection.
It's from David Henderson, who worked as an OEC economist for many years, and he talks about facts.
And the citation, more or less verbatim as I remember it, is, facts do not exist in a vacuum.
They merely embellish the assumptions that we make about reality.
So I think my answer to you is that there is no border, but the methods which we use as objective physical science are not contingent upon history.
So the change is not continuous there in our understanding. There is change, there is scientific revolution.
We have Newton for 400 years and then we have Einstein. But there is the difference that it's not contingent upon history.
whereas social and psychological development is contingent upon events in the past.
Am I picking the questionnaires?
The pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget was a contemporary of Hayek
and his developmental psychology and Hayek's projectivism seem to be elaborations on each other's ideas
and I was wondering if you could comment on the intellectual and even personal relationship between the two.
Can I comment upon the intellectual and personal relationship between Hayek and others of his contemporaries?
The answer is no.
I defer to your professionalism as a psychologist
and maybe you could inform me of one or two facts that I ought to be aware of but what seems to me to be the case I think Donald Hebb published work simultaneously with Hayek's sensory order around the time of 1950 and the question that I have unanswered in my mind is if Hayek had published in 1920 rather than in 1950 whether he would have got more due recognition
as a psychologist than he currently enjoys, which is virtually none.
The question suggests that the work of Richard Dawkins and that of Hayek overlap to some extent
and whether I'm aware of whether Richard Dawkins is alert to Hayek's existence.
Well, I do know that he is alert to Hayek's existence because I've sent him stuff.
I've had little in the way of response.
I greatly admire Dawkins' writing skills, but I find what I would describe as the arrogance of his position difficult at times.
He's not a good communicator, as Gerald was saying to me earlier, who's enjoyed a TV schedule with Richard Dawkins.
but Dawkins I haven't heard that I would not claim to know what his political
leanings are I don't know if anybody in the audience is aware of Richard Dawkins
I just wondered if Hayek's question is, if everything is an interpretation and isn't his own analysis an interpretation,
he seems to be putting it forward as the objective reality of the month. How does he deal with that?
We are always an issue. We always get involved with infinite regress whenever we talk about cause.
And we've all dealt with a child who asks, Dad, why did A happen? Well, because B happened.
And so why did B happen? Well, because C happened. And what about C? Why did C happen? Will you be quiet?
I mean, it's an obvious point, but Sir John Hicks articulated it when he says
all cause is down to an exogenous variable that we can't explain.
So all of our scientific theory of cause is founded upon the unknown.
So we always, the infinite regress is something we just have to live with.
It's the riddle of life itself, an infinite regress.
At what point did life begin?
Doctor, your explanation is beautiful and complete.
For me there's an opening there.
What about the human soul?
Is it all an interaction of neurons?
There's no objective truth.
The human mind is not capable of objective reality.
I think there's a big empty space in the highest philosophy.
You've asked me a question about the human soul.
I think that's the most difficult question that anybody could ever be asked.
But I'm currently reading Daniel C. Dennett's most recent text,
whose title escapes me, but it deals with determinism and the argument that everything ultimately must be physically determined and the title has come to me now.
It's called Freedom Evolves, that human freedom, human choice must be set in the evolutionary context as a means by which we enhance our survival propensities.
Jerry, you point out that Hayek's book is one of his most important contributions to knowledge, and yet you moan the fact that people didn't understand it.
But in his later work, it doesn't appear that he characterizes his later work with reference back to the sensory order.
In other words, he doesn't characterize it as an elaboration on or an explication of the sensory order.
I mean, is that true, and why do you think that's true?
He himself dropped the book.
I looked at that original manuscript, I've only had it for a matter of a couple of weeks, but the essence is there.
And maybe he just saw that as a one-off, and then he got on with his political theory, and then maybe in retrospect he saw the influence of the sensory order in his own writings,
without necessarily being consciously aware of that fact as he was doing it.
But it's one question to ask somebody else, why did you do that?
But sometimes when I ask that question of myself, why did I do that?
I don't have a ready answer.
So it is difficult sometimes to find a motivation in one's own actions that is not an ex-post
rationalization.
How would you compare Hayek's theory of money with more recent ones by Daniel Dennett, such as Inconscious Explained, and Stephen Anker, and Al Feinberg?
I don't think that it has the same kind of social structure in mind.
No.
Sure, sure.
Your remarks triggered in me an idea for a new research program or a new initiative.
There is this field called bioeconomics and economics biology, and there is this analogy between biology and economics.
for example, the wolf-year ratio would be equivalent to the ERE or equilibrium of what's in the media classes and the competition between firms in economics and competition between students in biology.
I'm referring to Stephen Walker's point about blocking between officers and socialists.
It seems that the new initiative would be to try to convert all those guys, because they have the ERE and the competition idea, and all they have to do is apply it to an area that they're not used to applying it to, namely economics.
But I think it will be an uphill struggle because I noticed that the sociobiologists are very quickly correct. They don't even dare call themselves sociobiologists anymore. They now call themselves evolutionary psychologists, and the fear of offending feminists. And yet they are fearing and very much undermining all the feministic views that now continue over the same, according to this biology stuff. There's great difference between them and feminists. So I wonder if you have any thoughts on that new initiative idea.
The question is focused upon bio-economics and the similarities that are being thrown up
and the fear of political correctness and so on and so forth.
Well, from Hayek, biology and social theory are dealing with complex systems and so the
same method would be relevant to complex systems wherever they're to be found.
So I wouldn't find it surprising that there are commonalities and there is a place for the exchange of ideas and to see where those commonalities can go together.
It wouldn't surprise me if Richard Dawkins, thinking to the previous question, had socialist tendencies because, as Hayek says,
and as anybody be willing to admit that Richard Dawkins is a very intelligent man and Hayek says
the thing about sociologists is they do as socialists is they do tend to be highly intelligent it says
but the the trouble with intelligent people is that they tend to overvalue intelligence
Gerald, you had a question.
I asked this question because I have not read the century order.
But, reflecting what you were saying, I was just thinking that, while I appreciate the significance of the general adaptation that was expressed by Hayek at the end of his work,
it seems to me that I see echoes here of the relationship between Hayek and Hoppe, and the Hopperian theory of philosophy of science is coming through.
I would put this to as a possible point of consideration from the point you may hear about set-referential, set-referentiality and it's this.
The very title itself, sensory order, seems to me to bear the distinction between sensation and perception on the one hand and intellection or conception on the other.
Sending you an example. Is it obviously true, I would think, that we perceive perception takes place according to the needs and desires of the receiver?
So, for example, now it's coming up for lunchtime, I'm very sensitive to the smell.
The smell of food is attraction. After I've had my lunch, the smell of food is still there, but now it's an attraction, and you have to eat and nolteate it.
Okay, so that's relevant to my own particular needs as far as I'm interested in.
If you look at conceptual math, for example, if you're a teacher and you're teaching addition to the student,
each individual student's conception is unique to that student.
If so, your teaching can say that 7 plus 5 equals 12.
Every student's understanding is that student's understanding and not another student's understanding.
But the object of their understanding, that 7 plus 5 equals 12, is identity.
It's the same truth which is apprehended.
Now to relate that then to the difference in methodology between Mises and Hayek,
When it comes down to this, the most exciting thing about Mises and indeed the Austrian School, generally, is the open and fractiology field.
That's the thing that gets me excited, right? The first 150 pages. Hey, I have to walk around on the 10th page.
I have to carry that around with a brown paper cover on it, right? That's the kind of work that is.
It's intellectually exciting, and the idea here, the core of the idea is this, right?
This subjectivity, subjectivism is that what I value is unique to me, is specific to me, that nobody can tell in advance what valuations I have or have to be done.
The market is, if you like, the emergent product of the competition and association and all of this sort of thing.
Nonetheless, there is a discernible objective structure, which is permanent and isolatable, so let man act.
As Thomas Aquinas has put it, every human being is different.
Aristotle said that whatever human beings think, they think the good.
And that, again, while the good for each individual is unique and specific,
That they seem to good, and that they must do so, and that it is inconceivable that they should do otherwise, that is the objective fact which necessarily is maintained.
So, to come to the question, how is your business?
Hell, I thought I was going to have to repeat that.
All of that being said, but not again.
I don't see in your presentation, and I'm relying on that because I don't know if it's there,
I don't see in your presentation that Hayek can accommodate what to me are those sort of things in fact.
I hope this isn't meant as a cheap shot, but seven plus three equals whatever you said it was equal to.
That is mathematics and that is not fact, that is like music, that is like a musical score.
It is an instrument by which we can understand, which we attempt to understand objective facts
and physical sciences and chemistry and so on and so forth.
The mathematics per se is not an object, it is a means of communicating about objects.
Now Hayek is strong on there being objective facts.
His ontology is the belief that there is a physical world out there, there are things out there.
But the understanding is there is never ever going to be any direct access to those objective things.
We only have the workings of the five senses and the coordination of those sensory impulses
which creates these networks of neurological connections
by which somehow, and nobody has an explanation of consciousness
and maybe consciousness and the soul go together
but we don't have the explanation of the self
But we have the ontology which says yes we believe those objects to exist and these are the problems which are thrown up when we can only access them indirectly and we can only talk about our subjective truths.
But given that we are from the same culture, we've had a similar kind of education, we talk the same language,
We're more likely to reach agreement than if we were from different cultures, or from different species, or from a different set of circumstances and environment.
That is my understanding of Hayek's position, rightly or wrongly.