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Hayek, Gödel, and the Case for Methodological Dualism Ludwig M.P

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Hayek, Gödel, and the Case for Methodological Dualism Ludwig M.P This article was downloaded by: [Ludwig van den Hauwe] On: 13 January 2013, At: 09:38 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Economic Methodology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjec20 Hayek, Gödel, and the case for methodological dualism Ludwig M.P. van den Hauwe a a Avenue Van Volxem, 326 Bus 3, 1190, Brussels, Belgium Version of record first published: 28 Nov 2011. To cite this article: Ludwig M.P. van den Hauwe (2011): Hayek, Gödel, and the case for methodological dualism, Journal of Economic Methodology, 18:4, 387-407 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2011.628045 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol. 18, No. 4, December 2011, 387–407 Hayek, Go¨del, and the case for methodological dualism Ludwig M.P. van den Hauwe* Avenue Van Volxem, 326 Bus 3, 1190 Brussels, Belgium On a few occasions F.A. Hayek made reference to the famous Go¨del theorems in mathematical logic in the context of expounding his cognitive and social theory. The exact meaning of the supposed relationship between Go¨del’s theorems and the essential proposition of Hayek’s theory of mind remains subject to interpretation, however. The author of this article argues that the relationship between Hayek’s thesis that the human brain can never fully explain itself and the essential insight provided by Go¨del’s theorems in mathematical logic has the character of an analogy, or a metaphor. Furthermore the anti-mechanistic interpretation of Hayek’s theory of mind is revealed as highly questionable. Implications for the Socialist Calculation Debate are highlighted. It is in particular concluded that Hayek’s arguments for methodological dualism, when compared with those of Ludwig von Mises, actually amount to a strengthening of the case for methodological dualism. Keywords: Hayek; theory of mind; Austrian methodology; Go¨del; incompleteness theorems; methodological dualism; Socialist Calculation Debate JEL Codes: B0; B4; B53 F.A. Hayek was not only a Nobel-prize-winning economist who made important contributions to monetary, capital, and business cycle theory. Pursuing an interest he had cultivated since his student days, he also made important contributions to neural science and to the theory of mind. These can be found in his book The Sensory Order which was published in 1952, and the essentials of which were already contained in a manuscript entitled ‘Beitra¨ge zur Theorie der Entwicklung des Bewusstseins’ which Hayek wrote as a young man at the age of 21. It has been acknowledged, however, that The Sensory Order should not be considered as a mere aside, isolated from Hayek’s main preoccupations (Aimar 2008, p. 25). His work in the Austrian tradition in economics, his defense of political liberalism, and his work in theoretical psychology constitute a unified and Downloaded by [Ludwig van den Hauwe] at 09:38 13 January 2013 integrated theoretical perspective (Horwitz 2000).1 The work of the mathematical logician Kurt Go¨del, in particular his famous incompleteness theorems, will appear to some as far removed from Hayek’s main concerns in social and political theory and in the theory of mind. According to one author, however, ‘Hayek may have anticipated by a decade Go¨del’s own proof’ (Tuerck 1995, p. 287). Since claims like these are somewhat remarkable, the relationship between Hayek’s theory of mind, and to some extent also his social theory and his methodology, on the one hand, and Go¨del’s theorems, on the other, will be examined more closely in this article. *Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; ludwigvandenhauwe@ hotmail.com ISSN 1350-178X print/ISSN 1469-9427 online q 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2011.628045 http://www.tandfonline.com 388 L.M.P. van den Hauwe 1 Introduction: Tacit knowledge and mechanism A recurring theme in writings within the Austrian School of economics relates to the role and function of tacit knowledge. Practical knowledge of the kind that is relevant to the exercise of entrepreneurship is mainly tacit, inarticulable knowledge, so this argument goes. This means that the actor knows how to perform certain actions (know how), but cannot identify the elements or parts of what is being done, nor whether they are true or false (know that) (Huerta de Soto 2008, p. 20). Much of what Hayek has to say about the role and function of tacit knowledge was already implicitly contained in his The Sensory Order (Hayek [1952] 1976). The main conclusion of The Sensory Order was that ‘in discussing mental processes we will never be able to dispense with the use of mental terms, and that we shall have permanently to be content with a practical dualism’ since ‘(i)n the study of human action ( ...) our starting point will always have to be our direct knowledge of the different kinds of mental events, which to us must remain irreducible entities’ (Hayek [1952] 1976, p. 191). This conclusion was based on ‘the fact that we shall never be able to achieve more than an “explanation of the principle” by which the order of mental events is determined,’ or, stated differently, on the demonstrable limitations of the powers of our own mind fully to comprehend itself. Hayek’s conclusion thus was that ‘to us mind must remain forever a realm of its own which we can know only through directly experiencing it, but which we shall never be able fully to explain or to “reduce” to something else’ (ibid., p. 194). Despite a certain parallelism of language, Hayek’s conclusions were thus markedly different from those of Ludwig von Mises, who seems to have believed that at least the conceptual possibility of such an ultimate reduction of the mental to the physical could not be excluded. In his subsequent papers Hayek also referred on a few occasions to the contribution of Michael Polanyi, in particular his Personal Knowledge2 (Polanyi 1958). Polanyi goes so far as to assert that tacit knowledge is in fact the dominant principle of all knowledge (Polanyi 1959, pp. 24–25). Even the most highly formalized and scientific knowledge invariably follows from an intuition or an act of creation, which are simply manifestations of tacit knowledge. Both Polanyi and Hayek refer to particular limitative meta-mathematical results, in particular Go¨del’s theorems, in developing the tacit knowledge thesis.3 As will be argued in this article, however, their positions are subtly although not insignificantly different. Polanyi generally concluded that ‘(t)he proliferation of axioms discovered by Go¨del ( ...) proves that the powers of the mind exceed those of a logical inference machine ( ...)’ Downloaded by [Ludwig van den Hauwe] at 09:38 13 January 2013 (1958, p. 261) and seems to have rejected Turing’s thesis in concluding that ‘neither a machine, nor a neurological model, nor an equivalent robot, can be said to think, feel, imagine, desire, mean, believe or judge something ( ...)’ (ibid., p. 263). As will be illustrated further in this article, Hayek’s position actually departs from this view and is consistent with the thesis that it is possible to build a machine that passes the Turing test.4 In recent times the debate over the wider philosophical implications of Go¨del’s theorems has sometimes been framed in terms of ‘mechanism’ versus ‘anti-mechanism.’5 While Polanyi clearly seems to belong to the anti-mechanist camp, we should certainly guard ourselves against characterizing Hayek’s position simply as ‘mechanist’ or ‘mechanistic,’ however. The term ‘mechanism’ seems to have no uniform or fixed meaning, although it has often been regarded as a term of abuse. The role of mechanism in human cognition was much discussed in the seventeenth century, in particular by Descartes, Hobbes, and La Mettrie (Davis 2004, p. 208).6 Journal of Economic Methodology 389 In the terms that are familiar from these classical mechanist/vitalist debates, however, Hayek’s position cannot be characterized as either mechanist or vitalist. Hayek’s approach is actually more akin to that of an author like Ludwig von Bertalanffy whose contributions are cited approvingly in The Sensory Order.7 Von Bertalanffy contends that neither classical mechanism nor vitalism provides an adequate model for understanding organic phenomena, and his work in the interdisciplinary field called ‘General System Theory’ can actually be seen as an attempt to transcend the classical dichotomy between mechanism and vitalism (von Bertalanffy [1969] 2009).8 The question has been the subject of renewed interest in the context of the possibility of machine intelligence. There is every reason to believe that one of the things our brains do is to execute algorithms although it is unknown and actually subject to controversy whether that is all that they do (Davis 2004, p.
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