Reason, institutions and evolution.

The statement that institutions define different kinds of rationalities is a mislead conception of the evolutionary interaction between mind and its environment. Rationality is only of one type: the adjustment of means to ends. Although this instrumental notion of reason has its failures, is better than any paralogism. What institutions really do is to condition rational agent’s decisions to follow a certain pattern in order to maximize the utility of his resources. The result of this conditioning is a rational action according to the limitations imposed by institutions. Nevertheless, reason is always only one –what change are the different outcomes of its application in different environments. What evolve are the institutional frame and, specially, an important part of it: the strategies for adaptation to the environment. At this point, we need to feed the Hayekian social thought on game theory.

Feedforward Systems

As Hayek stated in “Law, Legislation and Liberty” that society works as a negative feedback system, we can say that individuals and groups act as if they were feed-forward systems. At least, that is what we can conclude from reading Hayek´s essay “Economics and Knowledge”.

Feedback Systems

Adolph Löwe pointed out that Hayek thought of the capitalistic economy as a negative feedback system, while J. M. Keynes and he saw it as a positive one. Institutions were at the core of the problem: For Löwe, property rights were the source of the anarchy of production. On the other hand, Hayek stated the legal systems based on them made the economy stable.

Post Rationalism

We can define Hayek's thought as some kind of post-rationalistic philosophy.

Blind Machine

We can picture the Hayek’s spontaneous order as a blind machine, which provides the subjects involved in it with a perception device. In this sense, Hayek social theory is similar to Deleuze’s explanation of Foulcault’s diagram. Notwithstanding, the origin of this coincidence is their empiricist common root.

Subjectivity

Hayek opened his Sensory Order by inquiring: “What is mind?”. He could also have given this first chapter the title: “What is subjectivity?” –after all, he was an empiricist.-

Roots

The rules of perception issue belongs to the Hume’s legacy to Hayek – also to Burke’s and Kant’s. In this sense, the Hayekian social theory is closely related to an aesthetical subject.
Nevertheless, the roots of the Hayekian thought are not to be traced back to the major modern philosophy. Despite the different countries he lived in, the waving course of his years, his frantic movements from one field of study to another, Hayek remained loyal to his master’s teaching, the haunting ideas which introduced him to the matters of biology, psychology, and disperse knowledge, those of Ernst Mach.

Rules of Perception

The central issue of the philosophy of F.A. Hayek is the question of the rules of perception, even more important to his work than the most interesting Hayekian problem: the concept of spontaneous order. Once the former has been examined in detail -some kind of critique of judgment-, the latter will become clearer.