Beck and Hayek... yes, Hayek dude!

Philip Coates · June 13, 2010

Subject: Two Ways of Being Emotional

"On the one hand, there are Rand's abstract statements concerning the relationship of mind and emotion; on the other hand, there is the behavior of her characters, the way her characters deal with their feelings. If...you show someone being heroic by ruthlessly setting feelings aside, and if you show someone being rotten and depraved by, in effect, diving headlong into his feelings and emotions, and if that is one of your dominant methods of characterization...then..[you] have taught people: repress, repress, repress...[study]..Roark's way of responding to his own suffering, study the ruthlessness toward their own feelings and emotions exhibited by the heroes and heroine of Atlas Shrugged, and study also consistent way in which villains are characterized in terms of following their feelings. And understand the power of role models to shape beliefs." [Nathaniel Branden, "The Disowned Self"]

I don't know exactly what it's doing in a discussion of Beck and Hayek, but this is a very important point. Stoicism - noun = Indifference to pleasure or pain; impassiveness.

The ability to rise above pain or distraction and maintain one's course despite the buffets, despite the pressures is an important form of strength in real life, something worth emulating, and therefore a valid and powerful element of characterization of Roark, Dagny, and others.

There is a beautiful, moving line somewhere in Atlas, "a smile that was a victory over pain." But here is the distinction: You need to face your emotions with your eyes and your feelings wide open. Fully experience and acknowledge them and then, with difficulty sometimes, overcome them or put them in perspective.

In that sense, while it's great in portraying his strength, in real life, the reaction of a psychologically health and in tune Roark to those who don't understand or oppose or hate him or his ideas or spirit at every step of his life should not always be: "But I don't think of you."

It should be: "I've had to think of you and deal with those like you. And it has caused me great pain and frustration. But I've learned to push past that and keep my own vision sacred and uncompromised. And now I've gotten past that and can laugh at you most of the time."

The overcoming lesser things aspect is mentioned elsewhere in Rand where, with psychological insight instead of repression, she speaks of a pain that "only goes down to a certain level." She certainly doesn't deny the pain and is not advocating stoicism there.

Philip Coates · June 13, 2010

> self-denial can lead to severe psychological problems [X-ray]

I haven't read "Disowned Self", but I assume Branden discusses ways to de-repress and catalogs all the ways slicing off your emotional limbs and poking your emotional eyes out can happen: Someone who is a stoic and never finds what he loves or watches it pass in the night, in career or in romance. Someone who is a "poseur". Defense mechanisms like using humor all the time on serious matters, changing the subject. Deeply buried emotional issues that go back to events and conclusions from childhood.

Edith Packer has some good material on emotions. I probably didn't get around to reading NB because I got this from EP and some of it from Blumenthal as well.

George H. Smith · June 13, 2010

Although I don't think your use of the word "collective" is quite appropriate here, the point you are making was also made by the Scottish philosophers, such as Francis Hutcheson, Lord Kames, and Adam Smith, whom I have discussed in the "Christianity and Liberty" thread.

Imo it is because the word "collective" has this strong political/ideological connotation that you have the feeling it is not quite appropriate. Which term would you suggest instead for "collective" used by Michael? I personally have no problem calling it "collective", but to avoid possible misunderstandings, maybe we can think of another, less connotatively 'loaded' one. The only one I can think of is "group", but maybe we can find a better one.

The traditional word is "society," and I have no problem with that.

"Collective" means: "Of, relating to, characteristic of, or made by a number of people acting as a group: a collective decision" (American Heritage).

"Society" does not imply that people act as a group or reach collective decisions. Rather, it denotes "the totality of social relationships among human beings." A society can be small or large. Two or more people who engage in habitual and patterned interaction (in contrast to occasional and incidental interaction) may constitute a society.

A society is not necessarily a collective; the former is a broader, more inclusive concept than the latter.

Ghs

9thdoctor · June 13, 2010

I haven't read "Disowned Self", but I assume Branden discusses ways to de-repress

You can get it dirt-cheap from Amazon. It’s especially great, so if you’re up for taking reading recommendations from The Doctor (ever get around to Umberto Eco?), then this is it.

On Eco, here’s a bit of motivation for you, my summary of Foucault’s Pendulum contains an error, and I can’t go back and edit it now. You could point it out to me, and I’d be ever so humbled.

Michael Stuart Kelly · June 13, 2010

Although I don't think your use of the word "collective" is quite appropriate here...

George,

Believe it or not, I was once flamed in a really nasty manner by a group of Objectivist people because I contended that the human species exists. I was informed in a very dogmatic manner that only individual human beings exist.

Michael

Michael Stuart Kelly · June 13, 2010

George,

As an added thought, I adhere to a metaphysical organizational principle used by Koestler and Wilber: the holon (my link is to the Wikipedia article)

A self-contained individual is a part of a larger whole, but it also can be divided into self-contained parts. Or, from the article:

... holons exist simultaneously as self-contained wholes in relation to their sub-ordinate parts, and dependent parts when considered from the inverse direction.

Some people in our neck of the woods call this thinking collectivist, but it isn't really. Only one half of the holon can be called "collectivist."

I call it looking at how the pieces fit together in reality.

As I implied, I cannot stop being a member of the human race no matter how individualistic I try to be. But... I cannot stop being an individual no matter how "oneness" with my species I try to be.

That's a holon.

Rand called the collective part "the given," but did not distinguish much when wholes or parts were her "the given." And individualism--with respect to the individual's capacity to be the cause initiating effects--is what holistic thinkers would call a "relative degree of independence." To several Objectivists and libertarians I have discussed this with, there is no such thing as "relative degree" when discussing individualism. The holon idea takes the oomph out of this debate, at least in terms of metaphysical fundamentals.

When we get to society, this concept is really useful.

The traditional Objectivist argument is that society does not exist, only individuals exist. Yet we all grow up in a society--anyone can see that without even thinking about it--so that kind of argument doesn't get much traction outside of O-Land or L-Land. Sure, we bicker about this all the time, splitting hairs in a manner reminiscent of Clinton's, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." But this bickering has been going on ever since Rand said it and no conclusion has been presented that people agree on.

If we can't agree on it, how are we going to convince others?

I think the holon idea can set a very good context for libertarian ideas. Since malfunction of the part can kill the whole, and malfunction of the whole can kill the part, and both can be illustrated with concrete examples acting in a cause-and-effect manner, this sets a format to make some pretty good definitions--ones that can be derived from reality, not ones that try to fit reality to a principle.

Interestingly, you can run that backwards, too. When the part is healthy, it contributes to the health of the whole, and when the whole is healthy, it contributes to the health of the part.

Michael

George H. Smith · June 13, 2010

George,
As an added thought, I adhere to a metaphysical organizational principle used by Koestler and Wilber: the holon.
A self-contained individual is a part of a larger whole, but it also can be divided into self-contained parts.
Some people in our neck of the woods call this thinking collectivist, but it isn't really. Only one half of the holon can be called "collectivist."
Michael

I scanned the Wiki article and read the section on social holons.

My familiarity with holons comes from reading the detailed discussion in Koestler's book The Ghost in the Machine. Although it has been many years since I last read this book, I recall that Koestler uses the notion of holons to defend emergence theory in biology, in opposition to reductionism.

This methodological controversy pertains to levels of explanation. According to Koestler -- and, again, according to my imperfect recollection -- the highly complex holons that we find in biological entities means that their behavior cannot be fully explained by referring solely to the laws of lower-level disciplines, such as physics. (This reasoning is essential to Koestler's defense of free will.)

Whether or not all this is true, I would not apply the same reasoning to complex social phenomena. I do not subscribe to what is frequently called "social holism." Like Max Weber, Hayek, Mises, and others in their tradition, I am a methodological individualist. Social "wholes," as Hayek forcefully argues in The Counter-Revolution of Science, do not exist qua metaphysical entities; they are abstract constructs of the human mind.

Ghs

George H. Smith · June 13, 2010

Rand called the collective part "the given," but did not distinguish much when wholes or parts were her "the given." And individualism--with respect to the individual's capacity to be the cause initiating effects--is what holistic thinkers would call a "relative degree of independence." To several Objectivists and libertarians I have discussed this with, there is no such thing as "relative degree" when discussing individualism. The holon idea takes the oomph out of this debate, at least in terms of metaphysical fundamentals.
When we get to society, this concept is really useful.
The traditional Objectivist argument is that society does not exist, only individuals exist. Yet we all grow up in a society--anyone can see that without even thinking about it--so that kind of argument doesn't get much traction outside of O-Land or L-Land. Sure, we bicker about this all the time, splitting hairs in a manner reminiscent of Clinton's, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." But this bickering has been going on ever since Rand said it and no conclusion has been presented that people agree on.

This issue, which has been vigorously debated for many years by social philosophers, is far from trivial. It is fraught with moral and political implications.

You may find the following discussion of Herbert Spencer interesting, since his position seems very close to yours. (Spencer, as you probably know, was a founding father of modern sociology.) This passage is excerpted from my forthcoming book, Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, minus endnotes and formatting. I am here explaining Spencer's approach, not endorsing it. I present my own views later in the chapter on "Methodological Individualism."

Methodological individualism should not be confused with social nominalism. This latter is the doctrine that society and social phenomena exist in name only, that they are literally “fictions” (as Jeremy Bentham called them) which cannot be said to exist apart from individuals and their actions.
The difference between social nominalism and methodological individualism may be seen in the writings of Herbert Spencer, who adopted the latter view but not the former. When Spencer posed the question of whether society is “but a collective name for a number of individuals,” he answered, “no”; society is an “entity” with identifiable properties. This answer may seem surprising, for was not Spencer a methodological individualist? Yes, but this did not prevent him from maintaining that “society” is a real entity.
Spencer dismisses the view "that society is but a collective name for a number of individuals" -- in other words, that only individuals exist, while "the existence of the society is but verbal." This nominalist doctrine maintains that the members of a society are essentially identical to a lecturer's audience: an aggregate, a "certain arrangement of persons," that disappears after the lecture is over.
Spencer notes an important difference between an audience and a society. The audience is a temporary gathering of individuals who do not exhibit fixed and recurring patterns of interaction. A society, by contrast, exhibits a "permanence of relations among component parts which constitutes the individuality of a whole as distinguished from the individualities of its parts."
The relationship between society and individual human beings is like the relationship between a house and the individual stones that make it up. A house is more than a mere heap of stones randomly arranged; it consists of stones that are "connected in fixed ways." Similarly, a society is more than a heap, or aggregate, of individual human beings; it consists of individuals who exhibit a "general persistence" in their mutual relationships. This permanent element is the “trait which yields our idea of society."
Thus society is more than an aggregate of individuals; it is a system of individual relationships. Institutions are recurring and predictable patterns of interaction with definite characteristics that can be identified and studied by the sociologist, apart from their concrete manifestations in particular cases. Social institutions are “real” in the sense that they reveal themselves to human consciousness as objective features of the external world. They are discovered rather than invented; we cannot will them out of existence as we can a subjective idea that exists only in the mind. And it is this objectivity that makes an impartial science of society – i.e., sociology – possible.
Spencer, as I said, was a methodological individualist; despite his overuse (and even misuse) of the “social organism” metaphor, he repeatedly emphasized that individual human beings are the ultimate components of every social institution. But we have also seen that Spencer emphatically repudiated social nominalism in favor of realism. He regarded social phenomena as real things, because they exhibit permanent characteristics that can be studied by objective scientific procedures.
The difference between methodological individualism and social nominalism was also noted by Ludwig von Mises.
It is uncontested that in the sphere of human action social entities have real existence. Nobody ventures to deny that nations, states, municipalities, parties, religious communities, are real factors determining the course of human events. Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of such collective wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze their becoming and their disappearing, their changing structures and their operation. And it chooses the only method fitted to solve this problem satisfactorily.

Ghs

Michael Stuart Kelly · June 13, 2010

George,

I agree with you that this issue has many "moral and political implications." That is one of the reasons I believe that correct identification must precede evaluation--political or otherwise--or morality.

Here are some of the identifications I have been mulling over--ones that anyone can observe.

1. Certain kinds of holon-like social structures occur and have occurred throughout human history. To use the USA as an example, small individual communities make up larger individual ones like cities and counties, and those in turn make up larger individual ones like states, and those make up the country. Each organization has its own nature, but it also belongs to a whole in a hierarchy. This is not random, but a defined pattern throughout history. The names vary, but the holon-like nature of the hierarchy has stayed the same (although similar holons can exist side-by-side, but my point here is about the hierarchical nature inherent in each holon). At least in everything I have seen so far.

2. Society influences the individual in far deeper ways than is usually credited in Objectivist and libertarian circles. For a quick example, imagine what your own life would have been like had you grown up in a tribe in Afghanistan or in a high-level communist party family in Moscow. Would you have written your books on atheism after you grew up in Afghanistan, or would you have been a libertarian after growing up in a life of privilege in Moscow? Maybe. That is speculation. But your life and thoughts certainly would have been different--and I mean in fundamental ways, starting with the language you would speak.

Even Ayn Rand would not have been able to write Atlas Shrugged without living in the USA for years. Had she stayed in Russia, I have no doubt she would have been an author, but what her books would have been like is anybody's guess. Given her temperament, I have no doubt they would have had a strong individualistic streak and maybe a gloomy atmosphere, something like a modern Dostoevsky.

Nowadays on the Internet we are seeing the formation of social networks, and guess what? They are forming themselves in the same holon-like manner in the virtual world as people do in the physical world. And their influence on individuals is now being measured since all kinds of data are available. Here is an introduction to this kind of thinking in a TED speech by Nicholas Christakis called "The hidden influence of social networks." He concentrates more on connections, but the holon-like nature of the groups in the data he presents is there, albeit not all that obvious.

We can argue with Christakis's conclusions (and I certainly do not agree with several of his insinuations), but not with the measurements he took. There is a there there.

We have been so accustomed to imagining that the individual is separate from the collective, or that the collective is separate from the individual in such deeply argued and passionate works that it is almost strange to think that they are both part of the same reality--on a fundamental level.

One aspect of a holon is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Or as Wilber puts it, the part is more fundamental, but the whole is more significant. If the whole is destroyed, the parts qua holons are destroyed also.

In the Internet world which I am currently studying, people who get this often make a fortune. Facebook, Twitter, etc., are all founded on the idea of providing tools so that groups can form. They grant easy access to information, but they make it so that contacting "friends" or making "user groups" or setting "tags" on posts or any other number of features foster connections between people and almost shove groups into existence. These groups are essentially holons.

The repetition of these forms in human history going all the way up to the success and exponential growth of social networking on the Internet all arise from human nature on a really deep sense. It isn't just random. The data is observable, collectible and measurable. Notice in the video that the forms are never lattice-like, but agglomerations with centers and fringes--and connections between these groups.

Don't think that some of this stuff hasn't bothered me as I have been studying it, either. It does bother me. My outlook on life ever since my teens has come from an Objectivist foundation. Hell, I used to be an obnoxious Randroid. But I see what I see and I cannot not see it. So I have suspended previous evaluations in my own mind, except for obvious things that are easy to verify, until I learn more.

This means I don't claim to have super-clear thoughts on the "moral and political implications" of this stuff. But I do know that correct identification of human nature must be the foundation. I am in the identification stage.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I identify so strongly with Glenn Beck. He is a "correct identification" kind of dude (except for maybe his religion), even if it means turning his world upside down.

3. War between collectives has been a part of human history ever since the beginning. I simply cannot grok this on an individual-only level. You will find good people on both sides of any war and you will find bad people. We can say this is proof that collectivism is inherently evil, but that does little to explain why it keeps on happening.

4. I generally agree with Spencer's view from the excerpt you provided, but when he says things like "general persistence" in their mutual relationships (to quote you), as if this adhesion were steady and not growth-and-change oriented (like, for instance, being born in one society and later moving to another), he loses me.

5. Also (and this is one of the most fascinating parts for me), with the removal of physical restrictions that the Internet provides, we see these groups on many different levels, not just one, like with citizenship. In other words, the same human being can belong to many different groups, but each group cannot be understood by just studying the individual. Swarm characteristics emerge. The swarm attracts and/or repels individuals, and ultimately changes the ones who adhere in quite fundamental ways--just like the influx of a very different kind of individual, if strong enough or numerous enough, will alter the swarm.

In other words, a swarm does not just show the characteristics of an entity of sorts, it shows an organic nature (like birth, growth, death, health and illness, and even reproduction).

There's more, but that's enough for now. I'm running out of time.

Michael

Dennis Hardin · June 14, 2010

You have not understood Hayek correctly, but it would take some work to explain why. I may take a stab at this later; meanwhile, Hayek's best presentation of this subject is his classic essay Individualism: True and False .
I recommend that you read this piece before dismissing Hayek's notion of "individualism" as you have. You will not find the least hint of the claim that society "owns your life, but has the power to 'allow' you to have some limited degree of freedom if it so chooses."
Hayek's basic point is that the best social outcomes (e.g., greater productivity and wealth in a society) will be achieved when individuals are free to pursue their own goals, regardless of whether those goals are egoistic or altruistic.
This fundamental theme may be reformulated as follows: Even if you believe that you have a duty to help others, this altruistic goal can best be achieved in a free society.
Although I too would fault Hayek for not having a better moral defense of individualism, I also think that his practical defense of freedom -- to the effect that collectivism simply doesn't work, that it will not produce the outcomes that even collectivists want -- is extremely valuable. As Hayek put it in his last book, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988, p. 7):
"The dispute between the market order and socialism is no less than a matter of survival. To follow socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish the rest."
There is certainly nothing anti-Objectivist about this argument; on the contrary, Rand agreed with it wholeheartedly.
Hayek was not a moral philosopher, and he rarely delves into the field of theoretical ethics. Rather, he analyzes issues from the perspective of economics, social theory, and history.
Hayek's basic point -- to repeat -- is that to leave people free to satisfy their own desires (within the rules of justice) will produce the best social outcomes, regardless of what those desires may be. Thus even the altruist will be better off in a free society. Hayek goes to great lengths to demonstrate how those altruists who advocate socialism (or some form of collectivism) shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak, by calling for a socio-economic system that cannot possibly produce the outcomes they seek.
This is a very powerful argument for a free society. Should it be our only argument, as Hayek sometimes seems to think? No, of course not, but it is still a good argument, and we are indebted to Hayek for his thorough defense of it.
Ghs

George,

I don’t really disagree with most of what you say here. Clearly Hayek had some valuable insights. The problem was the way he went about arguing for those insights.

Chris Sciabarra has some “interesting” things to say about Hayek’s approach to social theory in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.

While exploring the differences between the two, he states:

“…[she] rejected emphatically the claims of evolutionists like Hayek, who assessed the efficiency of moral codes by their relative ability to sustain the cultures that embraced them. Cultural longevity was an insufficient standard for evaluating the morality of a given rule of conduct.” (p. 212)
“It is within the larger totality—the cultural context—that Hayek situated the mind. He maintained that the mind is inscribed in a cultural setting…The mind and culture developed concurrently…”(p. 224)
“Hayek stated, in almost Marxian fashion, that social theory must start ‘from [those] whose whole nature and character is determined by their existence in society’…” (p. 224)

Well, of course, none of this proves Hayek is a collectivist. But this sure seems like is a strange way to go about defending individualism.

Thank you for the reference to the essay by Hayek. I will try to find some time to read it and respond.

Dennis Hardin · June 15, 2010

You have not understood Hayek correctly, but it would take some work to explain why. I may take a stab at this later; meanwhile, Hayek's best presentation of this subject is his classic essay Individualism: True and False .
I recommend that you read this piece before dismissing Hayek's notion of "individualism" as you have. You will not find the least hint of the claim that society "owns your life, but has the power to 'allow' you to have some limited degree of freedom if it so chooses."
Hayek's basic point -- to repeat -- is that to leave people free to satisfy their own desires (within the rules of justice) will produce the best social outcomes, regardless of what those desires may be. Thus even the altruist will be better off in a free society. Hayek goes to great lengths to demonstrate how those altruists who advocate socialism (or some form of collectivism) shoot themselves in the foot, so to speak, by calling for a socio-economic system that cannot possibly produce the outcomes they seek.
This is a very powerful argument for a free society. Should it be our only argument, as Hayek sometimes seems to think? No, of course not, but it is still a good argument, and we are indebted to Hayek for his thorough defense of it.
Ghs

Hayek’s Individualism and Economic Order
The antirationalistic approach, which regards man not as a highly rational and intelligent but as a very irrational and fallible being, whose individual errors are corrected only in the course of a social process…is probably the most characteristic feature of English individualism….
It is merely one aspect of an even wider difference between a view which in general rates rather low the role which reason plays in human affairs…and that reason is very limited and imperfect…and a view which assumes that…everything which man achieves is the direct result of…the control of individual reason….
The endeavor to make man by the pursuit of his interests contribute as much as possible to the needs of other men leads not merely to the general principle of private property…
Any workable individualist order must be so framed not only that the relative remunerations the individual can expect from the different uses of his abilities and resources correspond to the relative utility of his efforts to others but also that these remunerations correspond to the objective results of his efforts rather than to the subjective merits….

I read the article, and my views remain unchanged. Hayek’s approach to defending freedom is inherently anti-individualistic and fundamentally collectivist.

The quotes above strike me as fundamental to an understanding of Hayek’s views as represented in this article. He starts with the premise that human reason is inherently deficient; i.e., that socialists have too high an opinion of man’s rationality. If reason were more reliable, in Hayek’s view, socialism would work just fine. So, his individualism is based on a view of man as fundamentally irrational and reason as basically defective.

Then he goes on to conclude that capitalism is better because it allows men “to contribute as much as possible to the needs of other men..”

Once again, I do not buy that Hayek is a true advocate of individualism. I don’t think individualism can be based on a view of reason as inherently inadequate. If reason is as weak as Hayek says it is, then the only valid basis for individualism—that man’s nature requires that he should use his mind for his own survival to pursue his own ends—collapses. On his view, man is inherently weak and dependent. No wonder he ends up justifying all manner of social welfare. And the fact that he justifies “freedom” on the basis of “the utility of [our] efforts to others” makes him a collectivist, because he regards the group—not the individual—as the source of moral standards.

George H. Smith · June 15, 2010

The quotes above strike me as fundamental to an understanding of Hayek’s views as represented in this article. He starts with the premise that human reason is inherently deficient; i.e., that socialists have too high an opinion of man’s rationality. If reason were more reliable, in Hayek’s view, socialism would work just fine. So, his individualism is based on a view of man as fundamentally irrational and reason as basically defective.

When Rand stressed, as she did repeatedly, that man is neither omniscient nor infallible, do you take her as saying that reason is somehow "deficient"? Of course not. Do you take her statements about the limits of reason as suggesting that man is "fundamentally irrational?" No.

Hayek is saying something quite similar. As he puts it in The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988, p. 8):

Although I attack the presumption of reason on the part of socialists, my argument is in no way directed against reason properly used. By "reason properly used" I mean reason that recognizes its own limitations and, itself taught by reason, faces the implications of the astonishing fact, revealed by economics and biology, that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive. How, after all, could I be attacking reason in a book arguing that socialism is factually and even logically untenable?

As for your claim that socialism, according to Hayek, would work "just fine" if reason were "more reliable," this is like saying that Rand would not have objected to socialism if it were based on rational egoism and didn't violate individual rights. Okay, maybe, but that's not the way things are.

Although Hayek frequently characterized himself as an anti-Rationalist, he was thinking of philosophical or Cartesian Rationalism, a school of thought that he associated with Descartes. Rand rejected this kind of Rationalism as well.

None of this committed Hayek to the position that man is "fundamentally irrational." He never believed any such thing,

As for whether Hayek believed that reason is "deficient," here we need to ask the quasi-Randian question: Deficient in what respect? I don't believe that reason enables us to predict the future, so does this mean that I think reason is "deficient"? Well, I suppose a self-proclaimed rational fortune teller might level this charge, but so what?

In his arguments about the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism, and in other arguments about the "fatal conceit" of central planning, Hayek isn't saying that reason is "unreliable," as you characterized his position. Rather, he is saying that central planning will generate unintended and unforeseen social and economic consequences with variables so complex that human reason cannot possibly predict or control them.

Hayek, in effect, is rebutting the grandiose claims of social and economic fortune tellers.

Ghs

Xray · June 15, 2010

The traditional word is "society," and I have no problem with that.
"Collective" means: "Of, relating to, characteristic of, or made by a number of people acting as a group: a collective decision" (American Heritage).
"Society" does not imply that people act as a group or reach collective decisions. Rather, it denotes "the totality of social relationships among human beings." A society can be small or large. Two or more people who engage in habitual and patterned interaction (in contrast to occasional and incidental interaction) may constitute a society.
A society is not necessarily a collective; the former is a broader, more inclusive concept than the latter.

"Society" is the term covering it best, yes.

The traditional Objectivist argument is that society does not exist, only individuals exist. Yet we all grow up in a society--anyone can see that without even thinking about it--so that kind of argument doesn't get much traction outside of O-Land or L-Land.

Where is the root of the error in their reasoning? Do they believe that just because the term society does not refer to an entity, this means society does not exist??

Chris Sciabarra has some “interesting” things to say about Hayek’s approach to social theory in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.
While exploring the differences between the two, he states:
“…[she] rejected emphatically the claims of evolutionists like Hayek, who assessed the efficiency of moral codes by their relative ability to sustain the cultures that embraced them. Cultural longevity was an insufficient standard for evaluating the morality of a given rule of conduct.” (p. 212)

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_and_Evolution.shtml
Rand’s most detailed published discussion of evolution is in her 1973 article entitled “The Missing Link,” which is reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It? Rand discusses the anti-conceptual mentality. Readers should keep in mind that Rand denies that animals think conceptually. In a passage that is somewhat hard to understand, she states:
I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between nature and man’s consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man’s consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of intelligence he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become human by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for effortless “safety” of an animal’s consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve. (Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?, p. 45.)

What is "volitional" about the development of man's consciousness? Isn't consciousness merely the result of the human brain having biologically evolved to a certain stage?

Rand almost sounds like a Creationist here (who has replaced "god" with "man").

Edited June 15, 2010 by Xray

Dennis Hardin · June 16, 2010

When Rand stressed, as she did repeatedly, that man is neither omniscient nor infallible, do you take her as saying that reason is somehow "deficient"? Of course not. Do you take her statements about the limits of reason as suggesting that man is "fundamentally irrational?" No.
Hayek is saying something quite similar. As he puts it in The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988, p. 8):
Although I attack the presumption of reason on the part of socialists, my argument is in no way directed against reason properly used. By "reason properly used" I mean reason that recognizes its own limitations and, itself taught by reason, faces the implications of the astonishing fact, revealed by economics and biology, that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive. How, after all, could I be attacking reason in a book arguing that socialism is factually and even logically untenable?
As for your claim that socialism, according to Hayek, would work "just fine" if reason were "more reliable," this is like saying that Rand would not have objected to socialism if it were based on rational egoism and didn't violate individual rights. Okay, maybe, but that's not the way things are.
Although Hayek frequently characterized himself as an anti-Rationalist, he was thinking of philosophical or Cartesian Rationalism, a school of thought that he associated with Descartes. Rand rejected this kind of Rationalism as well.
None of this committed Hayek to the position that man is "fundamentally irrational." He never believed any such thing,
As for whether Hayek believed that reason is "deficient," here we need to ask the quasi-Randian question: Deficient in what respect? I don't believe that reason enables us to predict the future, so does this mean that I think reason is "deficient"? Well, I suppose a self-proclaimed rational fortune teller might level this charge, but so what?
In his arguments about the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism, and in other arguments about the "fatal conceit" of central planning, Hayek isn't saying that reason is "unreliable," as you characterized his position. Rather, he is saying that central planning will generate unintended and unforeseen social and economic consequences with variables so complex that human reason cannot possibly predict or control them.
Hayek, in effect, is rebutting the grandiose claims of social and economic fortune tellers.
Ghs

Here, once again, are some quotes from Hayek's article:

Hayek - Individualism: True and False
P. 8-9
“…it is merely one aspect of a view which in general rates rather low the place which reason plays in human affairs, which contends that man has achieved what he has in spite of the fact that he is only partly guided by reason, and that his individual reason is very limited and imperfect…”
“The antirationalistic approach, which regards man not as a highly rational and intelligent but as a very irrational and fallible being…”
P. 12-13
“…a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it…but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid…”
“The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood…”

Your post seems to suggest that I am drawing wrong conclusions from Hayek's remarks, when all I am doing is quoting him. He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid." Earlier in the same essay he describes man as fundamentally indolent. The quote from Hayek in which he denies that he is attacking reason sounds more like tap-dancing to me. I am taking him at his word. If he did not mean to imply that man is irrational and that reason plays a minimal role in human life, he should not have repeated it over and over again. At the very least, he is guilty of an appalling lack of clarity and precision in his words. Why say that man is irrational when all you want to say is that his knowledge is necessarily limited?

I understand that Hayek was trying to differentiate his view from one which held reason to be infallible and omniscient--which he took to be the perspective of socialists--but he went much further than that. He portrays man as weak and malleable--like a clump of clay that can be molded by social institutions into a tool to serve "the need of all others" (as the last quote above suggests). Yes, he threw in a lot of interesting arguments about economic calculation being impossible in a controlled economy, and such reasoning was valid by itself. But he buried that under so much other crap about man's inherent weakness and the lofty ideals of serving the needs of others as to make his purely economic reasoning trivial by comparison.

George H. Smith · June 16, 2010

Here, once again, are some quotes from Hayek's article:
Hayek - Individualism: True and False
P. 8-9
“…it is merely one aspect of a view which in general rates rather low the place which reason plays in human affairs, which contends that man has achieved what he has in spite of the fact that he is only partly guided by reason, and that his individual reason is very limited and imperfect…”
“The antirationalistic approach, which regards man not as a highly rational and intelligent but as a very irrational and fallible being…”
P. 12-13
“…a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it…but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid…”
“The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood…”
Your post seems to suggest that I am drawing wrong conclusions from Hayek's remarks, when all I am doing is quoting him.

Yes, you are quoting Hayek, but you are quoting him selectively and then drawing conclusions from the quotations that he did endorse.

He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid."

In social affairs (including politics) humans do tend to be "very irrational" and "more often stupid." This is very different from claiming that man, according to Hayek, is "fundamentally irrational," as you claimed in an earlier post.

Hayek is not discussing how people use reason in their personal lives to further their own interests. He thinks reason is very well suited to this task, which is why he thinks people should be left free to make their own decisions, instead of having a central planner make such decisions for them. You need to keep in mind that Hayek is talking about what he sometimes called the social use of reason, i.e., reason as it pertains to designing complex institutions.

Earlier in the same essay he describes man as fundamentally indolent.

On p. 10, Hayek criticizes "misconceptions" about Adam Smith and the "bogey" of "economic man." Here Hayek is rebutting a common critique of classical free-market economists. He points out that their approach did not presuppose the unrealistic assumption that people will always behave rationally. If anything, "It would be nearer the truth to say that in their view man was by nature lazy and indolent...."

I assume this is where you got your reference to indolence (I can find no other), but Hayek goes on to say: "But even this would be unjust to the very complex and realistic view which these men took of human nature."

Unfortunately, this is fairly typical of how you are snipping passages and making them appear to mean things that Hayek did not intend. I think you are reading Hayek with certain preconceptions of what you expect to find and then fastening on certain words and passages that appear to support those preconceptions.

The quote from Hayek in which he denies that he is attacking reason sounds more like tap-dancing to me. I am taking him at his word. If he did not mean to imply that man is irrational and that reason plays a minimal role in human life, he should not have repeated it over and over again.

Again, Hayek's point is that human reason plays a minimal role in the development of complex spontaneous orders. For example, no single person or group of people designed language or the price mechanism of free markets. Hayek never denies that people use their reason, and very effectively so, to employ these spontaneous orders for their own interests. He never denies the efficacy of reason in that sense.

Thus Hayek was not tap dancing at all when he denied that he was attacking reason per se. He was merely clarifying a theme that runs throughout his writings.

None of the passages you quoted above is inconsistent with this position. When I get the time, I will see if I can comment on them in more detail.

If he did not mean to imply that man is irrational and that reason plays a minimal role in human life, he should not have repeated it over and over again. At the very least, he is guilty of an appalling lack of clarity and precision in his words. Why say that man is irrational when all you want to say is that his knowledge is necessarily limited?

Where exactly does Hayek say that man is "irrational" by nature? When we say that man is a rational animal, we mean he has the capacity to reason (Hayek agreed with this), not that he always or even mostly behaves rationally. Even Rand didn't believe the latter.

In any case, I have my own problems with the way that Hayek sometimes expresses his arguments. It's as if he chose words that he knew would annoy Randian types, including me. <_<

I prefer Mises, who often presented the same arguments as Hayek but in more "rationalistic" language. But Hayek was no more of an irrationalist than Mises was, nor was either of them a "collectivist" --even though both were utilitarians.

As I said, I will try to explain more of this later....

Ghs

George H. Smith · June 16, 2010

Some passing thoughts about the ongoing Hayek exchange....

I have had many discussions about Hayek over the years, but rarely have I found myself in the position of defending him. I am normally the person who criticizes Hayek in debates with dedicated Hayekians, especially on issues like natural rights, his sometimes inaccurate portrayals of classical liberalism, and his conception of evolutionary morality.

There is much in Hayek to criticize. Frankly, if Hayek didn't have so much to offer in social and economic theory, I probably wouldn't bother to defend him on any level, any more than I would go out of my way to defend, say, Marx against misrepresentations.

A major problem here is that Hayek came from a much different philosophical tradition than the quasi-Aristotelian tradition of Randians. Hayek was a socialist before his reading of Mises' book on socialism converted him to free-market views. And the kind of socialism that Hayek embraced exalted the ability of reason, as manifested in rational social planners, to develop and control social and economic institutions that would bring about a kind of utopia.

This background is essential to understanding Hayek's focus on the superiority of spontaneous orders over designed institutions. Although innumerable individuals use reason as these institutions develop and function, they do so in pursuit of their own interests without anyone intending or designing the overall outcome. And in the course of pursuing their own interests, they unintentionally benefit other people. Thus much of Hayek's social theory is an elaboration of Adam Smith's "invisible hand."

Invisible hand arguments were a watershed in the history of free market economics. According to the early defenders of mercantilism (and other critics of the free market), economic exchanges are a zero-sum game where one person gains at the expense of someone else. Classical liberals refuted this common view by showing how voluntary exchanges benefit all the parties concerned, and how these benefits extend to society at large.

Hence pro-market arguments were often framed in terms of the "common good." I know that some Randians have a negative reaction to this kind of terminology, but they shouldn't. After all, when Randians advocate a free society, they don't justify their position by maintaining that freedom is good only because it benefits them personally.

In IHS lectures on natural rights, which I delivered at summer seminars for over 15 years, I used to call the latter approach the "Me, George" argument for freedom, viz: "Freedom is good because it will benefit me, George." True, freedom will in fact benefit me, George, but that scarcely constitutes its philosophical justification.

Randians typically use "man qua man" arguments for freedom, and, in the final analysis, these MQM arguments amount to the claim that freedom will benefit everyone, generally considered. It is therefore an easy matter to translate traditional liberal claims about the common good (or public good), including those used by Hayek, into MQM terminology.

Ghs

Michael Stuart Kelly · June 16, 2010

He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid."
In social affairs (including politics) humans do tend to be "very irrational" and "more often stupid." This is very different from claiming that man, according to Hayek, is "fundamentally irrational," as you claimed in an earlier post.

There's a premise here I want to check.

Why is it an either-or proposition? That man is "fundamentally rational" or "fundamentally irrational"?

Isn't he both?

I see evidence of both all the time, everywhere.

If man is fundamentally one to the exclusion of the other (on a fundamental level, that is), how can there be choice? And without volition, how can there be ethics--on a fundamental level?

I believe this dichotomy is a good example of an oversimplification of a premise. It doesn't matter what you build on it, it will be flawed.

For the record, man is fundamentally a being with conceptual awareness and conceptual self-awareness. And he is also a being with a hell of a lot of fundamental prewired stuff in his mind that can be called anything but rational. And he fundamentally has volition.

Those are three fundamentals in man's nature I understand. Not one of them excludes the other.

Ironically, man has no choice over having any of these capacities. They are "the given." The fundamenal choice he can make is to engage his conceptual awareness (rational faculty) by wanting to at specific moments. Some of that rational faculty will run whether he wants it to or not, but he can use it to get a lot more done when it is engaged under conscious choice.

Michael

Brant Gaede · June 16, 2010

Man is fundamentally rational, but throw in a woman ...

--Brant

George H. Smith · June 16, 2010

He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid."
In social affairs (including politics) humans do tend to be "very irrational" and "more often stupid." This is very different from claiming that man, according to Hayek, is "fundamentally irrational," as you claimed in an earlier post.
There's a premise here I want to check.
Why is it an either-or proposition? That man is "fundamentally rational" or "fundamentally irrational"?
Isn't he both?
I see evidence of both all the time, everywhere.

Yes, human behavior is both rational and irrational.

One of Hayek's key points is that irrational behavior is frequently held in check by social institutions. If, for example, a businessperson is highly irrational, he will suffer economic consequences, and these undesirable consequences will cause him to modify his behavior.

Hence, according to Hayek, it is not as if people need to read Ayn Rand or some other philosopher in order to learn how to conduct themselves in a rational and moral manner in business transactions. Most don't learn the virtue of, say, honesty by reading a book. Instead, in a free market they learn such virtues via their interactions with other people. They learn that moral virtues are indispensable to success in their own lives.

This insight was by no means original with Hayek. It was part and parcel of the liberal tradition. As many classical liberals observed, you will often find better ethics in common laborers and merchants than you will find in highly educated intellectuals. This fact fascinated them, so they asked how this was possible. A common answer was that many of our virtues are a result of social interaction, not solitary philosophical reflections about the nature of morality.

This theme was the key to Herbert Spencer's notion of "survival of the fittest." (Spencer coined the phrase, and Darwin took it from him.) In a free society, according to Spencer, the honest and industrious will fare best, because they are the most "fit" to survive in that social environment. In contrast, in a statist society the indolent and those who manipulate the levers of power will tend to fare best.

In other words, most people will adapt to the social environment in which they find themselves in order to survive. This social feedback mechanism was what Spencer had in mind when he said, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."

Unfortunately, some Randians have a knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion that social institutions play a major role in human behavior, so they fail to take advantage of the brilliant insights of their classical liberal predecessors.

Ghs

George H. Smith · June 16, 2010

Michael,

One more point about rational and irrational behavior....

Many economists and social theorists, including Mises and Hayek at times, use "rational" in a very specific manner. They use it to designate the suitability of means to ends, regardless of what those ends may be. This way of speaking owes much to the great social theorist Max Weber.

According to this value-free usage, a bank robber is exhibiting "rational" behavior when he carefully plans his crime beforehand. And people exhibit "irrational" behavior when they call on central planners to accomplish goals that such planners cannot possibly bring about.

Many Randians get apoplectic when they encounter this usage of "rational," but that's their problem. It is a simple matter to translate the legitimate points yielded by this usage, such as those found in Misesian praxeology, into language more congenial to a Randian framework. I would even say that to ignore or dismiss valuable arguments for freedom because of disagreements over word usage is highly irrational. :rolleyes:

Ghs

Brant Gaede · June 16, 2010

Michael,
One more point about rational and irrational behavior....
Many economists and social theorists, including Mises and Hayek at times, use "rational" in a very specific manner. They use it to designate the suitability of means to ends, regardless of what those ends may be. This way of speaking owes much to the great social theorist Max Weber.
According to this value-free usage, a bank robber is exhibiting "rational" behavior when he carefully plans his crime beforehand. And people exhibit "irrational" behavior when they call on central planners to accomplish goals that such planners cannot possibly bring about.
Many Randians get apoplectic when they encounter this usage of "rational," but that's their problem. It is a simple matter to translate the legitimate points yielded by this usage, such as those found in Misesian praxeology, into language more congenial to a Randian framework. I would even say that to ignore or dismiss valuable arguments for freedom because of disagreements over word usage is highly irrational.
Ghs

They simply aren't keeping things hierarchical: that a bank robber would rationally plan out the robbery beforehand only begs the more important question of whether it is rational to rob the bank which in turn could raise other questions. If you are a freedom fighter fighting a dictatorship it might be both rational and moral to rob a bank. The people you are referring to seem to simply not want to deal with moral issues as such because they are comfortable with whatever their own at least implicit moralities are and don't want to go there, I speculate. Therefore they live and stay in utility-land and subjective economic values and the world of free pricing of goods and services for efficient production and distribution of same.

--Brant

Dennis Hardin · June 18, 2010

Here, once again, are some quotes from Hayek's article:
Hayek - Individualism: True and False
P. 8-9
“…it is merely one aspect of a view which in general rates rather low the place which reason plays in human affairs, which contends that man has achieved what he has in spite of the fact that he is only partly guided by reason, and that his individual reason is very limited and imperfect…”
“The antirationalistic approach, which regards man not as a highly rational and intelligent but as a very irrational and fallible being…”
P. 12-13
“…a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it…but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid…”
“The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood…”
Your post seems to suggest that I am drawing wrong conclusions from Hayek's remarks, when all I am doing is quoting him.
Yes, you are quoting Hayek, but you are quoting him selectively and then drawing conclusions from the quotations that he did endorse.
He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid."
In social affairs (including politics) humans do tend to be "very irrational" and "more often stupid." This is very different from claiming that man, according to Hayek, is "fundamentally irrational," as you claimed in an earlier post.
Hayek is not discussing how people use reason in their personal lives to further their own interests. He thinks reason is very well suited to this task, which is why he thinks people should be left free to make their own decisions, instead of having a central planner make such decisions for them. You need to keep in mind that Hayek is talking about what he sometimes called the social use of reason, i.e., reason as it pertains to designing complex institutions.
Unfortunately, this is fairly typical of how you are snipping passages and making them appear to mean things that Hayek did not intend. I think you are reading Hayek with certain preconceptions of what you expect to find and then fastening on certain words and passages that appear to support those preconceptions.
The quote from Hayek in which he denies that he is attacking reason sounds more like tap-dancing to me. I am taking him at his word. If he did not mean to imply that man is irrational and that reason plays a minimal role in human life, he should not have repeated it over and over again.
Again, Hayek's point is that human reason plays a minimal role in the development of complex spontaneous orders. For example, no single person or group of people designed language or the price mechanism of free markets. Hayek never denies that people use their reason, and very effectively so, to employ these spontaneous orders for their own interests. He never denies the efficacy of reason in that sense.
Thus Hayek was not tap dancing at all when he denied that he was attacking reason per se. He was merely clarifying a theme that runs throughout his writings.
None of the passages you quoted above is inconsistent with this position. When I get the time, I will see if I can comment on them in more detail.
If he did not mean to imply that man is irrational and that reason plays a minimal role in human life, he should not have repeated it over and over again. At the very least, he is guilty of an appalling lack of clarity and precision in his words. Why say that man is irrational when all you want to say is that his knowledge is necessarily limited?
Where exactly does Hayek say that man is "irrational" by nature? When we say that man is a rational animal, we mean he has the capacity to reason (Hayek agreed with this), not that he always or even mostly behaves rationally. Even Rand didn't believe the latter.
In any case, I have my own problems with the way that Hayek sometimes expresses his arguments. It's as if he chose words that he knew would annoy Randian types, including me.
I prefer Mises, who often presented the same arguments as Hayek but in more "rationalistic" language. But Hayek was no more of an irrationalist than Mises was, nor was either of them a "collectivist" --even though both were utilitarians.
As I said, I will try to explain more of this later....
Ghs

I am willing to concede that, since I have no inclination to study Hayek to the degree that you have, there may well be passages where he takes positions that are inconsistent with the above quotations. But within the context of what I have read, I think my conclusions are perfectly logical. The fault is with him, not with any effort on my part to misrepresent him by selectively quoting him. I think anyone with a limited knowledge of Hayek who read those quotations would take away the same conclusions about Hayek's view of man's fundamental nature. I do not wish to belabor the point, but I am also not about to accept the premise that I am being unfair. I'm sure you are correct when you say that there is much of value in Hayek. There is also a great deal of ghastly, disastrous philosophical nonsense. I think I will leave it at that.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Dennis Hardin

Dennis Hardin · June 18, 2010

...[M]uch of Hayek's social theory is an elaboration of Adam Smith's "invisible hand."
Invisible hand arguments were a watershed in the history of free market economics. According to the early defenders of mercantilism (and other critics of the free market), economic exchanges are a zero-sum game where one person gains at the expense of someone else. Classical liberals refuted this common view by showing how voluntary exchanges benefit all the parties concerned, and how these benefits extend to society at large.
Hence pro-market arguments were often framed in terms of the "common good." I know that some Randians have a negative reaction to this kind of terminology, but they shouldn't. After all, when Randians advocate a free society, they don't justify their position by maintaining that freedom is good only because it benefits them personally.
In IHS lectures on natural rights, which I delivered at summer seminars for over 15 years, I used to call the latter approach the "Me, George" argument for freedom, viz: "Freedom is good because it will benefit me, George." True, freedom will in fact benefit me, George, but that scarcely constitutes its philosophical justification.
Randians typically use "man qua man" arguments for freedom, and, in the final analysis, these MQM arguments amount to the claim that freedom will benefit everyone, generally considered. It is therefore an easy matter to translate traditional liberal claims about the common good (or public good), including those used by Hayek, into MQM terminology.
Ghs

I will repeat one of the Hayek quotes I referred to previously:

“The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood…”

Once again, I am willing to concede that Hayek may simply have made an unfortunate choice of phrasing here. Maybe he distanced himself from the obvious implications of this elsewhere. But saying that our goal ("chief concern") is “to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced… to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others,” is very different from saying that a particular economic system, as a matter of fact, works out to everyone’s benefit.

After all, when Randians advocate a free society, they don't justify their position by maintaining that freedom is good only because it benefits them personally.

That’s true. Instead, they show that there is no conflict between the moral (i.e., self-interest) and the practical (i.e., an outcome which, in the long term, favors everyone.) When Hayek says that our goal is to develop a system in which everyone “contributes to the needs of others,” he is elevating that end to a moral standard. On that premise, individualism is expendable at whatever point we can find a better way to achieve that goal. That’s very different from showing, theoretically, how individualism works out to the “common good.” Offering that practical defense as an argument is radically different from elevating it to our chosen goal.

If that is our goal, we will get lost in an endless debate on the practical aspects of means and ends while all other moral considerations are cast aside—which is exactly the state-of-affairs where such bone-headed “reasoning” has led us to today.

Dennis Hardin · June 18, 2010

He is the one calling man "very irrational" and at another point "more often stupid."
In social affairs (including politics) humans do tend to be "very irrational" and "more often stupid." This is very different from claiming that man, according to Hayek, is "fundamentally irrational," as you claimed in an earlier post.
There's a premise here I want to check.
Why is it an either-or proposition? That man is "fundamentally rational" or "fundamentally irrational"?
Isn't he both?
I see evidence of both all the time, everywhere.
If man is fundamentally one to the exclusion of the other (on a fundamental level, that is), how can there be choice? And without volition, how can there be ethics--on a fundamental level?
I believe this dichotomy is a good example of an oversimplification of a premise. It doesn't matter what you build on it, it will be flawed.
For the record, man is fundamentally a being with conceptual awareness and conceptual self-awareness. And he is also a being with a hell of a lot of fundamental prewired stuff in his mind that can be called anything but rational. And he fundamentally has volition.
Those are three fundamentals in man's nature I understand. Not one of them excludes the other.
Ironically, man has no choice over having any of these capacities. They are "the given." The fundamenal choice he can make is to engage his conceptual awareness (rational faculty) by wanting to at specific moments. Some of that rational faculty will run whether he wants it to or not, but he can use it to get a lot more done when it is engaged under conscious choice.
Michael

For the record, I agree with your conclusion, but not with the implication that anyone has been arguing for the view that man is "fundamentally rational." Over and over again, Hayek implies that man is "very irrational" and that reason plays a minimal role in human life. To disagree with that is not to say that he is "fundamentally rational." Man is a rational being by nature, but exercising such rationality is volitional. Each individual man must make the choice to be rational (i.e., to think) in every hour and every day of his life.

People make a similar error when they say that man is fundamentally good or fundamentally bad. He is neither. The evaluation of "good" and "bad" only applies to individual men, and it is also obviously an issue of choice.

George H. Smith · June 18, 2010

I will repeat one of the Hayek quotes I referred to previously:
“The chief concern of the great individualist writers was indeed to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced, by his own choice and from the motives which determined his ordinary conduct, to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others; and their discovery was that the system of private property did provide such inducements to a much greater extent than had yet been understood…”
Once again, I am willing to concede that Hayek may simply have made an unfortunate choice of phrasing here. Maybe he distanced himself from the obvious implications of this elsewhere. But saying that our goal ("chief concern") is “to find a set of institutions by which man could be induced… to contribute as much as possible to the need of all others,” is very different from saying that a particular economic system, as a matter of fact, works out to everyone’s benefit.

Hayek's statement, though misleading so far as it purports to describe the position of Adam Smith and other classical liberals, is obviously intended to be a reformulation of the invisible hand argument.

Hayek is basically saying that a free market system works to everyone's benefit, but he is saying more. As Adam Smith observed, when someone invests capital with the hope of making a profit, his self-interested action also benefits other people, even though that was no part of his intention.

I suppose many Randians will argue (and this seems to be your complaint) that these unintended benefits to others should not constitute part of our moral defense of free markets. Be that as it may, there was never any altruism or collectivism here. On the contrary, Adam Smith famously argued that we should should always be highly suspicious of any businessperson who claims to be acting for the public good, since he will probably be seeking special privileges from government. Smith went on to say that merchants and manufacturers do far more to promote the public good when they pursue their own interests in a free market than they could ever do intentionally.

If you read the two paragraphs by Hayek that precede the one you quoted, you will see that Hayek is attempting to summarize the views of Adam Smith. Although he doesn't do a stellar job in the quoted passage, I think the major point is clear enough, if read in context.

Ghs: After all, when Randians advocate a free society, they don't justify their position by maintaining that freedom is good only because it benefits them personally.
DH: That’s true. Instead, they show that there is no conflict between the moral (i.e., self-interest) and the practical (i.e., an outcome which, in the long term, favors everyone.)

This is a very odd distinction between the "moral" and the "practical." Since when in the Randian world do outcomes that benefit everyone constitute the "practical" aspect of self-interested actions?

When Hayek says that our goal is to develop a system in which everyone “contributes to the needs of others,” he is elevating that end to a moral standard.

A moral standard, perhaps, but not necessarily the only moral standard. Hayek, like Mises, was a utilitarian. I am not contesting that. What I am contesting is your claim that he was some kind of collectivist. He wasn't, unless we expand the meaning of "collectivist" to include everyone who disagrees with Rand's ethical egoism.

Ghs

Beck and Hayek... yes, Hayek dude!

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