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Darwinian paradigm, cultural evolution and human purposes: on F.A. Hayek’s evolutionary view of the market

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Abstract

The claim that the Darwinian paradigm of blind-variation-and-selective-retention can be generalized from the biological to the socio-cultural realm has often been questioned because of the critical role played by human purposeful design in the process of cultural evolution. In light of the issue of how human purposes and evolutionary forces interact in socio-economic processes the paper examines F.A. Hayek’s arguments on the “extended order” of the market (capitalism), in particular with regard to their policy implications. Its focus is on the tension that exists in Hayek’s work between a rational liberal and an agnostic evolutionary perspective. A re-construction of his arguments is suggested that allows for a reconciliation of these seemingly contradictory views.

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Notes

  1. On the relation between Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution and evolutionary epistemology see Vanberg (1994b).

  2. Campbell (1974, 1987).

  3. Responding to the more recent, and somewhat different, “defense of generalized Darwinism” by Aldrich et al. (2008), Levit et al. (2011) reject the project of generalizing Darwinism on the grounds that the abstract principles of variation, selection and retention “have not been crucial to distinguishing Darwinian from non-Darwinian approaches” in biology, and that they “do not suffice to substantiate an explanation of actual evolutionary processes,” but must be supplemented by specific hypotheses.

  4. I have addressed this issue before on several occasions (Vanberg 1994a, b, 1996, 1997, 2006).

  5. For references see Vanberg (1994a: 452).

  6. Elsewhere (Vanberg 1994a: 461) I have noted that in reading The Fatal Conceit one must keep in mind that this last book of Hayek has been heavily edited by W.W. Bartley. I should add, though, that this cautionary remark is not meant to doubt the authenticity of the principal arguments in The Fatal Conceit. Bartley’s editing appears to have affected more the wording than the essential substance of the arguments. The basic thrust of the evolutionary outlook in The Fatal Conceit is, indeed, already foreshadowed in Hayek’s “Epilogue” to Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979: 153–176). On this issue see also footnotes 23 and 27 below.

  7. Vanberg (1994a).

  8. For a more detailed discussion see Vanberg (1994b: 174ff.).

  9. As mentioned in the above introduction, this claim has been notably argued for by D.T. Campbell who insists that the “process of social evolution” is analogous to the “blind-variation-natural-selection version of biological evolution” (Campbell 1991: 92).

  10. G.M. Hodgson and T. Knudsen, the principal co-authors of a paper in “defense of generalized Darwinism” (Aldrich et al. 2008) state in their recent book Darwin’s Conjecture (2010: 48): “An enduring mischaracterization of the Darwinian account of evolution is that it is blind.”

  11. From their diagnosis that “the term blind in this context has several meanings” Hodgson and Knudsen (2010: 49) conclude: “Given these ambiguities and misunderstandings, we prefer to drop the term blind in this context. Terms such as undesigned or unforeseen are less open to misinterpretations.”—The semantic claim that the term “blind” is more open to “misperceptions” seems to me not the same as the claim that characterizing Darwinian evolution as “blind” is an “enduring mischaracterization.”

  12. For a more detailed discussion see Vanberg (2006: 201ff.).

  13. The essay was based on his presidential address before the London Economic Club in 1936 and was first published in Economica in 1937.

  14. In his Hayek on Modern Liberalism, Kukathas (1990: 13) notes that Hayek’s primary concern throughout his work has been to restate and elaborate “the normative principles which underlie the liberal ideal of a free society.”

  15. References to Hayek’s works are listed with publication year and page number(s) only.

  16. Hayek (1960: 30): “So far as possible, our aim should be to improve human institutions.”

  17. For further references see Vanberg (1994a: 454ff., 465ff.).

  18. On this issue see the papers by Stan Metcalfe and Aldrich and Young in this issue.

  19. Hayek (1979: 168): “Man has been civilized very much against his wishes. It was the price he had to pay for being able to raise a larger number of children.”

  20. The attitude of detached curiosity one finds expressed even somewhat provocatively in statements such as: “I do not claim that the results of group selection of traditions are necessarily ‘good’—any more than I claim that other things that have long survived in the course of evolution, such as cockroaches, have moral value” (1988: 27). —The “un-Hayekian” wording lets one suspect that this is an example of Bartley’s editing (see fn. 5 above).

  21. Hayek (1988: 133): “Yet, as with every other organism, the main ‘purpose’ to which man’s physical make-up as well as his traditions are adapted is to produce other human beings. … There is no real point in asking whether those of his actions which do so contribute are really ‘good’, particularly if thus it is intended to inquire whether we like the results.”

  22. Even though this line of argument has become most prominent in The Fatal Conceit it has its precursors. A lecture presented in 1979 at the Walter Eucken Institut in Freiburg Hayek (2004: 62) concluded with the statement: “Not what man understood as useful but what without his understanding was effective in increasing his numbers does in fact govern history, whether we like it or not” (my translation, V.V.).—In the “Epilogue” to his Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek (1979: 163) noted: “I have already pointed out that the pleasure which man is led to strive for is of course not the end which evolution serves …. The rules which contemporary man has learnt to obey have indeed made possible an immense proliferation of the human race. I am not so certain that his has also increased the pleasure of the several individuals.”

  23. Hayek (1973: 33): “It is the over-estimation of the powers of our reason which leads to the revolt against the submission to abstract rules. Constructivist rationalism rejects the demand for this discipline of reason.”

  24. In reference to his early contribution on the knowledge problem Hayek (1988: 88) notes: “I confess that it took me a long time from my first breakthrough in my essay on “Economics and Knowledge” … to state my theory of the dispersal of information, from which follow my conclusions about the superiority of spontaneous formations to central direction.”

  25. Hayek shifts tacitly from the first to the second version of constructivist rationalism when, after criticizing socialism for demanding “a deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority” (1988: 7), he argues: “The demands of socialism … assume that, since people had been able to generate some system of rules … they must also be able to design an even better and more gratifying system.”

  26. The discussion on nascent entrepreneurs and their training in Howard’s and Yang’s paper (in this issue) is instructive in this context.

  27. See also Hayek (1939: 8f.).—This theme is also addressed by Geoffrey Hodgson (in this issue).

  28. Hayek (1988: 75): “The process of selection that shaped customs and morality could take account of more factual circumstances than individuals could perceive, and in consequence tradition is in some respect superior to, or ‘wiser’ than, human reason.”—On the evolution of morality see Hodgson (in this issue).

  29. Hayek (1988: 8): “Although I attack the presumption of reason on the part of socialists, my argument is in no way against reason properly used …, reason that recognizes its own limitations. … Thus I wish neither to deny reason the power to improve norms and institutions.”

  30. I am using here the terminology of constitutional economics. See e.g. Vanberg (1994c: 178pp.) and passim.

  31. Stan Metcalfe (in this issue) elaborates on this theme.

  32. Hayek (1952: 160f.) alludes to the distinction that needs to be drawn here when he contrasts “two fundamentally different and irreconcilable attitudes …: on the one hand the essential humility of individualism, which … hopes to … create conditions favorable to further growth; and on the other hand, the hubris of collectivism, which aims at conscious direction of all forces of society.”

  33. The essay was based on a paper Hayek presented at the 1947 founding meeting of the Mont Pélerin Society.

  34. See also Hayek (1972 [1944]: 39, 1948c [1947]: 113, 115).

  35. As noted above, this theme plays a lesser role but is still present in Hayek’s later work, such as in his 1978 article on “Liberalism” where, under the heading “Positive tasks of liberal legislation,” he notes: “Traditional liberal doctrine … never developed a sufficiently clear program for the development of a legal framework designed to preserve an effective market order. If the free enterprise system is to work beneficially, it is … necessary that their (the laws’, V.V.) positive content be such as to make the market mechanism operate satisfactorily” (1978: 145f.).—See also e.g. Hayek (1960: 230; 1967b [1963]: 263, 1973: 74).

  36. Implicitly Hayek (1988: 32) distinguishes between government’s positive role in providing the framing conditions for a “desirable” process of cultural evolution and its “negative interference” when he argues: “Governments strong enough to protect individuals against the violence of their fellows make possible the evolution of an increasingly complex order of spontaneous and voluntary cooperation. Sooner or later, however, they tend to abuse that power.”

  37. For a more detailed discussion see Vanberg (1996, 1997).

  38. Darwin (1972 [1875]: 3f.): “Although man does not cause variability and cannot even prevent it, he can select, preserve, and accumulate the variation given to him by the hand of nature almost in any way in which he chooses. … Man may select and preserve each successive variation, with the distinct intention of improving and altering a breed, in accordance with a preconceived idea. … As the will of man thus comes into play, we can understand how it is that domesticated breeds show adaptation to his wants and pleasures.”

  39. Commons (1950: 91): “Political economy belongs to the field of artificial selection, because it deals with human purposes.”

  40. Cf. in this context the research program of evolutionary psychology that focuses on the question of what kinds of behavioral dispositions can plausibly be assumed to have evolved in the problem environment that our ancestors were exposed to for thousands of generations, living as hunters and gatherers in small bands (Cosmides and Tooby 1992: 219).—For a more detailed discussion see Vanberg (2004).

  41. It is in the spirit of this theory when Hayek (1976: 109) notes that the extended order of the market “arose through the discovery that men can live together in peace and mutually benefiting each other without agreeing on the particular aims which they severally pursue. … All that was required to bring this about was that rules be recognized which determined what belonged to each, and how such property could be transferred by consent.”

  42. Hayek (1988: 23): “Learnt moral rules, customs, progressively displaced innate responses, not because men recognized by reason that they were better but because they made possible the growth of an extended order exceeding anyone’s vision, in which more effective collaboration enabled its members, however blindly, to maintain more people and to displace other groups.”

  43. Campbell (1991) refers to the issue that is at stake here when he distinguishes “two forms of possible cultural adaptation,” namely one that “is exemplified by the cultural evolution of tools,” a form that “is characterized by the fact that individuals can generate variations on the culturally received form, and to some extent can confirm the efficacy” (ibid.: 102f.), and what he calls “type 2 cultural evolution”, which is characterized by “group-level advantage” and involves the evolution of “group attributes, ideologies, organizational traditions, etc.” (ibid.: 108).

  44. As Campbell (1991: 104f.) puts it: “For those beliefs and organizational forms that are beneficial for the group as a whole but costly for individual inclusive fitness …, there is individual-level selection pressure operating against the adaptive group selection.”

  45. As Hodgson and Knudsen (2010: 50) put it: “Sometimes, despite human intentions, some institutions will survive, while others do not. … Any outcome of artificial selection must be tested in the environment.”

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Correspondence to Viktor J. Vanberg.

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Helpful comments by Denise Dollimore and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.

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Vanberg, V.J. Darwinian paradigm, cultural evolution and human purposes: on F.A. Hayek’s evolutionary view of the market. J Evol Econ 24, 35–57 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-013-0305-9

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