'Known knowns, unknown unknowns' and all that sort of thing!

Donald Boudreaux, proprietor of the invaluable Cafe Hayek, was faced with a tricky question when a correspondent asked him for the best summary of Hayek's philosophy in the great man's own words.  After some considerable thought, I guess, his answer was some extracts from chapter 1 of the first volume of the magnificent and magisterial Law, Legislation & Liberty.  In it, Hayek points to the common fallacy(*) held by many unthinking people, and by all constructivists, that the immense organisation of societies and markets has arisen because of the power of, so to speak, uber-men who have been able to see clearly the range of influences which have brought their societies to this pitch and thus are able to redirect their societies accordingly and lift them to new levels of excellence.

Of course, it doesn't bear a moment's thought. 

No one man, or even a group of men, or even a group of men armed with the latest computers, can ever totally encompass all the factors at work in a modern society.  To give but one obvious and deadly (to constructivists' fond dreams, that is) riposte, no one can be aware of technological inventions just around the corner.  Thus, the socialists of the 1930s could not possibly have imagined, say, computers and fibre optics and the galvanising effect these have had on society.  But still, the arrogant belief persists like the religion it is.  So here, with thanks to Donald Boudreaux, I reproduce the excerpts that he chose which point up the fallacy(*), and the fallibility, of constructivists everywhere:

This ‘rationalist’ approach, however, meant in effect a relapse into earlier, anthropomorphic models of thinking.  It produced a renewed propensity to ascribe the origin of all institutions of culture to invention or design.  Morals, religion and law, language and writing, money and the market, were thought of as having been deliberately constructed by somebody, or at least as owing whatever perfection they possessed to such design.  This intentionalist or pragmatic account of history found its fullest expression in the conception of the formation of society by a social contract, first in Hobbes and then in Rousseau, who in many respects was a direct follower of Descartes [p. 10]. 

…

The fact of our irremediable ignorance of most of the particular facts which determine the processes of society is, however, the reason why most social institutions have taken the form they actually have….  [M]ost of the rules of conduct which govern our actions, and most of the institutions which arise out of this regularity, are adaptations to the impossibility of anyone taking conscious account of all the particular facts which enter into the order of society.  We shall see [in Vol. 2], in particular, that the possibility of justice rests on this necessary limitation of our factual knowledge, and that insight into the nature of justice is therefore denied to all those constructivists who habitually argue on the assumption of omniscience [p. 13]. 

…

Yet it is the utilization of much more knowledge than anyone can possess, and therefore the fact that each moves within a coherent structure most of whose determinants are unknown to him, that constitutes the distinctive feature of all advanced civilizations. 

In civilized society it is indeed not so much the greater knowledge that the individual can acquire, as the greater benefit he receives from the knowledge possessed by others, which is the cause of his ability to pursue and infinitely wider range of ends than merely the satisfaction of his most pressing physical needs [p. 14]. 

…

We shall find too that such current notions as that society ‘acts’ or that it ‘treats’, ‘rewards’, or ‘remunerates’ persons, or that it ‘values’ or ‘owns’ or ‘controls’ objects or services, or is ‘responsible for’ or ‘guilty of’ something, or that it has a ‘will’ or ‘purpose’, can be ‘just’ or ‘unjust’, or that the economy ‘distributes’ or ‘allocates’ resources, all suggest a false intentionalist or constructivist interpretation of words which might have been used without such connotation, but which almost invariably lead the user to illegitimate conclusions.  We shall see that such confusions are at the root of the basic conceptions of highly influential schools of thought which have wholly succumbed to the belief that all rules or laws must have been invented or explicitly agreed upon by somebody.  Only when it is wrongly assumed that all rules of just conduct have deliberately been made by somebody do such sophisms become plausible as that all power of making laws must be arbitrary, or that there must always exist an ultimate ‘sovereign’ source of power from which all law derives [p. 28].

…

Reason is merely a discipline, an insight into the limitations of the possibilities of successful action, which often will tell us only what not to do.  This discipline is necessary precisely because our intellect is not capable of grasping reality in all its complexity [p. 32].

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Law-Legislation-Liberty-Statement-Principles/dp/0415098688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282826964&sr=1-1

 (*) Corrected and another 100x lines to write - see comments!

 

Comments

[david morris]

Ahem

"Phallacy" ?

Shome mishtake shurely. Does La Duff know about your organic abuse ??

Kind regards

[David Duff]

Thank you, David, corrected and now I know why so many people think I'm a complete prick!

[Dom]

I thought you were making a joke! You know, Phallacy, uber-men ...

[David Duff]

Dom, you should know better than to expect that sort of subtlety here!