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The Evolution of the Extended Order
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11183 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1986 |
10,382 Words |
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Gerard Radnitzky
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At all levels practical problems include knowledge problems. A theory of action can succeed in analyzing social organization only if it is embedded in an adequate epistemological framework, i.e., a theory about the generation, improvement, and transmission of knowledge. At the same time, epistemology and the methodology of research can profit from applying the "economic" approach, since solving knowledge problems involves action. Unlimited competition--i.e., criticism--in the world of ideas, in scientific research as well as in critical thinking in general, is the intellectual counterpart to the market order (W. W. Bartley, III). Dogmatizing, i.e., the protection of certain ideas from critical examination, is the intellectual counterpart of economic protectionism, which is an attempt to impair or even to eliminate the selection mechanisms. In an important sense internal criticism is relatively unproblematic. There is a good reason for it whenever one discovers a particular inconsistency in a norm-system. It may be a "practical" inconsistency, e.g., when attempting to apply the rules of the system to a particular case, one discovers that the consequences are "unacceptable." Moral and legal systems evolve through endeavors to eliminate such inconsistence. Hence, as Hayek emphasizes, the model for morals is common law, case law, and not the other way around. The problem of criticism becomes more delicate when the issue is one of external criticism, when the critic has to reply to the question whether his criticism is more than simply an objection from a different point of view. In such cases genuine value issues may have to be faced. For a critical rational discussion of the value that has been accorded priority, it is necessary that the value and the value judgments expressing it as well as the argument supposed to support them be made explicit.
Hayek's social and political philosophy posits the priority of liberty, of the autonomy of the individual. From this value standpoint, the crucial test for any system of rules is whether it maximizes an anonymous individual's chance of achieving his UNKNOWN purposes, provided only that equal freedom is conferred upon all, i.e., provided only that the individual's aims are compatible with the prevention of infringement of the protected domain of one's fellow men. The last-mentioned condition expresses the regulative principle of equal treatment of everybody. It is a principle of universalizability in the sense of a test of the self-consistency of action: a rule when applied to different instances of the same type-situation must produce the same result. Justice of individual conduct is defined negatively as the prevention of injustice; and the injustice that is to be prevented is the infringement of the protected domain of one's fellow man. It is the task of the political philosophy of classical liberalism to make explicit and to produce arguments in favor of the priority of freedom. In our century no one has undertaken this task with more success than Hayek. Before attending to Hayek's theories, I propose to use as a foil a brief outline of the routes to sociality that biological evolution has developed.
Biological Evolution Has Developed Two Routes To Sociality That Go Beyond Kin Selection And Structured Demes
In a recent study, D. T. Campbell argued convincingly that biological evolution offers but two main routes to sociality. It may happen that a species is trapped in an ecological niche wherein it is no longer possible for an isolated individual or for a single family to survive. In this case the species either solves the problem of how to develop a
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