F. A. Hayek - On Social Evolution and the Origins of Tradition - The Turney Collection
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- čas přidán 29. 10. 2011
- In this exclusive video, Nobel-laureate F. A. Hayek discusses the evolution of morality and social norms, arguing that they result from unplanned, emergent processes. He contrasts this conclusion with other philosophical accounts of law and morality.
Read more essays by and about Hayek:
www.libertarianism.org/topics...
Download an .mp3 of this lecture here: bit.ly/yy7R7X
A truly brilliant individual. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, professor Hayek.
It is beautiful and remarkable how the existing body of work in neuroscience today completely supports all of the claims he makes about the evolution of social human interaction. Remarkable man.
Marx: "Capitalism created the proletariat." To which Hayek replied, "yes, capitalism enabled those to survive who had no possessions...capitalism has given life to the proletariat."
If he knew what Marxism had done to China, he would have called Marxism as the evil cult.
xiaoyi jing
He was very critical of Marxism!
Nice Greek username.
@@1rogerrryates Any intlligent person can clearly see that dying, hungry and dissatisfied workers are much worse for someone with productive capital, then happy, creative and content ones. In this sense, capitalism is much more altruisitc than socialism.
Capitalists have a vested interest in getting the people as content as possible, in fact in a well operating market system, only those firms survive which the people "vote" with their money about to survive.
In this sense also, the means of production are more directly in the hand of the people than in a socialist system.
Read a quotation of Marx having him said: 'I am not Marxist' but don't know if this is true
The deeper you understanding of apposite matters - the more patently brilliant this lecture shines.
Hayek was way ahead of his time, and ours, although I think we are finally catching up. It was great to see Dawkins was brought up and that Hayek was well aware of the latest ideas from the evolutionary psychology camp. Authors like Matt Ridley and his great new book "The Rational Optimist" are beginning to finally grasp Hayek in all his dimensions. Hayek wasn't just an economist, he was much more than that, he tried to show how the entire world work using an evolutionary approach.
Great lecture
Hayek wasn't a liberatrian,he found liberatrianism "singularly unattractive",he wasnt a conservative either(why I am not a conservative) he was hayek,the man.
Old Whig, a rather conservative form of classical liberalism but liberal nonetheless.
Cultural evolution notes
1.Accured traits and morals from many intellectual ancestors,non biologially.
2.Cultural selection works by group selection,groups following certain laws and norms prosper without knowing why they prospered.
@hayekian
I've been thinking of that recently. Basically like looking at things through the lens of evolution since the market is an evolutionary process. I think people in libertarian and non-libertarian camps often think of things from the point of view "hey, that's not a free market so the same principles don't apply" without any reasoning on *how* it's different often don't see that economics shows us the principles of action. Humans *always* seek to optimize their situation.
@HaploidCell Well, in practice that's how it often works, especially by conservatives and religious people. I think that one of the reason we can't contemplate them is that they go unnoticed, and it doesn't help that some have put certain traditional practices on a pedestal. One noticed, however, many traditions are possible to analyze and the effects can be predicted - and at that time we can ask critical questions such as "is racism good for us" or "maybe we should let women vote"
14:25 cultural evolution and group selection.
One of the smartest guys ever.
Nevertheless, I beg to differ in his assertion that morality cannot be achieved by using reason.
In fact an expert on rational thinking will conclude that morality and being moral is adjacent to our self-interest therefore it is the only logical solution in our interaction with our environment (not only within a society).
In other words it serves US to be ethical.
You have misunderstood entirely. He hasn’t said that an individual doesn’t make a rational decision to be moral. He said that morality itself and moral rules and principles aren’t rationally constructed.
Can somebody explain his main point i this lecture. I understood parts of it but not the main idea.
There are videos of that man speaking? I will watch all of them right now!
Can anyone point me to the definitive text that prof. Hayek wrote on the subject of Scientism, or any critique of reason (misapplied)? Thanks.
Counter-Revolution of Science
An English transcript would be much appreciated I think!
cc
Does anyone know if Hayek ever published this paper? He touches on some of what he talks about here in his essay "Individualism: True and False," but only briefly.
he published couple of articles in 80s where he approached the problem. Perhaps the article derived from this lecture is this: Hayek (1983k): "The rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason", in: Absolute Values and the New cultural revolution. Commemorative volume of the 12th international conference on the unity of the sciences, Chicago 1983, S. 35-42. (List of his works: hayek.de/index.php/schriften-von-und-ueber-friedrich-a-von-hayek/37-primaertexte )
Thanks for the heads up. Might I suggest you get a hold of Karl Popper's "the open society and its enemies, Volumes I and II. Probably one of the most adept forensics of Plato I have yet read.
Hayek is such a beauty when he comments on Hume and Scottish thinkers. Such a shame that he misinterprets and caricatures Dawkins's and so-called sociobiologists' points. They never claimed to have come up with a biological reduction of human cultural evolution. Dawkins makes it quite clear in The Selfish Gene about what he refers to as "memes": the only thing genes and memes have in common is that they evolve according to their own good, regardless of their "hosts", which means they both are "replicators" in their own special way. Dawkins couldn't have made it clearer: "The gene will enter my thesis as an analogy, nothing more." (40th anniversary edition, Oxford, p. 248).
I really, really can’t understand what he says. I thought it might be the microphone on other interviews he has. But I just can’t understand what he is saying .
The paper on which this lecture is based is available here: icus.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Hayek-Frederick-A.-Plenary-Address-The-Rules-of-Morality-Are-Not-the-Conclusion-of-Our-Reason.pdf
Friedrich Hayek speaking on Nov. 22, 1983 at George Mason University.
Introduced by prof. Karen Vaughn
Maybe you'd be surprised at how common this problem is in philosophy, or worse, religious studies. I've sat through many talks from someone I was looking forward to seeing, then being disappointed by the recycled content or lack of any--like I said, his whole talk seemed like a preface.
I've watched long interviews w/ Hayek & read some of his work, he sticks to his principles and doesn't have much else to say. My understanding is seldom challenged by libertarians, but usually glibly dismissed.
Transcription needed.
+Hernan Cobo "The Fatal Conceit" one of the chapters has this ideas.
www.libertarianismo.org/livros/fahtfc.pdf
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What year was this talk given?
1983, it was on the screen right at the beginning.
I appreciate it.
Hayek was 84 then.
For Hayek, skip to 1:11. You're welcome!
what year is this?
he reminds me of Carl Jung for some reason.
"Old speaker with heavy German/Austrian dialect"
one of the best interviews, changed everything for me.
I will translate the talk to portuguese soon. If we want the transcript, I can give you.
do you have it? thank you
It doesn't preclude it, but provides a philosophy of truth that cuts off more nuanced discussions like the one I was apparently having with myself. I didn't mention enforcement; regulation has more to do with transparency and making sure "peaceful" doesn't also mean slowly killing customers or employees. Democracy is always subverted by expedient measures and lack of transparency--which is exactly what capitalism can encourage. Relationships framed in legal "self-interest" are meaningless to me.
Do you have maybe a translation in german?
@hayekian Yep. For so long, social Darwinists followed an incorrect view of social evolution, where individuals and groups were competing in a zero-sum struggle for survival. Hayek, on the other hand, understood that the market creates societies where people with conflicting interests can co-operate and develop together.
Daniel Dennett, while no libertarian, said to me that Hayek's philosophy of mind was first-rate.
Please can somebody translate it in German. His message of liberty is very important for all people in the world!
Please Please help!
"plutocratic crony capitalist friends"
Please explain how this relates to Hayek in any way. I could be wrong but didn't he have a similar idea to Tocqueville regarding the necessity of failure in capitalism to keep the movement of capital churning between economic classes. Also I believe he was one of the first people to talk about behavioral economics which is currently gaining popularity.
the sensory order was pretty good salvo against behavioural economics
I agree, but Hayek seems to imply that Dawkins has a tendency to reduce it all to biological evolution, which is not true. Dawkins gives the concept of 'memes' which are not, in a first aproximation, biological (and coincidentally, not group selection), so maybe he wasn't up to speed on that.
I have a hard time listening to a lot of these older videos. I don't understand a lot of what he's saying. Audio quality, mixed with accent etc etc.
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It is so easy to understand him as someone who's first language is not english :P
captions helped a bit
I liked this old man and his way of argument.
The only thing that disturbes me is that these "old group selected moralities" are removed from any intellectual grounds.
If we "cannot contemplate them intellectually" we have no chance to reason against them.
Simply to say "cannot - not even in retrospective - be discovered by reason" just seems to be a cheap ploy to protect your argument.
It is putting up a thesis based on 'I said so" and telling you "logic won't work against it".
Am I wrong?
English transcript please...........
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On the topic of Ayn Rand, I think she is misinterpreted by both her supporters and her opposition(I would also say that the majority of both parties hasn't actually read any of her books). I am not sure why running a business would make you a better philosopher. Their job is to come up with ideas, its up to society to validate the relevance of those ideas. Regardless both sold books so I am not sure how socialism is the key to them having a comfortable life.
What about FGM female genital mutilation ?
The problem with evolutionary process (group selection) is that it is a process, and process takes time. It will be determined later whether a social practice is going to be perished or survived.
@@djohanrady the problem is the time ?
Sorry as far as I know this video does not even have an English transcript.
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Hayek gets a few things wrong morality IS value(hence moral relativism and moral pluralism being the same) judgement,isonomy stands not on science but on tradition,which is a value,nietzche got the point,he said "god is dead" and so are "the moral imperatives of tradition built around it" thou shall not steal becomes just another "rule imposed",of course the problem is nietzche(and the postmodernist) submit to no law cause "all law is authoritarian,ie will to power",here Hobbes is more correct in saying government CREATES liberty out of the "State of the nature" and "war of all against all" buy making them SUBMIT to laws,liberty in the aglican sense is based on authority.
Turn to 24:30 for Christian morality's 5000 year superiority
Translation in german please :)
You are being facetious. Pretending to agree with Myndir while saying the opposite. Individual genetics plays no part in Hayek's theory. It is a theory of cultural group selection. Where luck is as important as individual skill or virtue in deciding who succeeds. Why not try to actually watch the video's you comment on next time.
Uh, I think your thinking of Kaynes and FDR when you talk about central planning. Hayek was for free market capitalism and totally against state intervention not central planning.... I was hoping to get some insight from this conversation but its seems you have absolutely no idea what your talking about except the goals of the true left which is not to be confused with democrats whom in present state are fascist(occasionally more so then republicans although they hide it better).
If Social Darwinism is progress then forced labor camps must be Hayeks' vision of utopia. Progress as Hayek suggests is the discipline of learning to enjoy the spectacle of poverty and derive a sense of moral uplift and even a kind of connoisseurship in the refined exercise of such sentiments. Although I seem to recall that Thorstein Veblen explored similar theories of society much earlier.
His declaration that biological evolution cannot happen within a short a span as 50,000 years is quite incorrect. Incremental evolution happens with every successive generation. While it may speed up or slow down, species do not remain static for millions of years until they are zapped with a wand.
I think this makes his distinction between "cultural" and "biological" evolution naive.
He said that within this time biological evolution has little effect, not that this "cannot happen".
The distinction between biological and cultural evolution is not naive. Biology cannot explain the specific characteristics of culture. It can explain how and why we acquire culture, but never what this culture would be and what are the relevant facts which affects our culture.
Our language, our law system, the style of our clothes (or if we use them), our smyle, the style of our gait: nothing of this can be explained just in terms of biology (and this doesn't mean that it is our genes which make this possible at all).
I think this makes his distinction between "cultural" and "biological" evolution naive.
Words of UNwisdom From the delusional dogma of the Liberal faith.
"I think this makes his distinction between "cultural" and "biological" evolution naive."
So do you think morals, culture and language are a product of "biological evolution"? If so, the different systems of morals, culture and language are strictly related to genetical differences? lol
Guilherme Resende
Are you familure with Hayeks DEEP and brilliant perspective on sociopolitical, and economic matters? Hayek was an atheist/agnostic but had a deep respect for religiosity in general and Christianity. Hayek was one of the great minds of the 20th century (ever really). He also had profound respect for the GREAT western culture that would evolve as the contingency of incremental adaptations in response to religious Christian and other environmental forces generating from human action not human design. The reason why I hold Hayek in such high esteem beyond even his analytical genius is because he was such a stalwart champion of liberty.
One could make really an incontrovertible case that everything about humans including their culture is absolutely a product of biological evolution. Are you coming at this topic from a religious perspective and for some reason adverse to evolutionary theory?
FiT PT Wow, good to see someone who holds Hayek in high steem. I admire him very much, and by last years I've studing him in deep and profoundity. I also think he is one of the great thinkers (maybe the greatest) of the twentieth century. His idea about the use of knowledge are profound and original; and his contributions are to many and different topics like law, psychology, economics, epistemology, etc.
I seriously don't understood why you associated me with cristhian faith. I, like Hayek, respect cristhianism but I'm you cannot say I'm a religous person. I believe in evolution.
But the point is that I don't think that everything about human can be summarized by biological evolution -- like Hayek was trying to demonstrate in its entire lecture. I made a point: that, as there's different law, morals, culture and language between the various human groups; and, as they are not foundamentally distinct biologically, so law, language, morals and culture cannot be explained entirelly by biological reasons. (They are the great majority of the phenomena which are not the product of human design, but of human action).
If you want a more complete approach to this, I recommend you to read a very little article by the own Hayek. It's in the bellow link, which is a collectanea of studies called New Studies on Philosophy, Politics and Economics, called "Nature v. Nurture Once Again" (p. 290-295):
direitasja.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/new-studies-in-philosophy-politics-and-economics-friedrich-a-hayek.pdf
Or, simply this little stretch from his book The Fatal Conceit (p. 25), can help to clarify:
"It is wrong for Bonner (1980:10) to claim that culture is 'as biological as any other function of an organism, for instance respiration or locomotion'. To label 'biological' the formation of the tradition of language, morals, law, money, even of the mind, abuses language and misunderstands theory. Our genetic inheritance may determine what we are capable of learning but certainly not what tradition is there to learn. What is there to learn is not even the product of the human brain. What is not transmitted by genes is not a biological phenomenon."
I'm struggling to figure out what was said...lots of assertions about the ignorance of socialist economists, what David Hume suggested...it's like a long introduction to an argument that was never made. No examples of anything were given, just speculation by a guy whose name is bigger than his contributions.
theseanze sorry but he won the Nobel prize. And created price knowledge theory. Which is genius.
Since you mentioned Ayn Rand before, she was a libertarian anarchist. Since I know you won't actually read her books I suggest watching the Atlas shrugged movies. I am not suggesting this to change you mind but just so you actually know what it is your against.
What
If somebody is valued by many as one of the biggest thinkers of his time and you think what he says has no value, I would rather look at your own understanding. Not to say he or anybody else was always right but most of the time people that write comments like yours are the ignorant ones. Think about that befor you juge somebody by a youtube video.
"Their job is to come up with ideas"
You mean like... PLANNING?
LOL
Personal planning # central planning, is this too hard to grasp?
Ironically, I find Dawkins' conclusions out of his work in science and the counter-intuitive insights of altruism in evolution lead to a more socialist worldview. He waxes religiously sentimental when talking about the value of putting truth above one's own personal projects, which means everyone pursuing their own personal interest in a market would miss the point. You can't have peer review without regulation. Who regulates is a different question but bio/social science is not Hayekian.
My god this would have been painful to sit through. I can barely make out what he is saying. He should have had a professional English speaker read it for him, and stayed home, especially given the complicated nature of the material.
tothemax01 lol I understand him
Close your eyes. Easier to understand
Dawkins and memes start at 46:12.
What do you mean
Both parties support the police state. Both parties protect their big business cronies while making laws that destroy small business. Both are fascist. I am not talking about voters, I am talking about the people running the parties. Democrats say they are for democracy but last year at the DNC when the delagtes wanted to take god and Israel out of the platform(something I agree with) the party leaders had a vote and ultimately decided to ignore the delegates. Does that sound like democracy.
I think Hayek was an intellectual pygmy compared with Keynes. None of the discussions on youtube cites excerpts from Keynes's monumental work to critique it. If you are taking issue with a major work, you should cite specifically where it was wrong.
Hayek stated that Keynes was ignorant of economics. Nonsense! Keynes did exactly what I just wrote: he specifically stated where the followers of Ricardo were wrong; where they omitted essential
dependencies of the relationship between employment and wages and forced and reduced their relation to a simple demand and supply curve intersection.
There is great intellectual dishonesty on the part of Keynes's critics. There is much position, prestige, and money involved in attempting to diminish Keynes. A major university, U. of Chicago, is dedicated to elevating people like Hayek and Milton Friedman. They are called the Chicago School. They should be called the Chicago gang.
You obviously have never taken a philosophy class or you would know that they usually run absolutely nothing. Look at Marx as an example. Anyways can you tell me where crony capitalism is promoted by Hayek because I don't see it.
"Crony capitalism" is such a useless phrase. You don't like capitalism, why then bit just say capitalism? In fairness, they do say capitalism also, but at points they need that extra manipulation to attach to their language they'll add "crony" or "late stage"
The lecture was either transcribed or obtained from his prepared script. You can check it out here: pastebin.com/Qr3YGfkj
FA Hayek sounds like proto Jordan Peterson here.
There is no need for insults. You may disagree with Hayek but his theories aren't without merit.
@@rumpelwurzwurst4308 haha well now im a Hoppean so now i give Hayek and JBP the side eye xD
Your point is well taken. If society is created by the market, society exists to serve the market, some individuals will choose to suffer poverty, others of a more virtuous sort who equipped with appropriate genetics for the inheritence of comfort and leisure, will naturally succeed. The market seperates the best and brightest while banishing the inferior to their natural state of misery. God could not have created a mechnism more efficient than the market for seperating good from bad.
"democrats whom in present state are fascist"
LOL, been watching Fox lately?
According to every dictionary in existence, fascism is a far right-wing concept.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *pointing and laughing at the DOLT*
Look up the origins of fascism and you will find it is Progressivism.
"I entirely agree, in this respect, with Karl Marx contention that it was Capitalism which has created the Prolitariat, but not by expropriating anybody, or taking from anyone possesion ahead but simply by enabling those to survive who had no possesions. In that sense the Prolitariat is a creation of Capitalism, Capitalism has given life to the prolitariat"