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Purpose – The aim of this note is to explain what Hayek meant when in The Sensory Order he claimed that Mach was one of his fundamental readings in psychology while he was writing The Sensory Order.

Methodology/approach – A historical approach to show the different role Mach played in Hayek and Neurath/Carnap.

Findings•A parallelism between Mach–Kant and Hayek–Mach in psychology.•Hayek's rejection of Mach's final philosophical approach as well as his aversion against the Vienna Circle's positivism as forms of metaphysics, based on an awkward definition of isomorphism.

Research limitations/implications•The human sciences cannot be reduced to the natural sciences.•Any form of knowledge is knowledge of “how” rather than of “what”.

Originality/value of the paper•To show Mach's role in Hayek's psychology.•To consider The Sensory Order as a relevant part of Hayek's struggle against reductionism in psychology.

Purpose/problem statement – Two highly successful complex adaptive systems are the Market and Science, each with an inherent tendency toward epistemic imperialism. Of late, science, notably medical science, seems to have become functionally subservient to market imperatives. We offer a twofold Hayekian analysis: a justification of the multiplicity view of spontaneous orders and a critique of the libertarian justification of market prioricity.

Methodology/approach – This chapter brings to light Hayekian continuities between diverse literatures – philosophical, epistemological, cognitive, and scientific.

Findings – The very precondition of knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by society's manifold of spontaneous forces, a manifold that gives context and definition to intimate, regulate, and inform action. The free-flow of information is the lifeblood of civil (liberal) society. The commoditization of medical knowledge promotes a dysfunctional free-flow of information that compromises notions of expertise and ultimately has implications for the greater good.

Research limitations/implications – While we accept that there are irresolvable tensions between these epistemic magisteria we are troubled by the overt tampering with the spontaneous order mechanism of medical science. The lessons of Hayek are not being assimilated by many who would go by the adjective Hayekian.

Originality/value of chapter – On offer is a Hayekian restatement (contra the libertarian view typically attributed to Hayek) cautioning that no one spontaneous order should dominate over another, neither should they be made conversable. Indeed, we argue that the healthy functioning of a market presupposes institutions that should not answer to market imperatives.

Purpose – To review the significance of Hayek's argument, in The Sensory Order, from a connectionist theory of mental architecture to descriptive and normative individualism.

Methodology/approach – The chapter reconstructs Hayek's argument, then replaces Hayek's premises about mental architecture with premises derived from the recent neuroscience of reward and consumption, and then explains why the argument no longer goes through.

Findings – Hayek's abstract mental architecture was closer to adequacy than most subsequent competing alternatives produced by philosophers. His argument from this architecture to individualism is valid. However, we must now supplement the abstract architecture with complexities drawn from recent neuroscience. These show the argument to be unsound. However, if commitment to descriptive individualism is abandoned, then a new argument from psychological premises to normative individualism is available.

Social implications – There is a good argument from psychological premises to normative individualism; but normative individualists should not try to defend their position by resting it on the supposed truth of descriptive individualism.

Originality/value – All the main arguments of the chapter are new to the literature.

Purpose – Some personal reflections on the author's discovery of and promotion of Hayek's The Sensory Order.

Purpose – This chapter aims to critically examine how Hayek's philosophical psychology helps defend his liberalism.

Methodology/approach – It is commonly argued that The Sensory Order enables Hayek to strengthen the epistemological theses of his social philosophy against constructivist rationalism by demonstrating why the mind as a complex order can never fully explain itself and why only “explanation of the principle” is possible for complex phenomena. Building on this argument, the chapter attempts to show that we can reconstruct a liberal conception of man who is distinct, creative yet culturally embedded from Hayek's philosophical psychology.

Findings – This chapter contends that a better understanding of Hayek's liberal self not only can enrich our analysis of the strengths and problems of Hayekian liberalism but also help counter some of the major criticisms against The Sensory Order.

Research limitations/implications – The findings of this chapter suggest that while Hayek's epistemological defense of liberalism is both powerful and thought-provoking, there is a danger that he tends to treat individual liberty as an instrumental value without adequately taking into account the intrinsic value of individuality. This chapter tries to offer some preliminary analysis of this problem and points to the direction that thinkers sympathetic to Hayek's liberalism can further develop his defense by making good this inadequacy in future research.

Originality/Value of the chapter – This chapter attempts to reconstruct a liberal self from Hayek's philosophical psychology and subject such a conception to critical scrutiny in the light of Hayek's defense of liberalism. This is an area that is relatively neglected and needs to be better explored by Hayek scholars.

Purpose – Overview of Hayek's cognitive theory and the contributions of chapters.

Methodology/approach – Perspective on significance of Hayek's cognitive theory for the social sciences.

Findings – Hayek's cognitive theory provides insight into his oeuvre; more importantly, it is relevant for social theory in its own right.

Research limitations/implications – Hayek's cognitive theory warrants further attention by economists and social theorists interested in evolutionary social processes.

Originality/value of paper – To counter a widespread view that the contribution to economics and social science of Hayek's cognitive theory is largely confined to methodology. Hayek's cognitive theory also provides a useful framework for furthering the understanding of evolution within the social realm.

Purpose – The chapter provides an exposition both of Hayek's causal theory of the mind (especially as applied to intentionality) and of Popper's critique of causal theories, argues that Hayek fails successfully to rebut Popper's critique, and shows how the dispute between Hayek and Popper is relevant to controversies in contemporary philosophy of mind.

Methodology/approach –The chapter elucidates Hayek's ideas and Popper's by situating them within the history of the mind/body problem and comparing them to the views of contemporary philosophers like Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, and Hilary Putnam.

Findings – Popper's critique has yet to be answered, either by Hayek or by contemporary causal theorists.

Originality/value of the chapter –The chapter calls attention to some important but neglected ideas of Hayek and Popper and examines some of their as-yet-unpublished writings.

Purpose – To better understand the relation between Friedrich Hayek's “theoretical psychology” and contemporary connectionist theories of mind.

Methodology/approach – There is much in The Sensory Order that recommends the oft-made claim that Hayek anticipated connectionist theories of mind. To the extent that this is so, contemporary arguments against and for connectionism, as advanced by Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, and John Searle, are shown as applicable to theoretical psychology. However, the final section of this chapter highlights an important disanalogy between theoretical psychology and connectionist theories of mind.

Findings – While Hayek can be construed as a connectionist, it is argued that Hayek's ontological presuppositions are not shared by contemporary theorists of mind. In particular, modern critiques of Hayek's theoretical psychology qua connectionism assume that he attempts to provide an account of the mind within the confines of scientific naturalism. This essay argues that this assumption is false. Hayek's ontological presuppositions are more akin to Kant's, implying that Hayek's question is importantly different from those asked by contemporary theorists of mind.

Originality/value of the chapter – At a certain level of abstraction, a Hayakian machine is not unlike certain versions of a connectionist machine. However, to adequately assess the significance of The Sensory Order on its own terms, Hayek's project must be disentangled from our own ontological preoccupations.

Purpose – To answer the following questions: Is all knowledge based on “experience” in Hayek's view? Was he an “empiricist” or a “Kantian”? In what sense?

Methodology/approach – Starting from a thorough analysis of Hayek's explicit ideas about empiricism and experience in The Sensory Order and some related writings, I reconstruct his epistemology but also try to improve on it with the help of some other philosophers.

Findings – Empiricism has many meanings depending on how you define “experience.” Hayek is not a “sensationalist empiricist” because he does not believe that all knowledge is based on “sense experience.” However, given his ideas of “pre-sensory experience” and “experience of the race,” Hayek is a “post-positivist empiricist.” His empiricism can be improved upon by privileging what I call “selective experience.”

Research implications – The next step is to analyze Hayek's market economics and philosophy of science to see which kind of experience guides Hayekian entrepreneurs and scientists. If this line of research is continued, practical and social implications might follow.

Originality/value of the chapter – The question whether Hayek was an “empiricist” or a “Kantian” is an old question. However, this chapter is the first systematic analysis of his “empiricist” epistemology and his concept of “experience.” Moreover, it has value beyond Hayek scholarship since, in the general empiricism debate, epistemologists have almost ubiquitously assumed that “experience” means “sense experience.”

Purpose – (1) To show that Hayek's theory of spontaneous orders informs his theory of the mind in The Sensory Order (TSO), (2) to show that Hayek's apriorism – which makes its first appearance in the Beiträge of 1920 with the view that memory precedes neuronal interconnections – continues unchanged in TSO, (3) to show that the social phenomenon of intersubjectivity is presupposed in Hayek's account of how the mind develops, and (4) to present the scientific discovery of mirror neurons as evidence that intersubjectivity has a role in this development.

Design/methodology/approach – This is an analytical examination of Hayek's theory of the mind in TSO against the backdrop of his social theory.

Findings – (1) That the role of memory in Hayek's theory of mind can be characterized as aprioristic; (2) that Hayek is a metaphysical realist; (3) that Hayek presupposes intersubjectivity in the framework of social orders and the mind; (4) that Hayek may have been influenced by the it tradition; and (5) also that Hayek's TSO is not an argument belonging to biologism or Kantian epistemology.

Originality/value – This chapter rejects the commonly accepted view that The Sensory Order or its predecessor, the Beiträge, underlies all of Hayek's social theory. Instead, it presents the argument that spontaneous orders and intersubjectivity are not only presupposed but most likely imported to TSO from his social theory. Secondarily, this chapter rejects the view that Hayek's cognitive and social theories are characterized by the acceptance of biologism or Kantianism.