My paper “Hayek, Popper, and the Causal Theory of the Mind” appears in the latest volume of Advances in Austrian Economics, a special issue edited by Leslie Marsh and devoted to the theme Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. The publisher’s web page for the volume is here. You can find Marsh’s website devoted to the book here, the table of contents here, and Marsh’s introduction to the volume here. Here’s the abstract of my article (which follows the publisher’s required abstract format):
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chapter calls attention to some important but neglected ideas of Hayek and Popper and examines some of their as-yet-unpublished writings.
What that last line is referring to, specifically, are Popper’s private letters to Hayek vis-à-vis Hayek’s book The Sensory Order and Hayek’s unpublished (and unfinished) draft “Within Systems and about Systems: A Statement of Some Problems of a Theory of Communication,” all of which receive substantive discussion in my article. The article is an extended treatment of themes to which I was only able to devote the last few pages of my essay “Hayek the cognitive scientist and philosopher of mind” in The Cambridge Companion to Hayek. It also contains material that should be of interest even to readers with no special interest in Hayek or Popper, since what it has to say about them is relevant to the more general question of whether causal theories of intentionality (which are at the core of attempts to “naturalize” intentionality) can succeed. (I’ve addressed this issue in previous blog posts, such as this one, this one, and this one. Obviously, my many other posts on the mind-body problem are also relevant.)
