HAYEK’S SOLUTION TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

E. Feser, Department of Philosophy, University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.  Email: feser@humanitas.ucsb.edu

Introduction

            Well-known as a Nobel laureate in economics and as a political philosopher, F.A. Hayek is rarely thought of as a philosopher of mind.  Yet he was precisely that, and as I hope to show in this survey, he was one whose work is worthy of the attention of contemporary students of the mind-body problem.  For that work suggests a novel solution to what Colin McGinn has called the “hard nut of the mind-body problem” (1989, p. 349), namely the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness, also known as the problem of qualia.  But it also suggests that a complete understanding of the place of mind in the natural world, one that includes more than a grasp of the nature of qualia, must forever be denied us.  Interestingly, this is more or less the reverse of what is argued by many contemporary theorists.  The currently fashionable line appears to be that it is only the problem of qualia which poses a significant challenge to a complete understanding of the mind’s place in the natural order, and which, if McGinn is to be believed, cannot be solved.  But, as we shall see, if Hayek is right, the conventional wisdom has things precisely backwards.

            Hayek’s writings on the subject of the mind (1952, 1967, 1978, 1982) deal also with issues other than those just mentioned; among other things, they develop theories that foreshadow such contemporary approaches in cognitive psychology as connectionism (Smith, forthcoming), neural Darwinism (Edelman, 1982, pp. 24-5), and the complex adaptive systems research associated with the Santa Fe Institute (Miller, 1996).  But the distinctively philosophical theses suggested by Hayek’s work are what I wish to examine here, theses which to my knowledge have not been fully explored in the Hayek literature.[i]  The word “suggested,” incidentally, is used advisedly:  That Hayek believed a complete understanding of the mind to be impossible in principle is beyond doubt.  He is quite explicit about this.  But that he explicitly offered a solution to what is now known as the “hard problem” is, admittedly, less clear.  He certainly does not frame the issues in the terms common today.  Nevertheless, what he does say constitutes an at least implicit solution to the problem of qualia.  So the solution to the mind-body problem to be discussed here, whether or not it was Hayek’s (overt) solution, is in any case a Hayekian solution.

            I shall begin by formulating more precisely the issues at hand and then giving a rough sketch of Hayek’s solution.  The bulk of the paper will then be devoted to spelling his account out in more detail and relating it to the work of some important past and contemporary writers.  Finally, I shall make a few remarks about his position’s significance and what might be said in its defense.

The Problem and an Outline of Hayek’s Solution

            The traditional “mind-body problem” is actually a cluster of distinct problems, and we must first get clear on which of these Hayek’s work suggests a solution to.  As Jerry Fodor has often pointed out, there are really (at least) three properties of mental phenomena that might appear difficult to account for in naturalistic terms:

Lots of mental states are conscious, lots of mental states are intentional, and lots of mental processes are rational, and the question does rather suggest itself how anything that is material could be any of these (1994, p. 292).

There are, then, actually three mind-body problems (at least).  But as noted earlier, it is the first one mentioned by Fodor, the problem of consciousness, that has been thought by many philosophers to be the most important one, perhaps even the only intractable one.  It is the problem that the best-known anti-materialist arguments of recent years, those of Kripke (1971), Nagel (1974), and Jackson (1982), focused on; the one that David Chalmers (1995) and Galen Strawson (1994, p. 93) have labeled the “hard problem” (the others being relatively “easy” problems, i.e. ones solutions to which are -- allegedly -- readily conceivable within materialist constraints); and, again, the one that McGinn has notoriously decreed to be unsolvable (1989).  Yet, ironically enough, it is precisely this problem that, I want to argue, Hayek’s work suggests a complete solution to; and the other problems, the problems of accounting for intentionality and rationality, that he suggests we can never fully solve!

            Now the problem of consciousness is just the problem of explaining how a purely material system such as the brain can give rise to the experiences we are all familiar with, how something governed by exactly the same sorts of physical laws that govern obviously non-conscious entities – rocks, tables, chairs, and the like – could produce such phenomena as pains, tickles, itches, and the whole range of visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations, which are unique to (and definitive of) conscious beings.  These features are referred to variously as “raw feels,” sensory qualities, phenomenal qualities, or qualia, and they are what make it the case that there is “something it is like to be” conscious, whereas there is nothing it is like to be, say, a rock (Nagel, 1974).  To be sure, the steady advancement of neuroscientific knowledge strongly supports the conclusion that processes in the brain are responsible for bringing about these features.  But the difficulty is in seeing how they could possibly do so.  For none of the neurophysiological data either available to us now or conceivably available to us in the future (and none of the actual or conceivable chemical or physical data either, for that matter) appears to entail the existence of conscious mental states, of states associated with qualia.  That is, it seems entirely conceivable that all of the neurophysiological (and chemical and physical) facts could be exactly as they are in the actual world, and yet there are no qualia.  And if so, it is utterly mysterious why in fact there are qualia.

            The problems of intentionality and rationality, by contrast, though not by any means considered trivial, are often thought to be at any rate not special problems for reductionistic materialism per se (though, of course, Brentano would demur in the case of intentionality, as the ancients and medievals presumably would in the case of rationality).  That mental states, even if they’re identical to brain states, can have intentionality or “aboutness,” namely the property of being meaningful or of representing the world as being a certain way, is commonly thought to be explicable in causal, teleological, or information-theoretic terms.  That mental processes, even if identical with brain processes, can be rational, that is, can be such that we are capable of reliably moving from one thought to another in a manner that corresponds with the laws of logic, is commonly thought to be explicable by thinking of thought as a species of computation; and the physical bases of computation are, of course, well-understood.

            Hayek doesn’t frame the problem of qualia in quite the way I just did (a way which is fairly common today).  In his most extended work in the philosophy of mind, The Sensory Order, he describes the problem he is concerned with as that of accounting for the relationship between the phenomenal world, that is, the world of our experience which consists of an order of sensory qualities or qualia, and the physical world, or the world outside our minds which physical science describes for us and which we are aware of only via our awareness of the phenomenal world (1952, p. 4).  This relationship is problematic because “the progress of the physical sciences has all but eliminated these qualities from our scientific picture of the external world” (1952, p. 2), and banished them to the internal world, the world of the mind.  Whereas in sensory experience “events [in the external world] are classified according to their sensory properties such as colours, sounds, odours, feeling of touch, etc.” (1952, p. 3), physical science classifies them in terms of the abstract mathematical relationships they have to one another.  That is, science has revealed to us that the true nature of the physical world is vastly different from the picture of it our senses give us.  But that picture, of course, still exists.  The world of sensory qualities itself must also be accounted for.  And this is especially problematic given that that world itself, since it is the world of the organism (a physical entity alongside others), is itself somehow just another part of the world of physical events governed by physical law that science describes for us:

What we call ‘mind’ is thus a particular order or set of events taking place in some organism and in some manner related to but not identical with, the [external] physical order of events in the environment. The problem which the existence of mental phenomena raises is therefore how in a part of the physical order (namely an organism) a sub-system can be formed which in some sense… may be said to reflect some features of the physical order as a whole, and which thereby enables the organism which contains such a partial reproduction of the environmental order to behave appropriately towards its surroundings.  The problem arises as much from the fact that the order of this sub-system is in some respects similar to, as from the fact that it is in other respects different from the corresponding more comprehensive physical order (1952, p. 16).

            The very way Hayek states the problem gives, I think, a hint of what his solution is.  For as what we’ve seen so far indicates, for Hayek, our knowledge of the physical world is indirect.  We know of it only through the sensory qualities that constitute the world of experience; and what we know of it is only the abstract relationships that hold between its elements, i.e. its causal structure.  But also, as we’ve seen, he thinks that the world of experience is itself a part, a sub-system of, the larger physical world; that is, he thinks it is identical with the brain.  He is thus committed to some well-known philosophical theses: the indirect realist theory of perception; a structuralist account of our knowledge of the physical world; and the mind-brain identity theory.  These theses are crucial elements of his solution to the problem he has posed, which is, I want to suggest, no less than a solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.  But they are not the whole story.  To them he adds an account of sensory qualities or qualia as classificatory states of an organism, that is, states whereby an organism differentiates between various stimuli in the external world (1952, p. 42).  To have the capacity for sensory experience, on Hayek’s view, is just to have the capacity to discriminate between the elements in one’s environment in such a way that one is enabled efficiently to interact with that environment; a capacity, moreover, that has been shaped by the evolutionary history of the species to which an organism belongs and by the organism’s own individual experiential history (1952, p. 53).  The character of sensory experience, then, is determined not just by the nature of the stimuli, but by the biological makeup of the subject of experience.

            Now these elements of Hayek’s position are, of course, by no means unique to him.  Individually,  each of these theses has been held, and is held, by a number of philosophers.  But he is, to my knowledge, the only theorist to put them all together; and the resulting position turns out to be far more than the sum of its parts.  On Hayek’s account, the sensory states of an organism, the states involving qualia, just are states of the brain, in particular, states whereby the brain discriminates between events in its environment.  And the manner in which the brain does so, and thus the character of the sensory states themselves -- and thus in turn the picture of the external world that results -- is determined by contingent physiological factors.  This rather Kantian result, undermining, as it does, the view of the mind as having an unmediated grasp of the external world, is in line with, and reinforces, the indirect realist claim that our knowledge of the material world is indirect or inferential, and the allied ( at least in the work of many writers, as we shall see) claim that that knowledge is knowledge, not of the material world’s intrinsic nature, but only of its causal structure.  And these claims themselves support the other aspects of Hayek’s position.  For objections to those aspects typically amount to the charge that they leave out the essential, qualitative, sensory features of experience, because it is alleged to be conceivable that an organism could have just the brain states and discriminatory capacities that we do, and yet have no qualia.  But this sort of objection presupposes that we have a transparent enough grasp of the intrinsic nature of the material world to enable us to judge that a part of that world, namely the brain undergoing certain states, could conceivably lack qualia.  And this presupposition is just what the structuralist view of our knowledge of the physical world challenges.  So the various theses under consideration, in combination, work to reinforce each other, each element in Hayek’s overall position supporting, or undermining the criticisms typically made of, other elements.  (Not that defense of that position need thus be circular; for each element can be, and has been, argued for independently.)

            This then, in a nutshell, is Hayek’s solution to the problem of qualia: Qualia or sensory qualities are identical to states – specifically, discriminatory or classificatory states – of the brain; and the standard doubts about such an identification are entirely undermined by our complete lack of any knowledge (of the intrinsic nature of the brain) which would be inconsistent with it.  Like standard materialist identity theories, Hayek’s, in identifying qualia with states of the brain, is thoroughly naturalistic.  At the same time, it takes the qualitative nature of experience more seriously than materialists tend to do, and thus respects the concerns of those philosophers who have rejected other naturalistic accounts as inadequate.  For it entails that we lack the grasp of the intrinsic nature of the material world that most naturalists (at least implicitly) think we have, and on the basis of which they tend to try to redefine or even eliminate the notion of qualia in a manner many see as implausible and untrue to the facts.  Hayek’s position, I think, therefore allows us to combine the strengths of traditional naturalistic and non-naturalistic accounts of qualia while avoiding the weaknesses each tends to exhibit, and thus opens the way to a complete and satisfying solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.

            Elaborating on and clarifying this claim is what I will proceed to do presently, but first we must get a working sense also of the negative aspect of Hayek’s position, the way in which he thinks a complete understanding of the mind is beyond us.  As we’ve seen, for Hayek, perceptual experience is nothing but the activity in which the brain classifies or differentiates the stimuli present in its environment; the brain is, then, a classificatory system.  But from this it follows that the brain’s (or mind’s) understanding of itself is necessarily limited, Hayek concludes.  For:

[A]ny apparatus of classification must possess a structure of a higher degree of complexity than is possessed by the objects which it classifies; and… therefore, the capacity of any explaining agent must be limited to objects with a structure possessing a degree of complexity lower than its own.  If this is correct, it means that no explaining agent can ever explain objects of its own kind, or of its own degree of complexity, and therefore, that the human brain can never fully explain its own operations (1952, p. 185).

Tantalizing and suggestive as this passage is, its import is not entirely clear, and spelling out Hayek’s negative argument is something else we shall have to do.  Suffice it for now to say that what Hayek is going to argue is that the rules that govern the classificatory process in question, and which, in particular, give our conscious experience meaning or significance and guide our reasoning, amount to a bedrock of tacit knowledge that must forever remain inaccessible to us in its totality.  To see how he does so, though, we need first a fuller understanding of the various aspects of his positive account.  We shall now consider these in turn.

Indirect Realism, the Structuralist Thesis, and Mind-Brain Identity

            Indirect realism is the view that there is a material world existing independently of the mind (hence it is a form of realism), but that in perceptual experience, we are not aware of it directly (hence the modifier “indirect”); what we are directly aware of are sense data or sensory qualities, and it is only through these that we (indirectly) perceive the external world.  (It is also often referred to as the causal theory of perception, the representative theory of perception, or causal realism.)  The “structuralist thesis” (to use Foster’s (1991, p. 123) phrase) is the related claim that our knowledge of the external, physical world is abstract knowledge, knowledge not of its intrinsic nature, but only of its causal structure.  As I’ve already indicated, these positions play a crucial role in making plausible Hayek’s version of the mind-brain identity theory.  For they allow him to sidestep the objections that are typically made of this theory.  Those objections typically appeal to the notion that mental states have properties that are incompatible with the properties that states of a material object, even one as complex as the brain, have, so that (by Leibniz’s law) they cannot possibly be identical (see Churchland, 1988, pp. 29-34 for discussion of this sort of objection); or, as already noted, to the idea that it is conceivable that the neurophysiological facts are as they are, and yet there are no qualia, no conscious mental states, so that there must be more to the mind than the brain.  This latter suggestion is often labeled the “zombie hypothesis,” since what is said to be conceivable amounts to a creature that is exactly like us in its neurophysiological, behavioral, and other physical properties, and yet is completely unconscious (like a zombie); and it has recently been the subject of a great deal of attention.[ii]  As I have suggested, the indirect realist and structuralist theses undermine objections of these kinds, since they undermine the claim that we know enough about the intrinsic nature of the material world to be able to say that a part of it possibly lacks sensory qualities.

            Now the application of these theses to a defense of the mind-brain identity theory is, I must point out, an area where Hayek himself is more implicit than explicit.  He never discusses the utility of appealing to the former to respond to objections to the latter.  Indeed, these objections were not fully formulated at the time Hayek wrote The Sensory Order, being developed by philosophers only after a rather different (and in my view, less plausible), physicalistic version of the mind-brain identity theory started to become popular in the late 1950’s and the 1960’s, represented by Australian philosophers like J.J.C. Smart (1959) and D.M. Armstrong (1968).  But Hayek’s commitment to both theses puts him in the company of adherents to another kind of mind-brain identity theory, a group which includes Moritz Schlick (1985), Bertrand Russell (1927), Herbert Feigl (1967), Grover Maxwell (1978), and, most recently, Michael Lockwood (1989).  In this tradition of thought, the uniqueness of a mind-brain identity theory informed by indirect realism and structuralism is stressed; it is, unlike Smart’s and Armstrong’s theories, non-physicalistic, precisely because these theses strip it of any commitment to a notion of the material world as physical where “physical” is defined in such a way as to exclude sensory qualities.[iii]  And that Hayek’s work was consciously informed by this tradition is clear.  He speaks of the influence on him of Schlick’s General Theory of Knowledge in an autobiographical note (1994, p. 64), and both that book and Russell’s Analysis of Matter are in the bibliography of The Sensory Order.

Like Russell, Maxwell and Lockwood in particular, Hayek stresses that our knowledge of the material world is knowledge of its causal structure rather than knowledge of its intrinsic qualities; that science reveals to us the causal relationships between events in the external world, but tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of those events themselves (1952, pp. 6, 171).[iv]  Common sense, of course, leads us to think that the qualities we are aware of in perceptual experience are qualities of the external world itself.  But on the indirect realist view, those qualities, sensory qualities, are merely the veil through which we perceive the external world; and on the mind-brain identity theory in question, they are themselves identical with states of the brain.  So the various sensory qualities are actually features of the brain, not features of the external world (i.e. the world external to the brain).  As Hayek puts it:

Whenever we study qualitative differences between experiences we are studying mental and not [external] physical events, and much that we believe to know about the external world is, in fact, knowledge about ourselves (1952, pp. 6-7).

This is reminiscent of Russell’s notorious summing up of the sort of mind-brain identity theory at issue:

I should say that what the physiologist sees when he looks at a brain is part of his own brain, not part of the brain he is examining (1927, p. 383).

Strictly speaking, what Russell means, of course, is that the physiologist does not directly see the brain he is examining, though of course he sees it indirectly; what he does see directly are sensory qualities or qualia, which are identical with states of his own brain.  And what is true of the physiologist and his patient’s brain is true of all of us and all external objects and events, if Hayek, Russell, et al. are correct.  All that we think we know to be intrinsic properties of the external material world are really nothing other than events within our own brains.

            This approach, in my view, completely undermines all of the standard arguments against the mind-brain identity thesis that appeal to the nature of qualia.  Consider the best-known examples of such arguments mentioned above.  Kripke’s argument alleges that, since expressions referring to mental events and expressions referring to brain events are rigid designators, any statement of an identity between a mental event and brain event, if true at all, would have to be a necessary truth.  But since, it is alleged, it is possible that a given brain event could occur without the corresponding mental event occurring (e.g. it is possible that, say, C-fiber stimulation, or whatever, is occurring but pain is not), such an identity statement couldn’t be necessarily true.  So all such statements must be false.  But this argument depends, of course, on the supposition that we know enough about the intrinsic nature of brain events to be able to judge that they could be occurring without mental events also occurring; and this, as we have seen, is just what the view under consideration denies.  On that view, all we know about brain events, considered as material events, is just what we know about all material events, i.e. their causal interrelationships.  So what it is to be a certain type of brain event is just to play a certain causal role relative to other material events.  And given this characterization of brain events, an identity between brain events and mental events (say between C-fiber stimulation, understood abstractly as whatever type of event plays such-and-such a causal role, and pain as the type of event that turns out to play it) is no more problematic than any other identity claim made in science (such as the claim that, to put it crudely, genes are DNA, that is, that the causal role specified by talk of genes turns out to be played by DNA).[v]

            Nagel’s and Jackson’s arguments can be responded to in a similar fashion.  The upshot of both is that one could have a complete account of the neurophysiological facts concerning human beings or animals and still not know what it’s like to experience red, say (as in Jackson’s (1982) example of the neuroscientist Mary), or what it’s like to have the experiences bats have in getting about the world by means of echolocation (as in Nagel’s (1974) example), so that there must be something more to the mind than just the brain.  But if all this neurophysiological knowledge amounts to in the first place is just knowledge of the causal structure of the brain, then it just isn’t all there is to know about the brain after all.  In particular, it isn’t knowledge of what sorts of things fills the nodes of this causal structure or play the causal roles the neurophysiology tells us about.  And on the mind-brain identity theory we’re considering, it is precisely sensory qualities or qualia which do so, precisely the elements Nagel and Jackson say a mind-brain identity theory must leave out. 

            It should be clearer now also why the “zombie” and Leibniz’s law objections also fail.  For it turns out that to imagine beings identical to us neurophysiologically, behaviorally, and so forth, is just to imagine a certain sort of causal structure.  It is not to imagine what sorts of things play the causal roles within that structure.  And so it does not, by itself, amount to imagining beings whose brains are just like ours.  To make it amount to this, on the sort of mind-brain identity theory under consideration, would involve imagining further that what play the causal roles in question are sensory qualities or qualia.  But then we wouldn’t be imagining “zombies” at all, and we thus wouldn’t be imagining anything that could serve as a counterexample to the theory.  And obviously, one couldn’t accuse this theory, in identifying states involving sensory qualities or qualia with brain states (understood simply in terms of their causal relationships), of trying to identify sensory states with states that have incompatible properties.

            Now all this in fact constitutes only a first approximation to the sort of response I think should be made to the objections we’ve been looking at.  For as we shall see, Hayek’s account of sensory qualities will require a slight reformulation of the replies just considered, differing as it does from the account that Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al. are committed to.  But what has been said should make it clear that the sort of mind-brain identity theory we’re looking at, informed as it is by indirect realism and structuralism, is immune to the sorts of objections typically made against physicalistic identity theories.  Still, what makes it immune to them, it might be charged, makes it open to other, just as serious, objections.  For it appears to meet the criticisms of anti-materialists precisely by co-opting what is distinctive about their position and abandoning what is usually thought to be distinctive of materialism!  And in doing so, in particular, in making qualia the elements that flesh out the causal structure of the brain, it threatens to lead us to an extreme opposite to that of physicalism, that is, to idealism or panpsychism.  For why should we not conclude that what is true of one object, the brain, is true of all of them?  Moreover, commitment to indirect realism seems to entail skepticism about the external world.  For if we have no direct perceptual contact with that world, how can we be certain that it exists at all?

            To take the second objection first:  The fear that indirect realism leads to skepticism is probably the primary reason why it is not more widely accepted among philosophers.  But even if it does, it would not follow that it is false.  For it could turn out both that indirect realism is true, and that we are therefore left in the unhappy epistemic position of being unable to justify our belief in an external world, a belief that we are nonetheless incapable of giving up.   Such a Humean skeptical solution, intellectually unsatisfying as it would be, cannot be simply ruled out a priori.[vi]  Nevertheless, if indirect realism did leave us in this position, we would, admittedly, have good reason to at least try to find an alternative that did not.  Fortunately, it doesn’t.  Even given indirect realism, we can justify belief in the existence of the external world, I think, by arguing that the hypothesis that it exists is the best explanation for the orderliness of our experience, etc. (Mackie, 1976, Chapter 2).

But as Lockwood has pointed out, even to suggest that the indirect realist must provide such a justification if his position is to be worthy of attention is to grant too much to his critic; for the challenge of skepticism, whether or not it can be met, is not in fact a special problem for indirect realism (1989, pp. 142-3).  The skeptical problematic arises because it is conceivable that I could have just kind of experiences I have when, say, I’m sitting in front of the fire reading, and yet I’m not sitting in front of the fire at all, but only hallucinating or dreaming that I am, while in reality I’m asleep in bed, or a brain in a vat, or whatever.  And since the evidence for the claim that I’m sitting in front of the fire reading would be exactly the same whether or not I’m actually doing so, it follows, the skeptic says, that I can’t be justified in believing that I’m really sitting in front of the fire.  This sort of skeptical argument, if it is a challenge to belief in the external world at all, is no more a challenge for the indirect realist than for anyone else – including the direct realist, who must also acknowledge the possibility of such vivid hallucinatory or dream experiences.   So the indirect realist is under no more of an obligation to provide a refutation of skepticism than anyone else.[vii]

As for the accusation that the version of the mind-brain identity theory advocated by Hayek, Russell, et al. must inevitably lead to panpsychism, this is a consequence that Lockwood, for one, appears to think may well follow from the theory as so far stated, and to avoid it, he argues for the thesis that sensory qualities can exist unsensed by any perceiver (1989, pp. 160-7).  If this thesis is correct, then even if sensory qualities are what “flesh out” the causal structures of objects external to the brain (just as they do in the case of the brain itself), panpsychism wouldn’t follow.  For it would (arguably) follow only if sensory qualities depended for their existence on some perceiver, and thus were intrinsically mental.  This thesis is, however, counterintuitive at best; and as I’ve argued elsewhere (Feser, forthcoming) Lockwood’s arguments in its defense are not compelling.[viii]

Fortunately, we need not rely on such an exotic thesis in order to avoid panpsychism.  For Hayek’s account of sensory qualities or qualia affords us another way to do so.  That account is unlike that given by any of the other proponents of the type of mind-brain identity theory we’ve been considering, and its combination with the theses we’ve already examined is what makes his overall position unique.  Properly to understand it, however, we need to consider it in the light of some other aspects of Hayek’s position, particularly what might be called his naturalistic Kantianism or physiological apriorism.

Perception as Classification and Physiological Apriorism

As I briefly stated at the outset of this paper, for Hayek, perceptual experience is nothing but the brain’s classificatory or differentiating activity in response to the impingement on sensory surfaces of the various stimuli that constitute the external environment (and this “external” environment, incidentally, would include parts of the body external to the central nervous system, in which we feel pains, tickles, itches, and the like).  Sensory qualities or qualia, on this view, are thus nothing but the classificatory or discriminatory states of the brain in undertaking this activity (1952, p. 2).  As The Sensory Order discusses in great neurophysiological detail (at least the neurophysiological detail available in 1952), the perceptual process is a matter of various neural impulses being excited or inhibited, and thus connections between the neurons and collections of neurons that make up the brain being strengthened or weakened, in consequence of sensory receptors being triggered.

But what, then, accounts for the great variety that exists in the world of sensory experience, that is, the vast differences that exist between the various sensory qualities?  For patterns of neural activity, however varied in their complexity, seem qualitatively much the same.  How then can they constitute the different sorts of qualia (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory)?  What differentiate neural events in such a way that they can be identified with the various sensory qualities, Hayek says, are just the various roles played by each in the system of neural events that constitutes the brain (1952, p. 18); it is “the position of the individual impulse or group of impulses in the whole system of such connexions which gives it its distinctive quality” (p. 53).  And since these neural events are identical with sensory qualities, it thus turns out that:

[I]f we can explain how all the different sensory qualities differ from each other in the effects which they will produce whenever they occur, we have explained all there is to explain… [T]he whole order of sensory qualities can be exhaustively described in terms of (or ‘consists of nothing but’) all the relationships existing between them.  There is no problem of sensory qualities beyond the problem of how the different qualities differ from each other – and these differences can only consist of differences in the effects which they exercise in evoking other qualities, or in determining behavior (1952, pp. 18-19).

 The classificatory or differentiating activity of the brain that constitutes perception, then, amounts to a state of affairs in which each stimulus or set of stimuli initiates a given pattern of neural impulses, identical with the instantiation of a certain sort of sensory quality, which derives its distinctive character from its having been initiated by certain stimuli, influencing and being influenced by certain sets of other impulses, and finally, even if indirectly, influencing the production of a certain kind or kinds of behavioral response.

            As Hayek makes clear in “The Primacy of the Abstract” (1978), impulses within different sets of neural connections are initiated by different aspects of a given stimulus, some sets of connections associated with some properties, others with others.  That I see something as an object of a certain sort, and respond behaviorally to it in a certain way, is the result of a “superimposition” of the members of one set of neural events and dispositions to act rather than another (pp. 40-42).  The superimposition being of the sort it is is what gives the set of neural events and dispositions to act constituting it the sensory character it has.  Using a simple example, I think we can make Hayek’s account clearer.  Consider the case of my looking at an orange.  What gives this experience the quality it has, a quality which is similar in some respects but not others to that of the experience of looking at an orange car, is that the orange’s stimulating my sensory organs initiates some sets of neural impulses which are also initiated when I look at an orange car and others which are not, but which are also initiated when I look, say, at a billiard ball (which is similar to an orange in shape); that those impulses initiate further sets of impulses that are related to those initiated when, say, I see other types of fruit (while failing to initiate impulses related, say, to my seeing rocks); and that it ultimately (through such intermediate impulses) initiates some dispositions to act (realized in further neurophysiological activity), rather than others, say a disposition to salivate and to eat the object (which I also have when seeing a hamburger), rather than a disposition to take a drive, which I might have when seeing an orange car.  In short, that it is just this collection of interconnected neural impulses rather than another is what makes it identical to a “roundish, orangish” sensory quality rather than, say, a “reddish, square-like” sensory quality.

            That a certain set of neural impulses is correlated with a certain property, and that only the superimposition of such a set upon others, correlated with other properties, makes possible the distinctive character that a given sensory quality has, entails that sensory experience is possible only once the brain has, in virtue of the development of such connections, formed concepts of the properties in question (1978, pp. 42-3; See also 1952, Chapter 8, Section 1, where Hayek refers to the pre-experiential development of such connections, perhaps confusingly, as “pre-sensory experience”) – a person’s having a concept being identified with his having formed a certain set of neural connections.  From this, Hayek argues, it follows that the having of general concepts is a presupposition of experience rather than being the product of abstraction from what is presented in experience, as classical empiricism would have it (1978, pp. 42-43; 1952, Chapter 8, Section 1).  This is what he means by “the primacy of the abstract,” and it is part of what makes Hayek a Kantian of sorts.  Moreover, that the having of the concepts that make experience possible amounts to the having of certain sorts of neural connections is part of what makes his Kantianism naturalistic.

            There is yet more to the story, however.  For on Hayek’s account, the neural connections in question are not just the product of the so-called “pre-sensory experience” of the individual organism, that is, the development of neural connections, and thus concepts, that occurs as a result of an individual organism interacting with a particular environment.  They are also partly the product of the evolutionary history of the species to which the organism belongs (1978, p. 42; 1952, p. 166).  The individual organism is predisposed to form concepts, or sets of neural connections, that have proved advantageous to the preservation of the species; and presumably predisposed not to form those which might somehow prove disadvantageous (as Hayek implies on p. 42 of 1978).  The character of sensory experience, and of qualia, is thus partially determined by natural selection.  This is another important aspect of Hayek’s naturalistic Kantianism or “physiological apriorism” (as Weimer refers to it, 1982, p. 270), which Hayek sums up as follows:

Sense experience therefore presupposes the existence of a sort of accumulated ‘knowledge’, of an acquired order of the sensory impulses based on their past co-occurrence; and this knowledge, although based on (pre-sensory) experience, can never be contradicted by sense experiences and will determine the forms of such experiences which are possible (1952, p. 167).

            Now another consequence of all this is that sensory qualities or qualia turn out not to be intrinsic qualities but relational ones; for their character is entirely determined by their place in a network of such qualites, a network which just is the network of neural connections that makes up the brain (or at least a subsystem of that network).[ix]  There are, on Hayek’s account, no features of qualia over and above their places in this network (1952, pp. 30-6).  And this is radically at odds with the view of qualia taken by other adherents to the sort of mind-brain identity theory Hayek holds to (i.e. the sort informed by the indirect realist and structuralist theses).  On their view, though our knowledge of the external world is nothing more than knowledge of its causal structure, our knowledge of qualia turns out to be knowledge of the intrinsic nature of at least one material object, namely the brain (See e.g. Lockwood, 1989, p. 160).  Moreover, as we have seen, this opens the way to the suggestion that sensory qualities might also be the intrinsic qualities of material objects other than the brain (which is what leads Lockwood to argue that they can exist unsensed, so as to avoid panpsychism).  Thus Lockwood speaks of his theory as one which “represents the physical world as infused with intrinsic qualities which, in conjunction with natural laws, constitute the basis of its causal powers and which include immediately introspectible qualities in their own right” (1989, p. 159).[x]  By calling sensory qualities “intrinsic,” Lockwood appears to mean both that they are intrinsic to the brain (and perhaps other material objects) rather than properties the brain has only in virtue of its relations to other objects, and that the features of these qualities are not entirely determined by the qualities’ relations to other entities.  Hayek denies that they are intrinsic in either sense:  Sensory qualities are properties the brain has only in virtue of its causal relations to external stimuli, and their characteristics are entirely determined by the qualities’ places in the causal network of the collection of brain events they are identical to.  His position thus amounts to a further radicalization of an already radical position.  Not only our knowledge of the external world, but our knowledge of the internal world as well, turns out to be knowledge of relations, of causal structure:

The conclusion to which we have been led means that the order of sensory qualities no less than the order of physical events is a relational order – even though to us, whose mind is the totality of the relations constituting that order, it may not appear as such.  The difference between the physical order of events and the phenomenal order in which we perceive the same events is thus not that only the former is purely relational, but that the relations existing between corresponding events and groups of events in the two orders will be different (Hayek, 1952, p. 19).

It should be clear by now how Hayek’s account of sensory qualities allows him to avoid the slide into panpsychism that threatens other adherents to the sort of mind-brain identity theory we’re examining.  On the view of Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al., sensory qualities are what they are independently of anything else; and thus, since they are arguably essentially mental, if they are the intrinsic properties of such objects in the external world as rocks, tables, chairs, and the like, we are led to the conclusion that rocks, tables, chairs, etc. are in some sense mental in their constitution.  But on Hayek’s view, what gives something the characteristics that make it distinctively sensory is just its place in a certain sort of causal structure.  And it is implausible to suppose that rocks, tables and chairs have any elements that have the sorts of causal relations that the neural events that Hayek identifies with qualia have.  So on Hayek’s account of sensory qualities, there is no threat of panpsychism.  Not only are qualia not the intrinsic properties of material objects, they are not intrinsic properties at all.[xi]

Now this aspect of Hayek’s position, like the other aspects we’ve looked at, is not unique to him.  His characterization of qualia as classificatory or discriminative states of an organism is similar to such recent accounts as that of Daniel Dennett (1993; 1991, Chapter 12).  And as such, it might be thought to be subject to the same objection that might be made against these other accounts, namely that it is conceivable that an organism could have just the discriminative states in question, and yet lack qualia.  But while this objection does, I think, have considerable force against such an account of qualia as it has been developed by writers like Dennett, it has no force against Hayek.  For what gives it force in Dennett’s case, say, is that Dennett appears to take for granted that we have a transparent grasp of the nature of the physical world, and that that world is as physicalism says it is; and then he says that qualia are just states of the sort acceptable to the physicalist.  This makes him as subject to the charge that he “leaves out” qualia as any of the standard, Smart-style mind-brain identity theories discussed earlier.  But on Hayek’s account, like that of Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al., we just don’t have such a grasp of the physical world; and thus we lack the transparent grasp we think we have of what it is for a physical system to instantiate classificatory states.  So unlike Dennett, Hayek cannot be accused of trying to reduce sensory qualities to physical ones (understood in the physicalist’s sense of “physical”).  Qualia are just the discriminative states of an object, the brain, the intrinsic nature of which we know nothing about.  And since we know nothing about it, there is no basis for anyone to object that it is conceivable that the brain could have the discriminative states in question and yet lack qualia.  What we do know about it is that it has a certain kind of causal structure, including that it instantiates certain discriminative states; and in fact, if we have any basis for judging what it is for something to instantiate classificatory or discriminative states (or for determining “what it is like” for them to do so), it is just our knowledge of our own sensory qualities.

This undercuts what no doubt many would put forward as another objection, namely that the sensory experiences familiar to us in everyday life “just don’t seem like” classificatory states.  For as we’ve seen, what classificatory states “seem like” to us, based on our experiences of them (based, say, on our observations of the workings of classificatory systems like computers, in which we take it for granted that we know the intrinsic nature of these objects) is misleading, since our experiences don’t reveal to us what things are really like “in themselves.”  So we have no basis for thinking we know that classificatory states can’t seem like qualia.  And,again, if Hayek is right, if we have any basis for determining what classificatory states seem like, it is nothing other than our own sensory experiences!  The proper response to this objection, then, would be:  “Of course qualia seem like classificatory states.  What qualia seem like is just what classificatory states seem like!”[xii]

I think Hayek’s position here can be clarified further in the following way.  Given that, on Hayek’s view, the character of a given sensory quality is determined by the role it plays in a network of such qualities, his conception of sensory qualities or qualia might properly be described as a functionalist conception, i.e. one according to which to be a given sensory quality is just to play a certain kind of functional role.[xiii]  Now the objections typically made to functionalism parallel those typically made to the mind-brain identity theory: It is charged that it is possible that a system could have just the functional organization we do (or our brains do) and yet lack qualia (Block 1978).  And though this sort of objection has, in my view, considerable force against standard versions of functionalism (just as the parallel objections have considerable force against standard versions of the mind-brain identity theory), a response parallel to that theorists like Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al. give to criticisms of the identity theory can be given to it from a Hayekian point of view:  To make this sort of objection presupposes that we know enough about the intrinsic nature of any system instantiating a given functional organization to be able to judge that it lacks qualia; and given indirect realism and the structuralist theses, we just don’t know enough.  In fact, we might say that from a Hayekian point of view, to imagine a system having just the functional organization we do would just be to imagine a system having the very sorts of experiences we have.  Hayek thus essentially does for functionalism what Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, and the like do for the identity theory.  (And thus, though Hayek identifies sensory qualities with states of the brain, he might better be thought of as a functionalist rather than an identity theorist, since it is the functional roles of those brain states he is most concerned with.)

The basic idea might, finally, be restated this way: On standard, physicalistic mind-brain identity theories, the “give” is all on the side of the mind; the physical and/or neurophysiological properties are taken to be unproblematic, and it is the mental properties, such as qualia, which are to be explained (or explained away) in physicalistic terms.  But on the sort of identity theory advocated by Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al., it’s the other way around, with qualia taken to be what’s unproblematic, so that we’re left with a mind-brain identity theory extremely hospitable to the anti-physicalist.  We might say: It’s not that qualia turn out to be brain states so much as that (some) brain states turn out to be qualia.  Similarly, on the standard functionalist identification of qualia or sensory qualities with functional states (or features of functional states), the “give” is typically all on the side of the qualia (most functionalists being physicalists, after all).  But on the Hayekian approach, it’s the other way around:  It’s not that qualia turn out to be functional states, so much as that functional states (of a certain sort) turn out to be qualia![xiv]

Incidentally, it should by now be clear why -- and how -- we need slightly to reformulate the replies we considered earlier to the standard objections made to the mind-brain identity theory.  As formulated above, they reflected the view of Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al. that qualia are intrinsic properties, having the characteristics they do independently of their places in the causal structure of the brain: Thus Maxwell speaks of qualia as what fill the nodes of the brain’s causal structure, implying that they exist over and above their places in that causal structure (1978).  Given Hayek’s account of qualia, I believe that what we should say  in response to those who object, say, that it is conceivable that an organism could have just the neurophysiological states that we have and yet lack qualia is not (as Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al. might say) that they are in fact imagining only the causal structure of the brain but not what fleshes it out, but that they are in fact failing even adequately to imagine that causal structure.  For on Hayek’s view, it turns out that our awareness of the order of sensory qualities just is awareness of a certain kind of causal structure, namely the causal structure that exists between certain brain events.  My awareness of a collection of sensory qualities just is awareness of a set of events in my brain as causally related to one another in a certain way; it just is awareness of certain kinds of functional states.  So to try to imagine the causal structure of an alleged “zombie’s” brain without imagining at the same time it having sensory qualities simply would not, from the Hayekian point of view, be to imagine its causal structure at all.  (A similar reformulation can be made of the replies given above to the other objections we looked at.)

At any rate, we have seen that Hayek’s adoption of the indirect realist and structuralist theses protects his account of sensory qualities from the sort of objections that might be fatal to similar accounts, just as it protects the sort of mind-brain identity theory he holds in common with Russell, Maxwell, Lockwood, et al. from the sorts of objections typically made to physicalistic identity theories.  And that account of qualia also protects his version of the type of mind-brain identity theory in question from the charge of panpsychism that threatens other such identity theories.  Moreover, the naturalistically Kantian aspect of that account further bolsters the indirect realism and structuralism; for it suggests that the mind simply cannot grasp the world directly and “as it is in itself,” molded as it is by the contingent physiological histories of the individual and species.[xv]  The various elements of Hayek’s position thus mutually reinforce one another, giving each a plausibility it cannot have by itself.  The combination of these elements is what makes Hayek’s position unique; and as what we’ve seen suggests, it might also make it amount to a complete solution to the problem of qualia.[xvi]

As already noted, however, Hayek also argues that, even if that problem is solved, a complete understanding of the place of mind in the natural world is forever to be denied us.  It is now time to see why this is so.

The Limits of the Mind’s Understanding of Itself

We’ve seen that, for Hayek, the character of the classificatory activity that constitutes perceptual experience is determined by the (“pre-sensory”) experiential history of the individual organism and the evolutionary history of the species.  This history shapes the parameters of an organism’s possible perceptual experience by hardwiring into the brain the discriminatory capacities that are most conducive to the survival of the species.  The neural connections determined by this history and themselves determining perceptual experience and the behavioral dispositions we saw that Hayek thinks is tied to it thus embody a sort of a priori knowledge of certain features of the external world:

A certain part at least of what we know at any moment about the external world is therefore not learnt by sensory experience, but is rather implicit in the means through which we can obtain such experience; it is determined by the order of the apparatus of classification which has been built up by pre-sensory linkages [i.e. neural connections].  What we experience consciously as qualitative attributes of the external events is determined by relations of which we are not consciously aware but which are implicit in these qualitative distinctions, in the sense that they affect all that we do in response to these experiences (1952, p. 167).

But as this passage implies, this knowledge is not explicit, but tacit.  What it is that we “know” about the world and how to interact with it is not known consciously.  As Miller puts it, “Evolution adapted the eye to facts about optics, but nowhere in the eye can one find a representation or explanation of those facts” (1996, p. 60).  We don’t know precisely what it is that we know.  And since the knowledge in question is what determines the character of the mind’s classificatory activity, it follows that we don’t know all there is to know about that activity.  Why it is that Hayek thinks the mind can, in principle, never completely understand itself is starting to become clear.

            What Hayek is arguing is that the explicit “knowledge that” something is the case which derives from sensory experience rests on implicit “knowledge how” to get about the world, a kind of knowledge which can never be made completely explicit (1952, p. 39).  The distinction between these two sorts of knowledge and the notion that the former rests ultimately upon the latter are themes discussed, in one way or another, by such writers as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Ryle, and Polanyi.  Like those writers, Hayek thinks that this tacit “knowledge how” underlies also our abilities to take what we are aware of in perception as having a certain significance or meaning and to draw conclusions from it; that is, it forms the basis of intentionality and reason (see especially Hayek 1967, and also 1988, Chapter 1).  And like them again, Hayek holds that the character of this knowledge is partly determined by cultural factors, as well as by biological ones.

            The idea can, I think, be made clearer by thinking of it in terms of the problem of rule-following made famous by Wittgenstein (who was, incidentally, Hayek’s cousin).  The rules that govern the use of language and logical and mathematical practice, Wittgenstein holds, are determined by “forms of life” or sets of cultural practices that communities simply take as given, as what determine what is legitimate and illegitimate but are not themselves subject to evaluation as to their legitimacy (Wittgenstein 1953; also important is his 1969).  Now whether the relevant “community” is supposed to be a given local human culture or the human race as a whole will to some degree determine whether and to what extent all this is given a relativistic-cum-skeptical reading, as will the answer one gives to the question of why exactly some practices and not others are taken as given.  What Wittgenstein’s own view of these matters was is, of course, a subject of great controversy.  Hayek’s view, however, is clear.  The practices in question, which embody the rules that govern language and reason, are determined by cultural evolution as much as by biological evolution.

            Hayek’s notion of cultural evolution is one according to which those practices which best enable a group of human beings to adapt to its environment will be those which survive, for the groups that practice them will be those which proliferate and keep these practices alive; while those practices which are ill-suited to the preservation of a group will die out, since either the group that practices them will itself shrink or die out, or will abandon those practices and adopt those of more successful groups.  That the practices in question will in fact facilitate the adaptation of a group to its environment is not necessarily the reason why the practice is chosen; indeed, it rarely is, for that the practice has this utility is usually only discoverable after the fact if at all.  The practice may in fact be chosen for reasons that have no relationship to its actual value, perhaps even for superstitious reasons.  But this is irrelevant to the causes of the practice’s preservation, as well as to its actual value.  (Compare the situation in biological evolution, where a feature comes about, not because it is advantageous to the organisms possessing it, but because of a random mutation; rather, it is because it turns out to be advantageous that it is preserved or selected for and is of value to the organism.)

            Applied to the rules that form the basis of intentionality and reason, Hayek’s claim is that those rules that aren’t hard-wired into the brain as a result of biological evolution are inculcated by means of this process of cultural evolution.[xvii]  That many of these rules appear to be widespread, even if this can be argued to be not the result of biological evolution, can be accounted for by Hayek’s notion of cultural evolution, since it is likely that groups which follow non-adaptive rules will either shrink or die out or abandon those rules.  Fodor has argued that “Darwinian selection guarantees that organisms either know the elements of logic or become posthumous” (1981, p. 121); Hayek might add: “And even if it doesn’t, cultural evolution will.”  This account of things preserves, I think, the insights of Wittgenstein’s account while avoiding the latter’s potential weaknesses.  For Wittgenstein’s “forms of life” arguably amount to arbitrarily chosen practices that have no necessary connection to the way the world is.  Relativism and skepticism loom.  But on Hayek’s account, that certain practices are preserved is the result of the adaptive advantage they provide (regardless of whether those practicing them are aware of this); and that they provide this advantage is certainly strong evidence for their corresponding to some extent to the way the world is.

            But again, the thing to keep in mind here is that these rules are not necessarily consciously chosen for their utility; and in fact their utility might be quite unknown or even unknowable.  Indeed, they are not necessarily consciously chosen at all.  We just abide by them, without realizing it.  The rules by which we perceive, understand, and reason about the world are not themselves perceived or understood by us, nor did we arrive at them by a process of reasoning.  They are inculcated by biological and cultural evolution.  As Hayek sums it up: “Mind is not a guide but a product of cultural evolution, and is based more on imitation than on insight or reason” (1988, p. 21); and  “It is less accurate to suppose that thinking man creates and controls his cultural evolution than it is to say that culture, and evolution, created his reason” (p. 22).

            Because the rules which govern its operations – which govern perceiving and reasoning – are not consciously chosen or known but are presupposed in all conscious activity and all knowing, the mind does not fully understand itself.  But even if this is in fact true, need it be?  Couldn’t we come to discover these rules and state them explicitly, thereby attaining a full understanding of ourselves?  Hayek answers that this is impossible.  For even if we come to understand some of the tacit knowledge that guides our mental processes, this understanding itself would be governed by yet higher-order rules which would remain tacit or inexplicit:

It is important not to confuse the contention that any such system [as the mind] must always act on some rules which it cannot communicate with the contention that there are particular rules which no such system could ever state.  All the former contention means is that there will always be some rules governing a mind which that mind in its then prevailing state cannot communicate, and that, if it ever were to acquire the capacity of communicating these rules, this would presuppose that it had acquired further higher rules which make the communication of the former possible but which themselves will still be incommunicable (1967, p. 62).

            Hayek’s claim here can, I think, be illuminated by comparison with the notion of “the Background” (of tacit knowledge) developed by John Searle (1983, Chapter 5; 1992, Chapter 8).  Searle argues that intentional mental states – beliefs, desires, and the like – have the content they do only by virtue of their place in a vast network of intentional states: The desire to run for the presidency of the United States, for example, has the intentional content it has only in the context of other intentional states such as the belief that the United States has periodic elections, the desire that voters cast their votes for one, and so forth; and if the other intentional states were different, the intentional content of the desire would be different.  But this network itself functions against a background of capacities which are themselves non-intentional, non-representational.  The sort of “capacities” Searle has in mind are essentially the things we have been calling pieces of tacit knowledge, i.e. the presuppositions of  everyday conscious and explicit reasoning which are rarely or never themselves made explicit or consciously considered.  And because they aren’t, they aren’t, strictly speaking, intentional or representational at all.  Commonsense realism about the external world is, Searle says, an example of such a capacity, something that isn’t really a belief but a presupposition of our beliefs:

My commitment to ‘realism’ is exhibited by the fact that I live the way I do, I drive my car, drink my beer, write my articles, give my lectures, and ski my mountains.  Now in addition to all of these activities, each a manifestation of my Intentionality, there isn’t a further ‘hypothesis’ that the real world exists (1983, pp. 158-9).

            Now that the Network of intentional states rests on a Background of tacit “knowledge” (Searle capitalizes the terms to signify their status as technical terms) is true not only in fact, but of necessity, in Searle’s view.  For since the intentional states which make up the Network get their content from other such states, if there were no non-intentional Background, then in tracing the links that give any particular intentional state its content, we would be led into an infinite regress (1983, pp. 152-3).  Even if, in trying to undertake some activity, I consciously follow explicitly formulated rules, those rules themselves are capable of various interpretations; and the same is true of any further rules I might appeal to in order to interpret the first set.  So ultimately, I must simply act in accordance with some interpretation of some set of rules, without explicitly or consciously choosing to do so; otherwise I would never get started.[xviii]  (And though Searle doesn’t give this example, we might also think of Lewis Carroll’s famous parable “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” (1977, pp. 431-4), in which the hapless Achilles finds that he is unable to proceed in running through a simple modus ponens argument if he tries explicitly to formulate each assumption lying behind the inference.)       

            The way this all fits in with, and is reinforced by, Hayek’s overall position is as follows.  As we’ve seen, perceptual experience is, on his account, just the brain’s classificatory or differentiating activity in response to the stimuli impinging upon it.  This activity consists in the forming and strengthening or weakening of neural connections and sets of neural connections, different sets of neural connections corresponding to different attributes of a stimulus and perception of the stimulus amounting to the “superimposition” or co-occurrence of impulses in the various connections corresponding to its attributes.  Perception of stimuli thus requires that there be a larger number of sets of connections corresponding to various possible attributes than there are stimuli – to perceive even a single stimulus like an orange, for example, I must possess multiple sets of neural connections, corresponding to orangeness, roundness, and the like.  Now this process is constrained by the evolutionary history of the species and the past history of the individual, the latter partly consisting of the inculcation of cultural practices that give perceptual experiences their cognitive significance.  These constraints amount to tacit rules that determine whether a stimulus is to be classified one way or another (i.e. whether perceptual experience is going to have this quality or that), what behavioral responses to stimuli we are disposed to, and what inferences we are disposed to make from our experiences; and if these rules become explicit, it is only because of the operation of higher-order tacit rules.

            Such rules consist ultimately in just the existence of certain higher-order neural connections which govern the classificatory connections that constitute experience, though, and the making explicit of them just amounts to the forming of yet higher-order classificatory neural connections.  And as in the case of perception of external stimuli, this is a matter of the superimposition of connections corresponding to different aspects of the rules.  So again, there must be a larger number of possible sets of connections corresponding to possible attributes of rules than of rules themselves.  This idea is what Hayek has in mind when he says, in the passage quoted earlier, that “any apparatus of classification must possess a structure of a higher degree of complexity than is possessed by the objects which it classifies” (1952, p. 185).  And it follows from it that it is impossible for all the rules that govern the mind to be made explicit;  for to make explicit or classify all the rules governing it, the mind would have to be more complex than itself   (1952, Chapter 8, Section 6, passim).    

            These, then, are the sorts of considerations that lead Hayek to conclude that the operations of the mind, particularly in respect of their intentional and cognitive aspects, rest on a foundation of tacit knowledge which cannot, in principle, be made fully explicit.[xix]  And since it cannot, it will forever be impossible for us completely to understand those operations.  We are simply unable to get outside our own skins, as it were, and survey the systems that constitute our minds; for we are those systems.[xx]  This dovetails with the indirect realist, structuralist, and Kantian aspects of Hayek’s position: Our conception of the world is unavoidably conditioned by built-in constraints, and of necessity, we can’t step outside those constraints, see what the world is like independently of them, and note just how they condition our grasp of that world; and even if we could, it would only be by virtue of guidance by further constraints which we would not thereby have stepped outside of.

Conclusion

Hayek’s philosophy of mind, I have argued, suggests a complete solution to the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness, the problem of sensory qualities or qualia.  But it also implies that a complete understanding of the mind, particularly of the features of intentionality and rationality, is beyond us (though importantly, it does not imply that no understanding at all of these features is possible).  In these respects it represents, as I noted earlier, something of a reversal of what appears to be the conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind, according to which a solution to the problem of qualia is nowhere in sight, perhaps even impossible, while the other problems are relatively simple, perhaps even already solved.  If only as a challenge to current assumptions, then, it is worthy of our attention.  It is even more so if it is correct.

I believe that it may very well be correct.  To be sure, I have not argued in any detail for the various elements of Hayek’s position.  (The paper is long enough as it is.)  My purpose here was primarily to try to summarize and (hopefully!) make more widely known a body of important but little known ideas.  And in any case, those elements have, individually, each been ably argued for by a large number of writers.  What I have tried to do in defense of Hayek’s account is show how his unique combination of these various elements enables the objections typically made to each of them to be overcome.  And I will say one more thing in support of it.  Russell said of his own version of the mind-brain identity theory we’ve looked at: “In favour of the theory I have been advocating, the most important thing to be said is that it removes a mystery” (1956, p. 153).  I believe that this is even more true of Hayek’s position – at least in respect of what it says about the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness.[xxi]

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