Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition

To know is to cognize, to cognize is to be a culturally bounded, rationality-bounded and environmentally located agent. Knowledge and cognition are thus dual aspects of human sociality. If social epistemology has the formation, acquisition, mediation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge in complex communities of knowers as its subject matter, then its third party character is essentially stigmergic. In its most generic formulation, stigmergy is the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment. Extending this notion one might conceive of social stigmergy as the extra-cranial analog of an artificial neural network providing epistemic structure. This paper recommends a stigmergic framework for social epistemology to account for the supposed tension between individual action, wants and beliefs and the social corpora. We also propose that the so-called "extended mind" thesis offers the requisite stigmergic cognitive analog to stigmergic knowledge. Stigmergy as a theory of interaction within complex systems theory is illustrated through an example that runs on a particle swarm optimization algorithm

Knowledge Questions: Hayek, Keynes and Beyond

This paper discusses the “knowledge problem” in terms of both the use and generation of knowledge. This is analyzed in the context of Hayek's failure to respond to the “Keynes Challenge”—the claim that markets fail to produce relevant knowledge—by suggesting that in the aftermath of The General Theory he was not well-positioned to address that problem. Ironically, his post-World War II work in cognitive psychology, The Sensory Order, offers a theory of the generation of knowledge which can provide a useful analogy for understanding the generation of market-level knowledge. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003Hayek, Keynes, knowledge,

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Margolis, Thomas McQuade, Gordon Tullock, and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. The usual caveat applies. F.A. Hayek’s theoretical psychology was developed in his 1952 book, The Sensory Order. Because economists have increasingly become interested in cognition and psychology, this work has valuable implications for economic science. Nevertheless, these implications have sometimes been obscured by bogus interpretations of the book. We address down such interpretations of Hayek and suggest some ways in which the message of The Sensory Order matters for economic research today. 1 I

Carabelli & de Vecchi on Keynes and Hayek

Carabelli & De Vecchi dispute competing interpretations of Keynes and Hayek, including ours. They mistakenly impute to us the view that Keynes was inconsistent. They deny that Keynes had a subjectivist theory of expectations by noting his rationalist philosophy. We agree that Keynes had a rationalist philosophy, but deny that this implies an objectivist theory of economic expectations. We persist in viewing Keynes as a subjectivist regarding expectations. This short paper reviews these issues and a few other contentious matters regarding Keynes and Hayek.