From cognitive autonomy to the criticism of socio-cultural determinism

pp. 55-74

in: Francesco Di Iorio, Cognitive autonomy and methodological individualism, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

In Chap.  2 I analyzed Hayek's criticism of behaviorism and other psychological theories. The purpose of Chap.  3 is to show that similar arguments concerning the interpretative nature of cognition and the complexity of mind, which Hayek developed against materialistic psychologies, can also be used to undermine the socio-cultural determinism of methodological holism. The possibility that socio-cultural determinism can be criticized by using the idea that the mind is a self-organizing system is discussed only briefly in Hayek's (1952b) The Sensory Order. However, the way in which Hayek used this idea to challenge socio-cultural determinism was his most original criticism of the theory of the heteronomy of sociological holism.