1 DRAFT: DO NOT CITE

Mindscapes and Landscapes: Hayek and Simon on Cognitive Extension

Leslie Marsh Deans Office, Medical School, University of British Columbia

In Hayek and Behavioural Economics, Palgrave Macmillan, Eds., Roger Frantz and

Robert Leeson. http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=509789

Abstract: Hayeks and Simons social externalism runs on a shared presupposition: mind is constrained in its computational capacity to detect, harvest, and assimilate data generated by the infinitely fine-grained and perpetually dynamic characteristic of experience in complex social environments. For Hayek, mind and sociality are co-evolved spontaneous orders, allowing little or no prospect of comprehensive explanation, trapped in a hermeneutically sealed, i.e. inescapably context bound, eco-system. For Simon, it is the simplicity of mind that is the bottleneck, overwhelmed by the ambient complexity of the environmental. Since on Simons account complexity is unidirectional, Simon is far more ebullient about the prospects of explanation. Hayeks social externalism functions as a kind of distributed extra-neural memory store manifest as dynamic spontaneous orders. Simons organizational rule-governed externalism negotiates the inner world (the mind) with the outer world through a homeostatic interface that offloads the cognitive burden into the environment. Their respective externalisms may differ in detail but not in spirit in that it ameliorates their shared presupposition of cognitive constraint. Even though any optimization talk for Hayek and Simon is objectionable, knowledge acquisition can be represented by a contextualized stigmergic swarm optimization algorithm that gives due emphasis to both the individual and the environment. The key insight is that perfect knowledge is unnecessary, impracticable and indeed irrelevant if one understands the mechanism at work in complex sociality, a stigmergic sociality that in effect augments or scaffolds cognition. Keywords: Friedrich Hayek, Herbert Simon, cognitive closure, bounded rationality, complexity, extended mind, particle swarm optimization, stigmergy.

I: A Shared Presupposition

Is complexity primarily an epistemological or an ontological phenomenon? Is there even

any coherence at all in suggesting the latter ontological variety? Two of the twentieth

centurys greatest minds did approach this philosophical chestnut Friedrich von Hayek

and Herbert Simon.1 Hayek and Simon share a key philosophical presupposition: that is,

mind is constrained in its computational capacity to detect, harvest, and assimilate

(crunch or process) data data generated by the infinitely fine-grained and perpetually

dynamic characteristic of experience in complex social environments.2 To ameliorate this

state of affairs, Hayek and Simon proffer an adaptive externalist theory of mind to spread

2 the cognitive burden. For Hayek the social and artifactual world functions as a kind of

distributed extra-neural memory store manifest as dynamic traditions, custom and

practice the sine qua non of acting, thinking, and communicating. For Simon, the

inner world (i.e. the mind) has a homeostatic interface (a system that regulates its

internal environment towards equilibrium), with the outer world modulated through the

artifactual environment, most notably social institutions that give conceptual outline to

thought and determine action. Both Hayek and Simon rejected the pernicious fiction of

the unvarnished Cartesian reasoner manifest in the derivative guises of, on the one hand,

central planning-type rationalism, and on the other hand, homo economicus so favored by

orthodox economics.

Complexity is the touchstone for both Hayek and Simon. For Hayek, mind and

sociality are classic instantiations of mutually reinforcing spontaneous orders. Simon, by

contrast, takes the view that it is the environment in which complexity abides and not in

the mind. There are problems with both Hayeks and Simons positions. With Hayek one

cannot be sure if hes making an epistemological claim or a metaphysical claim. With

Simon how does one account for the unidirectional account of complexity? That is, if one

accepts the presupposition of mind being highly adaptive and plastic (as he does) in

negotiating an ambient complex environmental soup, why then would mind not reflect

this external complexity? Part of the problem in approaching both Hayek and Simon lies

in giving some specification to this thing called complexity, a term subject to much

obfuscation even before it is layered with the agnoseology or the theory of

unknowability literature (Rescher, 2009, p. ix) that Hayek and Simon partake in.

3 Hayek and Simon are, to use the current argot, well recognized as situated

theorists and it is from this perspective that they are so fertilely examined. Both sought

to overcome the notion of abstract Cartesianism on the one hand, and an inflated social

ontology on the other hand, that paid scant regard to the individual mind. Consider these

two similar constructivist slogans3:

Insofar as behavior is a function of learned technique rather than innate characteristics of the human information-processing system, our knowledge of behavior must be regarded as sociological in nature rather than psychological . . . (Simon, 1996, pp. 54, 62, 76). It is probably no more justified to claim that thinking man has created his culture than that culture created his reason (Hayek, 1952/1979, p. 155).

It is this situated perspective that motivates their social externalism. Broadly speaking,

externalism is the thesis that an individuals environment has some causal determinant on

the content of the individual mind. It is social in the sense used here that Hayek and

Simon are primarily concerned with social institutions. By contrast, Cartesian

individualism (or internalism) is internal in the sense that knowledge relies solely upon,

or is fashioned by, the operation of the cognizers mental states without any appeal to

external considerations. Simon got a boost from David Chalmers and Andy Clarks

seminal paper The Extended Mind (Chalmers & Clark, 1998) in which they

acknowledge Herbert Simon as providing some inspiration for their extended mind thesis,

a species of externalism. Positing the notion of the extended mind forces one to take

seriously the idea that cognition has an embodied, social, and artifactual dimension;

indeed, mind exists at the intersection of this trinity.4 Simon in turn credited and endorsed

Hayek for providing the key philosophical presupposition that underwrites cognitive

extension (Simon, 1996, p. 34). Hayeks work in the philosophy of mind is now

4 garnering much attention (Feser, 2006; Butos & Koppl, 2007; Butos, 2010; Marsh, 2010;

Marsh, in press); Simon is of course a grandee within cognitive science circles.

The discussion unfolds as follows. Section II outlines some of the general issues in

conceptualizing complexity. Section III examines the cognitive dimension to knowledge

acquisition referred to variously as the agnoseology or the theory of unknowability

literature. Sections IV and V explicate Hayeks notion of cognitive closure and

Simons notion of bounded rationality respectively. The penultimate section recasts

both Hayek and Simon as proffering a stigmergic variant of cognitive extension. The

final section offers some concluding thoughts.

II: Complexity: Some Basic Distinctions

Whether or not one takes complexity as an epistemological or an ontological thesis,

complexity-talk is inextricably a cognitive phenomenon: complexity refers to some

observing system (Biggiero, 2001). Or as Rescher puts it: [C]omplexity . . . pertains in

the first instance to cognitive artifacts . . . (Rescher, 1998, p. 16).5 Mind and complexity

are, Janus-like, inextricably linked: to be sure, Hayek and Simon understood this better

than most. This said, the immediate task at hand is to try and get a handle on the highly

slippery concept that is complexity.

As Nicholas Rescher (1998, p. 8) says: There is no agreed upon definition of

complexity any more than there is one of chair despite the fact that these days

complexity is all the rage within the academy and the popular imagination. Herein lies

5 the danger: to invoke the concept without much conceptual discrimination empties any

concept of meaning. Hayek, for one, in Bruce Caldwells words, [b]y the 1960s Hayek

was seeing complex orders everywhere (Caldwell, 2000, p. 19). Simons definition of

complexity (Simon, 1962; cf. Rescher, 1998, p. 22, note 14) is woefully inadequate:

There are some properties common to many complex systems. Complex Systems are those that are made up of a large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way. Given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole.

Complexity studies is a veritable smorgasbord of overlapping disciplines and research

projects for a birds eye view see the diagram below.

6

Figure 1: Made available courtesy of Hiroki Sayama, Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group, Binghamton University, State University of New York.

This diagram sets out in a comprehensive and clear way the various projects and sub-

fields that comprises complex systems studies. The particular conglomeration that this

paper is concerned with is collective behavior, specifically particle swarm

optimization/stigmergy more on this in section VI. In clearing some distinctive

conceptual space one must test a given concept for:

7 (a) logical independence

(b) extensional and intensional adequacy

(c) functionality.

(a) Logical independence merely means that a given concept shouldnt be analyzable in

terms that presuppose that very concept. As Neil Johnson (2009, p. 3) rightly says:

Take a look in many dictionaries, and you will find Complexity defined along the lines of The behavior shown by a Complex System. Then look up Complex System, and you will probably see A system whose behavior exhibits Complexity.

An example of this can be found in Knauff and Wolf (2010, p. 100) in their introduction

to a Special Issue on Complex Cognition:

The crucial characteristic of complex cognition is that it takes place under complex conditions in which a multitude of cognitive processes interact with one another or with other noncognitive processes.

(b) Extensional and intensional adequacy is philosophical jargon for the idea that a

concept, say complexity, should enable one to pick out and identify all and only the

things to which the concept applies.

(c) The functional adequacy of a given concept cuts across (a) and (b) and asks why

would we need a given concept what work or role would a given concept have to

fulfill? (In addition to epistemic and ontological modes of complexity, Rescher

offers a third mode functional complexity (Rescher, 1998, p. 9)).

By way of a first pass, Melanie Mitchell (2009, pp. 12-13) suggests that there are three

properties common to all instantiations of complexity:

8 1. Complex collective behavior i.e. emergent phenomena not reducible to

individual components

2. Signaling and information processing there is informational flow within and

between systems

3. Adaptation there is an inherent dynamicism manifest as learning or evolutionary

processes.

Though 1-3 are perfectly sound typical features can they be viewed as jointly and

severally characterizing complex systems? If items 1-3 define complex systems then its

puzzling as to why Mitchell later acknowledges that a single definition of- and

measurement of- complexity is not forthcoming even at complexitys Mecca, the Santa

Fe Institute (Mitchell, 2009, pp. 94-95, 301). Specifying necessary and sufficient features

is bound to defeat most attempts at defining open concepts: Mitchell concedes as much

(Mitchell, 2009, p. 297). Complex systems are at best a family resemblance concept with

no single property in common (Wittgenstein, 1953, I.66). This would be the approach to

counter the philosophically illiterate criticism heaped by science journalist John Horgan

upon the cogency of the very concept of complexity science as reported by Mitchell

(2009, pp. 291-292, 299).

It might be argued that the common denominator and therefore the defining

feature of complexity is emergence. But again things are not that straightforward. As

David Chalmers points out, there needs to be a more adequate analysis of the concept of

emergence (Chalmers, 2006). Chalmers distinguishes between strong emergence and

weak emergence. The former is the idea that the high-level phenomenon arises from the

low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon are not deducible even in

9 principle from truths in the low-level domain. The latter is the idea that the high-level

phenomenon arises from the low-level domain, but truths concerning that phenomenon

are unexpected given the principles governing the low-level domain. This distinction does

not seem to be made within the literature: emergence is taken as an undifferentiated

conflation of weak and strong variants even though novel features might well be a

function of theoretical impoverishment.6 The greater complexity of social phenomena

(filled with meaning and significance) renders controlled experimentation

impracticable and lessens the precision of the social sciences (or so it is usually conceded

by Hayek and Popper).

III: Taking Ignorance Seriously

As already indicated the other component to thinking about complexity resides in the

realm of epistemology. Epistemology in the Plato-Descartes tradition, besides being

highly individualistic, i.e. individualistic (or internal) in the sense that knowledge relies

solely upon the operation of mental states without any appeal to external considerations

is primarily concerned with justification. It therefore has a distinctly positive concern.

Ignorance, for want of a better term, by contrast does not play a leading role in

epistemology.

The sort of ignorance we are concerned with here is inevitable ignorance

(Rescher, 2009, p. 2) the idea marking what we cannot know as opposed to culpable

ignorance what we dont know or what we should know but dont, or as others term it

deliberate or inadvertent neglect, secrecy or suppression, unquestioned tradition (or

10 avoidable) cultural political selectivity (Proctor, 2008). But neither are we concerned

with insoluble ignorance (Rescher, 2009, p. 11). Preeminent examples of insolubilia

typically come from the realm of theology, a domain that cannot be considered a proper

object of epistemological study.7

When Hayek delivered his Nobel Prize Lecture entitled The Pretence of Knowledge he

might well have had Socrates words in the deepest recesses of his mind. Plato in the

Apology (29a) has Socrates say:

For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance?

Well-known epistemologist Susan Haack opened up a recent talk with the following, now

infamous words, from Donald Rumsfeld:

. . . as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns the ones we dont know we dont know.

Despite Rumsfelds awkward phrasing, Haack saw that it brought to light a serious

epistemological point the idea of the unknown unknowns. Haack elucidates what she

has previously termed as the Rumsfeld Problem (Haack, 2008) as follows.

To assess how good the evidence was that, e.g., Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence services needed to know not only where the available evidence [the knowns] pointed, and how secure it was, but also how comprehensive it was; and to do that, they needed to know what relevant evidence there might be that they didnt have [the unknowns]. Unfortunately, though they knew what some of the relevant evidence was that they needed but didnt have [the known unknowns], they didnt realize that other evidence, evidence

11 they also didnt have, was also relevant [the unknown unknowns]. (Haack, 2011).

At first blush does it make any sense to posit the idea of unknown unknowns? Were

they to be identified as such then surely wed know something. The idea of unknown

unknowns is a neglected part of epistemology and cuts across the epistemology of

complexity in all its guises including the philosophy of sociality and the philosophy of

mind. Hayek (1967, pp. 22-42) certainly thought that epistemological modesty was vital:

It is high time, however, that we take our ignorance more seriously. As Popper and others have pointed out, the more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.

Consider the following illustration of the epistemological paradox that lies at the heart of

positive knowledge:

Figure 2: If the circumference marks the bounds between what we know and what we dont know, then with the increased body of knowledge at time t ignorance increases!8

The perpetual limiting condition is what (to borrow a phrase from Colin McGinn, 1989)

Im terming as cognitive closure. The notion of cognitive closure, though unfashionable

and controversial, is hardly an eccentric position; it has a long-standing provenance and

can be found in different guises in recent philosophy of mind (McGinn, 1989 and Stoljar,

Body of

knowledge at time t

Body of knowledge

at time t

12 2006). Despite the aforementioned paradox, neither Hayek nor Simon are saying that

scientific or social progress is not possible. What they are saying is that one has to be

very careful about characterizing progress progress is not a straightforward linear

phenomenon and that epistemic modesty should be an epistemic virtue. The next two

sections examine Hayeks and Simons notions of cognitive closure.

III: Hayeks Double Hermeneutic

Hayeks cognitive closure position has strong commonalities with philosophers of mind

such as Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, and Colin McGinn, their conclusions collected

under the rubric of new mysterianism (Flanagan, 1984). Mysterianism connotes the

idea that while naturalism is true, the human mind is terminally constrained in being able

to explain itself so whatever we discover about the causal states of consciousness, there

will still remain an explanatory gap. Though Hayeks tome in philosophical

psychology (Hayek, 1952/1976) is centrally concerned with the mind-body problem, the

issue is emblematic of a generalized cognitive and epistemic predicament that was his

lifelong concern. That is, what is the precise nature of our lack of knowledge: is it

conceptual, empirical, terminal or surmountable? Eric Dietrich and Valerie Hardcastle

have an epistemically motivated view that consciousness has an essential property that

prevents it from ever being explained, philosophically or scientifically (Dietrich & Gray

Hardcastle, 2004). This amounts to a deflationary view that, on acceptance, does away

with standard philosophical metaphysical talk. Ostensibly, their distinctive position turns

on the idea that even if there were scientific progress in matters of consciousness,

13 explanation would still not be forthcoming. Hayeks double hermeneutic turns upon the

inextricable link between mind and sociality: whatever mind may be, how does it

apprehend the natural and social world, a world that significantly constitutes the mind?

The brain is both the object of interpretation as well as the interpreter: therefore the

brain is itself a hermeneutic device (rdi et al, 2006). For Hayek the idea of the mind

explaining itself entails a logical contradiction (Hayek, 1952/1976, 8.91; 1952/1979, p.

380). Hayek is acutely aware that self-referentiality leads to dead ends, the instrument of

explanation simultaneously being the object of explanation cannot get us anywhere

(Hayek, 1952/1976, 8.67, 5.91, 8.26, 8.69, 8.80; cf. Rescher, 1998, pp. 151-164 and

Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 49).9 Any explanation of consciousness must be condemned

to a practical dualism (Hayek, 1952/1976, 8.87).

Three related points need to be made. First, Hayek is not recommending a

Cartesian dualism, but simply that despite the underlying physical basis of consciousness,

all we really have to work with and through is a folk psychology that posits two realms

the sensory order and the physical order. Second, Hayek is through and through a

naturalist, a position he has consistently held throughout his career. Hayek fully

acknowledges that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, but determining what the

precise relation of consciousness is to the physical world is constitutionally beyond

mankinds ken (Hayek, 1952/1976, 1:11). Third, Hayek is not a naturalistic agnostic,

that is, the view that science currently cannot offer an explanation of the mindbody

relationship, but in principle it could. Hayeks pessimism manifest in his discussion of

cognitive closure and qualia (the felt qualitative aspect to experience) marks a deep

philosophical issue: that is, the view that science is explanatorily closed (Hayek,

14 1952/1976, 1.88, 8.31). Were Hayek an agnostic he would take the view that the

ultimate explanations provided by science are in need of supplementation (Hayek,

1952/1976, 1:13; 8:26; 8:31; Hayek, 1952, x35). Rescher also marks this point by

saying that there is no cognitively satisfactory basis for maintaining the completeness of

science in a rationally cogent way (Rescher, 1998, p. 48). Science has failed miserably

at assimilating the irreducible phenomenal aspect of conscious experience (Hayek,

1952/1979, p. 36) and will continue to do so. For Hayek it is the capacity of mind as a

pattern detector that holds out the nave promise that any and all patterns or structures

can, in principle, be laid bear to analysis whatever the subject domain. It would be fair to

suggest that this concern lay at the root of his anti-rationalism or critique of scientism in

the social domain. Despite the shared presupposition of cognitive closure here we find the

greatest point of divergence between Hayeks ostensible pessimism and Simons psycho-

ebullience:

For the first time in its history as a science, psychology may now be in possession of techniques that are commensurate in power with the complexity of the phenomena we seek to understand and explain (Simon, cited in Crowther-Heyck, 2005, p. 257).

It is difficult to discern what motivates Simons view. Suffice to say, this tension might

have arisen because Simon may have always harbored a residual optimism of the early

days of artificial intelligence and was still very much a cognitivist.

IV: Bounded Rationality

For Simon complexity is an external phenomenon; it is the intrinsic richness of the social

and artifactual environment (the former, properly speaking is very much an artifact) that

15 the world apprehends through the senses and the information about the world is stored in

long-term memory. Social complexity for Hayek and Simon offers both the fabric of

possibility and of inherent constraint (c.f. Rescher, 1998, p. 191). Epistemic and cognitive

efficiencies, well beyond the capacity of any one mind, are facilitated through the

ubiquity of sociocultural trellising and dynamic looping. Human beings:

can store away in memory a great furniture of information that can be evoked by appropriate stimuli . . . [I] would like to view this information-packed memory less as a part of the organism than as a part of the environment to which it adapts (Simon, 1996, p. 53).

For Simon, rationality is not bounded by the Humean passions but by the structural

limitations of the brain as a computational device. Human cognition is constrained by the

inextricably linked problem of sheer volume of data and computational speed available

(Conlisk, 2004, p. 193). For Hayek, the mere possibility of thought can exist only within

a matrix of tradition, custom and practice to dispense with these resources would not

only be vulgarly rationalistic but irrational. Similarly, for Simon, rationality can only be

coherently detected and specified within a context a context of social organization

whether it be the family, the school, the company and so on.10 Social organization

provides the scaffolding for reason and not (as Crowther-Heyck so elegantly puts it)

amplifiers of unreason (Crowther-Heyck, 2005, p. 47). On Simons account rationality

takes place, indeed is really only possible only within an institutional context why else

would these institutions have arisen? Rationality, therefore, is an adaptive ability in the

face of complexity. It should be noted that being obfusticated by complexity does not

entail that an optimal resolution cannot be found but that it cannot be solved without

some other steep transactional cost e.g. time (Simon, 1972, p. 164). Simons work in

16 administrative theory is the source of his notion of bounded rationality and distinguishes

administrative science from economics whereas economic man maximizes,

administrative man satisfices, satisficing being a strategy for operating in complex

settings with incomplete information because they have not the wits to maximize

(Simon, 1956, p. 136). Agents, are therefore prone to identify with sub-goals, that is, the

searching for a good enough action rather than optimal ones.

Simon rejected, as did Hayek, the pernicious fiction of perfect profit-maximizing

rationality so characteristic of homo economicus.11

The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality (Simon, 1957, p. 198).

The upshot for Simon is that cognitive agents simply do not have sufficient means for

storing information in memory to enable them to apply the most efficient strategy unless

the presentation of stimuli is greatly slowed down or the subjects are permitted external

memory aids or both (Simon, 1996, pp. 61, 99-100).

A recurrent problem for Simon is if he accepts the plasticity of mind (and he

does) and its development as a spontaneous order, how does he reconcile this with the

idea that complexity is merely an external phenomenon? Simon might well respond by

saying that relatively speaking, the individual mind is simple compared with the

emergent sociality generated by multitudes of other individual minds. Godfrey-Smiths

suggestion that there is no necessary link between environmental complexity and organic

complexity (if there were, a given organic system would be implausibly large and

cumbersome) could come to Simons rescue (Godfrey-Smith, 1996, p. 59). This would

explain Simons externalism, i.e. offloading the cognitive burden on the environment.

17 Yet another problem that Simon faces is in his idea of a homeostatic interface between

mind and environment. Though he doesnt mentioned Simon specifically, Godfrey-Smith

makes the point that perhaps intelligence is not a genuinely homeostatic phenomenon

(1996, p. 79).

VI: The Ant on the Beach

For Simon, ants (and indeed humans) viewed as behaving systems, are really quite

simple. The apparent complexity of the ants behavior is largely a reflection of the

complexity in which it finds itself:

We watch an ant make his laborious way across a wind- and wave-molded beach. He moves ahead, angles to the right to ease his climb up a steep dune let, detours around a pebble, stops for a moment to exchange information with a compatriot . . . [I]t is a sequence of irregular, angular segments not quite a random walk, for it has an underlying sense of direction, of aiming toward a goal . . . [H]e has a general sense of where home lies, but he cannot foresee all the obstacles between. He must adapt his course repeatedly to the difficulties he encounters and often detour uncrossable barriers. His horizons are very close, so that he deals with each obstacle as he comes to it . . . [V]iewed as a geometric figure, the ants path is irregular, complex, hard to describe. But its complexity is really a complexity in the surface of the beach, not a complexity in the ant (Simon, 1996, p. 51).

According to Andy Clark, the dean of the extended mind theorists, [M]uch of what goes

on in the complex world of humans, may thus, somewhat surprisingly, be understood in

terms of so-called stigmergic algorithms (Clark, 1996, p. 279). Ubiquitous instantiations

of stigmergic systems include stock markets, economies, traffic patterns, supply logistics

and resource allocation, and urban development. Simons ant example and Hayeks

notion of spontaneous order are stigmergic in all but name.12 The point of Simons ant

example, which he modeled in much greater detail in an earlier paper (Simon, 1956), is to

18 show that the postulating of a utility function is superfluous to theories of rational

behavior, behavior that is better conceived as a theory of perception and cognition.

In what follows, the mechanism of stigmergy is explicated by recasting Simons ant

example as a swarm algorithm. Clarks claim is substantiated by recasting Hayeks

spontaneous order and Simons bounded rationality as stigmergic social externalism since

both share the twofold presupposition that (a) no one mind has global knowledge and (b)

calculation or coordination is done through the social artifacts, a dynamicism of

iterated looping of behaviors.

Zoologist Pierre-Paul Grass (who coined the term stigmergy) discovered in the

coordination and regulation of termite colonies the phenomenon of indirect

communication mediated by modifications of the environment (Grass, 1959). Grass

sought to understand the mechanisms underlying the emergence, regulation, and control

of collective activities in social insects. Put in economists terms, Grass sought to

address the coordination paradox. How does one reconcile prima facie chaotic behavior

at the individual level with the global/societal level of the termite colony? Grass

observed that the coordination and regulation of the termites impressive building

activities did not depend on the individual agents themselves, but were subject to a

cybernetic feedback loop through pheromone traces and environmental modifications

made by other ants. In other words, the environment acts as a kind of distributed memory

system. Though Hayek and Simon took economists optimization-talk13 to task, the

discussion that follows of particle swarm optimization (PSO formulated by Kennedy et

19 al., 2001), is inherently stigmergic in that each individual contributes to the evolution of

collective knowledge, which in turn impacts upon the individual. PSO is a social

algorithm and runs on a socio-cognitive model of social influence and learning

embodying the three standard social principles; the ability to evaluate, compare, and

imitate.14 PSO seems particularly well suited to the way in which Simons and Hayeks

social externalism operates as extended cognitive systems. It might be suggested that the

concept of stigmergy, typically associated with ant- or swarm-like agents with minimal

cognitive ability, is inappropriately deployed in the human-human realm. Simon

preempts this criticism: There is nothing particularly remarkable about this description

of rational choice, except that it differs so sharply from the more sophisticated models of

human rationality that have been proposed by economists and others (Simon, 1956, p.

130). To make the point in the explication that follows, ant is substituted by an individual

human agent. In any event, Simons homo adaptivus is relatively simple, necessarily

existing in a complex environment about which it has only partial knowledge

stigmergically ameliorated through environmental interaction.

The starting point of my reconstruction is as per Simon (1956, p. 130)15:

The organisms life space may be described as a surface over which it can locomote. Most of the surface is perfectly bare, but at isolated, widely scattered points there are little heaps of food, each adequate for a meal. The organism's vision permits it to see, at any moment, a circular portion of the surface about the point in which it is standing. It is able to move at some fixed maximum rate over the surface. It metabolizes at a given average rate and is able to store a certain amount of food energy, so that it needs to eat a meal at certain average intervals. It has the capacity, once it sees a food heap, to proceed toward it at the maximum rate of locomotion. The problem of rational choice is to choose its path in such a way that it will not starve. Now I submit that a rational way for the organism to behave is the following:

20 (a) it explores the surface at random, watching for a food heap;

(b) when it sees one, it proceeds to it and eats (food getting); (c) if the total consumption of energy during the average time required, per meal, for exploration and food getting is less than the energy of the food consumed in the meal, it can spend the remainder of its time in resting.

Consider a group of n blind individuals randomly placed in a landscape at time 0.16 The

group has the task of finding the lowest point in the landscape. Every minute (i.e. at time

t), each individual i moves ki(t) steps in a given direction (e.g. specified by the angle i(t)

to the East-West direction). In other words, at time t, each individual moves along a

certain vector vi(t) (see figure 3).

The PSO algorithm is a model for the way in which each individual in the landscape

develops a strategy to achieve the goal of identifying the lowest point. At the heart of the

algorithm lies the idea that the individual will move so as to account for both the lowest

point it has reached so far, and the lowest point achieved by the group (including itself)

so far. So-called acceleration constants cind(t) and cgroup(t) determine the weights to be

put on a move towards ones own best position and the group best position respectively.

When cind(t) > 0 and cgroup(t) = 0, the individuals progress completely independently,

drawing no benefit from the findings of the rest of the group. This would amount to a

situation in which the relevant knowledge has no social component. On the contrary,

when cind(t) = 0 and cgroup(t) > 0, each individual only takes into account the group best,

so that the information acquired by the individual along the way is discarded as long as it

does not define the group best position. This amounts to equating the relevant knowledge

with its social dimension.

21 The ideal weighting is obtained for when cind(t) cgroup(t). Note that in the

optimization process, some randomization is added to the iterative procedure to enable

some flexibility in the actual weightings which are ascribed to the individual and group

components of the information acquired so far. This also has the advantage of more

realistically mimicking the way in which actual strategies manage the relative weights of

individual and group knowledge, i.e. generally in a non-totally deterministic way, but

rather with some random variability. Thus, if )(tyij represents the component in the jth

dimension (in the example there are only two dimensions, i.e. the Northing and Easting)

of the best position achieved so far by individual i, and )(^ty j the component in the jth

dimension of the group best position so far, and if )(txij is the actual position in the jth

dimension of individual i, the move to the next position )1( +txij is defined by:

- an individual component which is proportional to the discrepancy between the

individual best and the current position, with a coefficient of proportionality

)()( , trtc jindind , i.e. the weight )(tcind but randomly perturbed by )(, tr jind (which is

uniformly distributed between 0 and 1);

- a group component which is similarly proportion to the discrepancy between

the group best and the current position, with a coefficient of proportionality

)()( , trtc jgroupgroup , i.e. the weight )(tcgroup but randomly perturbed by

)(, tr jgroup (which is uniformly distributed between 0 and 1).

22

Figure 3: A group of n individuals randomly parachuted in a landscape at time 0. The group has the task of finding the lowest point in the landscape.

In line with the example of the individuals scanning a landscape, we can see how the

process by which a group acquires knowledge can be modeled in this way. The

stigmergic aspect of this process is encapsulated in the impact the groups knowledge has

upon the individuals investigative strategy, and vice-versa, the contribution the

individuals discoveries make to the knowledge possessed by the group. To make the

algorithm more suitable for his application, one might wish to dispense with the

oversimplified assumption of perfect knowledge by each individual of the knowledge

acquired by the group (e.g. by introducing some additional randomness).

Another use of the PSO algorithm would be the modeling of the process of

acquisition of knowledge by individuals. Here the population or group best are more or

less fixed and uninfluenced by the individuals knowledge acquisition. The algorithm is

H

P -m0

P P n1

-m0 -m0

23 thus chiefly designed to represent the learning curve characterizing knowledge

acquisition. That is, the individuals understanding of a body of knowledge is not a matter

of just assimilating it in one go, but rather of progressively integrating aspects of this

body of knowledge from the perspective the individual is coming from.17

In the PSO algorithm, the role played by the groups best position, which

represents the groups knowledge is crucial to each individuals evolution. It is important

to note that in the algorithm, this group knowledge corresponds to some individuals

knowledge at any given time, but there is no single individual whose knowledge it is over

time.

Stigmergy is precisely the interaction of these two forms of knowledge and gives

credence to the proposition that 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 must surely be essentially

stigmergic. If stigmergic-talk is deemed an overly whimsical rational reconstruction of

Simon and by extrapolation, Hayek, then it is to a more recent theorist we need to turn.

Don Lavoie, an Austrian school economist, saw the resonance of swarm behavior

to human-human stigmergy in no uncertain terms.18 Like Hayek and Simon, Lavoie

accepts the presupposition of cognitive closure (Lavoie, 1985, pp. 65-66, 68-69). Lavoie

explicitly and repeatedly cites the work of sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, a leading theorist

on termite stigmergy. Wilson (1975/2000, pp. 186188) identifies two main variants of

stigmergy:

Sematectonic stigmergy

Sign-, cue-, or marker-based stigmergy

24 Sematectonic stigmergy connotes communication via modification of a physical

environment, an elementary example being the carving out of trails. One needs only to

cast an eye around any public space, a park or a college quadrangle to see the grass being

worn away, revealing a dirt pathway that is a well-traveled, unplanned and thus indicates

an unofficial intimation of a shortcut to some salient destination. Marker-based

stigmergy denotes communication via a signaling mechanism. A standard example is the

phenomenon of pheromones laid by social insects. Pheromone imbued trails increase the

likelihood of other ants following the aforementioned trails. Unlike sematectonic

stigmergy which is a response to an environmental modification, marker-based stigmergy

does not make any direct contribution to a given task.

Though Lavoie doesnt ever invoke the term stigmergy one should be in no doubt

that the features of mass coordination across all domains of sociality are for him

stigmergic indeed, the terms tradition and the market are shorthand for stigmergic

sociality (Lavoie, 1985, p. 29). Lavoie makes the link between mass communication

and the knowledge problem (Lavoie, 1985, pp. 27-28) and rightly focuses on the

mechanism of coordination. For Lavoie the similarity between insects and man is greater

in this respect than it may appear and moreover the human analogue of the insects

pheromone is the expenditure of money in market exchanges (Lavoie, 1985, pp. 69-71,

72).

The principle the sociobiologists call mass communication reveals how partial, localized knowledge on the part of a termite in one part of a colony can be merged in such a way that the systems overall allocation of resources is informed by more knowledge than any one participant to the process can possess. It seems to me that the very same kind of mass communication is the principle that operates in market systems (Lavoie, 1985, p, 76.)

In language reminiscent of Hayek, Lavoie is of the view that:

25 These diverse spontaneous orders, from primitive insect societies to such complex institutions as markets and science, all exhibit as a basic organizing principle a competitive process of discovery whereby each participant both actively contributes and passively responds to signals (Lavoie, 1985, p. 86).

In other words, the stigmergic interest lies in the stochastic spread of a marker through a

population of strangers whereby a strong pheromone trail will translate into heightened

awareness of a given product, which in turn will convert into sales. Such strategies, if

successful, are both financially and logistically highly efficient.

VII: Concluding Remarks

Whatever sociality may be, by definition it cannot reside solely within an individual:

continuity can only be mediated, albeit imperfectly (not in high-fidelity), through a web

of social artifacts that contains its own immanent standard of epistemic weight regarding

its methodological, conceptual and empirical problems. One way is to conceive of

sociality in terms of epistemic engineering that stigmergy proposes. This would be

consistent with the idea of informational flow (traditions and practices as external

artifacts or downstream epistemic engineering as Sterelney 2003 puts it) between

generations and the idea of cooperation conceived as distributed cognition.

Despite their differences, i.e. Hayeks bidirectional complexity and Simons

unidirectional complexity, both positions fall under what Godfrey-Smith has termed c-

externalist explanations (a species of a more general externalism) whereby environmental

complexity explains cognitive (internal) complexity (1996, pp. 31, 57-60). Let us

summarize or loosely adduce the argument that has been presented.

26 immergence emergence Mind: (a) Individual cognition is delimited

(b) Mind is a conditioned complex adaptive system Knowledge: (c) Social epistemology is, by definition, stigmergic

Society: (d) Sociality is adverbial, adaptive and stigmergic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cognition: (e) Cognition is distributed, conditioned and stigmergic

Figure 4: The small arrows connote a two-way interaction between elements (a) to (d); the larger arrows

connote emergence (novel behavior emerging from a lower level specification of a system) and its corollary immergence (individual interaction informed by a global state of affairs).

If mind is constitutionally delimited then it must somehow augment its epistemic and

computational capacity: adaptive evolutionary imperatives demand it. Hayeks and

Simons shared a priori presupposition that mind is constrained in its computational

capacity should not be taken as an exercise in armchair philosophizing.19 The point

shouldnt be lost that both men were motivated by a practical concern. That is, they were

deeply concerned by an uncritical acceptance of rationalism in its two most extreme (and

hence) sinister guises: central planning rationalism (favored by collectivism) and the

vulgar individualism of homo economicus (favored by orthodox economics).20 Hayek

made the very distinctive link between mind and freedom: All institutions of freedom

are adaptations to this fundamental fact of ignorance (Hayek, 1960/1978, p. 30). For

Simon the great sin of central planner was their arrogance in believing that they knew

best for all, while the great failing of radical individualists lay in their arrogant belief that

the individual could reason as God would (Crowther-Heyck, 2006, p. 273). Their key

insight is that perfect knowledge is both unnecessary, impracticable and indeed

irrelevant if one understands the mechanism at work in complex sociality, a stigmergic

sociality that in effect augments or scaffolds cognition.21

27

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29 1 Neither the Hoover Institution (Hayek archives) nor Carnegie Mellon (Simon archives) reveal any exchange between these two. My thanks to Nicholas Siekierski, Assistant Archivist, Hoover Institution and Jennie Benford, University/Heinz Archivist, Carnegie Mellon University for their respective assistance. 2 It is puzzling as to why there is a paucity of literature examining Hayek and Simon. One explanation might be that these two polymaths have tended to be viewed more as dilettantes (regarding Hayek see Hayek, 1994/1998, p. 152; Samuelson, 2009, p. 3, note 2; regarding Simon see Crowther-Heych, 2005, p. 4). Be that as it may, Hayeks and Simons stars are in the ascendency, gaining new-found appreciation for their fusion of philosophical psychology with social epistemology, arguably the most important aspects to their voluminous corpora. 3 To complicate matters Hayek is a died-in-the-wool constructivist yet it is so-called constructivism that he takes to task. Hayek attributes to constructivists the impulse that, since all aspects of sociality are in some sense artifactual (in being created by man, the residua of conscious minds), therefore sociality in all its forms must be amenable to alteration (Marsh, 2012). 4 The extended mind literature is as controversial as it is suggestive and has generated a vast literature. Clarks early statement (with David Chalmers) termed active externalism ran on what they termed the parity principle. Roughly speaking its the idea that if a part of the extra-cranial world, say a computer chip, were embedded within the cranium, wed have no problem accepting the functional similarity of the chip as part of the brains cognitive machinery. Cognitive archaeologist Stephen Mithen (2000) also argues that artifacts can form a literal extension of the mind. Gallagher & Crisafi (2009) are of the view that the Clark-Chalmers thesis can be extrapolated to include social institutions deploying a highly suggestive appeal to Hegel a Hegel lite if you will. 5 To say that complexity is inextricably linked to cognition is not to deny ontological objectivity (Rescher, 1998, p. 36) or to deny epistemic progress (Rescher, 1998, p. 49). There are facts of the matter but they are not accessible (Rescher, 2009, p. 2). 6 It should be noted that complexity connotes a state of the world; complicated a state of mind (Norman, 2011, pp. 2, 4. 40, 53; Rescher, 1998, p. 17). Another distinction that has been drawn is between structural complexity and functional complexity. The former concerned with the mereological composition of a system; the latter concerned with what the system is supposed to do (Godfrey-Smith, 1996, p. 26) but as Godfrey-Smith concedes, structural complexity might well be required for functional simplicity (p. 27). 7 Take the concept of God: the concept does not achieve enough clarity and distinctness to be discussable. When we cite the divine attributes omniscience, omnipotence, and so on we dont have the least purchase on these ideas which generate paradoxes almost immediately. 8 Im indebted to William Dennis for bringing this idea to my attention. 9 This has resonance with two variations of Reschers argument. The first (1998, pp. 25-54, 71): 1. The worlds descriptive complexity is infinite (even finite phenomenon can exhibit infinite complexity) 2. A complete inventory of facts can never be made ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Therefore, reality is bound to be cognitively opaque The second (Rescher, 2009, p. 66): (1) Physical reality is reflective of the work of a mind more powerful than ours (2) A mind of lesser power is unable to understand the workings of a mind of greater power ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) Therefore, an adequate apprehension of nature is beyond our grasp 10 Simon, 1979, p. 497: In a footnote Becker indicates that he denotes as irrational [A]ny deviation from utility maximization. Thus, what I have called bounded rationality is irrationality in Beckers terminology. 11 This is sharply borne out by the experiments formulated by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his collaborator Amos Tversky, presented in popular form in Kahneman (2011).

30 12 Hayek with his characteristic prescience did hint at the issue of swarm behavior/stigmergy but not being a modeler, as Simon was, never provided the fine-grained detail required to illustrate a spontaneous order. 13 Rational inquiry is a process of optimization that is, maximization under constraints (Rescher, 1998, pp. 57, 169); (Gigerenzer, 2004, pp. 390-91); cf. optimization dogma (Conlisk, 2004, p. 194). 14 Note: the particle component in PSO denotes an individual and the swarm in PSO denotes a process or grouping. 15 The more technically orientated reader should look at the algorithms Simon formulates in this same paper. 16 Amended from Marsh & Onof, 2008. 17 There are in fact typically different types of neighborhoods to be considered in the process of acquisition of knowledge by an individual or a group. For most matters, pertaining to what one takes to be correct, there are three types of neighborhoods: the specialists in the relevant field; the cultural milieu; and the family/geographical neighborhood. The first neighborhood is defined by its being necessarily associated with the acquisition of knowledge; the second is associated with the necessary belonging to a cultural milieu, but the fact it is this one rather than another is a contingent matter; the third is entirely contingent: it is an entirely contingent matter whether one has geographical/genetic neighbors which have an influence upon ones acquisition of knowledge. The existence of a number q of neighborhoods is best taken into account by altering the PSO algorithm to have several croup(t) weightings:{ cgroup1(t), cgroup2(t), . cgroupq(t)}. In the case where several groups are considered, as proposed in the modification of the lbest algorithm to reflect the multiplicity of bodies of expert knowledge, there is therefore a distribution of knowledge both among the groups and among the individuals of any given group. 18 Im indebted to Steve Horwitz and Adam Martin for bringing this aspect of Lavoies work to my attention. 19 Even those who are not out of sympathy with the Hayek-McGinn line are concerned that although we might not be able to specify a solution, it is incoherent to suggest that we couldnt understand what would count as a solution (Kriegel, 2003, p. 184). 20 Egidi & Marengo (2004) have made a good but limited start at examining both Hayek and Simon. I do however take issue with their view (p. 336) that the main difference between Hayek and Simon is that Hayek gave epistemological prioricity to the market (see Hardwick & Marsh, in press). Elsewhere I have looked at Hayek as cognitive scientist rather than social theorist/economist Marsh 2010; 2012. It is odd that a major bounded rationality theorist does not reference Simon see Morton, 2004, 2010. 21 Im indebted to my colleague David Hardwick for the ongoing stimulating discussion on all these issues and for his practical support; to Nicholas Rescher for generously sending me some of his preprints, to Douglass North for providing a missing reference and to Shannon Selin for proofreading and for sending my way salient references I wouldnt have come across myself.