| Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics (2003) | |||||||||||||||
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| When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, (reason’s) conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and ‘tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attained with difficulty … (Hume, 1739/, p 507). …we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed rules (of caring intervention to do visible ‘good’) of the…small band or troop, or…our families…to the (extended order of cooperation through markets), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were to always apply the (non-cooperative) rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. (Hayek, 1988, p 18). (Italics are his, parenthetical reductions are mine). We have become accustomed to the idea that a natural system like the human body or an ecosystem regulates itself. To explain the regulation, we look for feedback loops rather than a central planning and directing body. But somehow our intuitions about self-regulation do not carry over `to the artificial systems of human society. (Thus)…the…disbelief always expressed by (my) architecture students (about)…medieval cities as marvelously patterned systems that had mostly just “grown ” in response to | |||||||||||||||
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