----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- Dear HES Listers, I am organizing a conference (July 2003) on Dewey, Hayek, and Embodied Cognition. The tentative program is listed below. Elias L. Khalil Behavioral Research Council A Division of American Institute for Economic Research Third Annual Symposium on the Foundations of the Behavioral Sciences "Dewey, Hayek and Embodied Cognition: Experience, Beliefs and Rules" July 18-20, 2003 AIER Campus Great Barrington, Mass. Statement and Aim The living, breathing, knowing organism is present. To add a"`mind" to him is to try to double him up. It is double-talk; and double-talk doubles no facts. [Dewey & Bentley, Knowing and the Known. In Rollo Handy and E.C. Harwood (eds.), Useful Procedures of Inquiry. Great Barrington, MA: Behavioral Research Council, (1949) 1973, p. 141]. The Behavioral Research Council of the American Institute for Economic Research is sponsoring a conference whose aim is to discuss the role of experience, beliefs and rules in human behavior in light of recent findings in the cognitive neurosciences. The proceedings of the conference will be published in a book. Two texts will act as starting points, namely, John Dewey and Arthur Bentley's Knowing and the Known (1949) and Friedrich Hayek's The Sensory Order (1952). Both works in many ways have anticipated "embodied cognition," a recent development in the cognitive sciences that views the brain/mind as doubly embedded: embedded in the body and embedded in the environment. That is, the brain/mind cannot be seen as an organ in-itself, but rather as a mediator that unites the organism with its environment. The works of Dewey/Bentley and Hayek argue that cognition is based on classificatory, quasi-Kantian systems that inform the inquirer on how to experience the environment. The apparent problem is that such classificatory systems cannot be definitely confirmed or refuted on the basis of empirical findings. Such a problem, which has not been seriously tackled by rational choice theorists, has been gaining attention by philosophers of the mind in light of advances in the cognitive neurosciences. In specific, the papers will tackle the following questions: If human behavior is based on experience, as Dewey argues, why do agents develop beliefs, conceptual schemes, and metaphysical propositions which cannot be refuted or affirmed empirically? In general, why do humans develop abstract rules, such as the ones concerning truth and justice, if pragmatism is taken seriously? How do experience and accompanied neural activity give rise to beliefs? And, vice versa, how do such beliefs and neural activity, as Hayek proposed, formulate experience? Also, what concerns economists, if beliefs and brain activity formulate one's experience, can beliefs still be justified on rationality grounds-or is Bayesian updating unfounded? The 2003 conference will include economic theorists, cognitive psychologists, philosophers of mind, legal theorists, and neuroscientists. The conference might be a launching pad for "cognitive economics," i.e., how opportunities are conceived and created in the economy. This can be the basis of explaining entrepreneurship-a phenomenon long neglected by economists. * Registration and submission of contributed papers, please visit www.brc-aier.org or contact: Elias L. Khalil ([log in to unmask]) Director, Behavioral Research Council AIER PO Box 1000 Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA TEL: 413-528-1216 ext. 3124 FAX: 413-528-0103 A Partial List of Participants: (* contributed papers) Bruce Caldwell ("The Evolution of Hayek's Thought") Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro Thomas C. Dalton ("Value, Belief and Inquiry: A Deweyan Perspective") Senior Research Associate, College of Liberal Arts, California Polytechnic State University Kurt Dopfer ("Embodied Cognition in an Evolving Economic Environment: Genetic Invariants and Adoptable Rules") Professor of International and Development Economics, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland Jean-Pierre Dupuy ("Embodied Social Cognition") Professor, Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée, École Polytechnique, France Professor, Departments of French/Italian and Political Science, Stanford University Gerald Edelman ("TBA") (1972 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine) Chairman, Department of Neurobiology, The Scripps Research Institute Edward Feser ("Naturalism, Evolution, and Hayek's Philosophy of Mind") Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University Geoffrey M. Hodgson ("Instinct and Habit Over Reason: Dewey, Hayek and Veblen") Research Professor, University of Hertfordshire, UK * Elias L. Khalil ("Human Sacrifice, Conspiracy Theory, and Other Beliefs: Evolutionary, Rational and Transactional Views") Director, Behavioral Research Council, AIER Elisabeth Krecké ("TBA") Faculty of Applied Economics, Université d'Aix-Marseille III, France Rodolfo Llinás ("TBA") Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman, Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine Howard Margolis ("Habits of Mind: Ideas as Possessions") Professor, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago Bart Nooteboom ("TBA") Professor of Organizational Dynamics, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands Douglass C. North ("TBA") (1993 Nobel Prize for Economics) Director, Center for Study of Political Economy, Washington University Mark Perlman ("Competing and Complementary Authority Systems.") University Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh John Pickering ("Signs and Beliefs: Hayek's Inquiry and Biosemiotics") Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Warwick University, UK Richard Posner ("TBA") Judge, US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School Salvatore Rizzello ("Knowledge as a Path-dependence Process: Microfoundations and Economic Implications") Associate Professor of History of Economic Thought and Economics, Faculty of Law Coordinator, Centre for Cognitive Economics University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy Frank X. Ryan ("Neuroscience and Dewey's Critique of Behaviorism") Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Kent State University John R. Searle ("TBA") Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language Department of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley Vernon Smith ("TBA") (2002 Nobel Prize for Economics) Professor of Economics and Law Research Scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science George Mason University Ulrich Witt ("The Cognitive Underpinnings of the Generation of Novelty") Director, Evolutionary Economics Group, Max-Planck-Institute for Research into Economic Systems Professor, Department of Economics, University of Jena, Germany ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]