Contribution to Book
F. A. Hayek and the Rationality of Individual Choice
Revisiting Hayek's Political Economy
(2016)
Abstract
An underappreciated aspect of F. A. Hayek’s mature views about ration- ality is the inter-relation of the “pure logic of choice” and rule-following behavior. Sometimes it is asserted that Hayek abandoned his earlier understanding of individual rationality and replaced it with a completely rule-oriented conception of decisionmaking. In fact, however, the analysis in Hayek’s Sensory Order gives us the framework in which the relative roles of explicit choice-logic and rule-following can be discerned. Furthermore, this framework also shows that his fundamental conception of individual rationality is pragmatic, contextual, modifiable, and ecolo- gical. While standard neoclassical economists were axiomatizing the explicit logic of choice, Hayek was decades ahead of these economists in understanding the nature of decisionmaking outside of completely arti- ficial worlds in which there are no cognitive limits and in which the struc- ture of the environment is simple. This paper attempts to lay the foundation for an integrated understanding of Hayek’s pragmatic rule-following rationality and the “ecological rationality” of Gerd Gigerenzer and other researchers.
Keywords
- Hayek,
- sensory order,
- pure logic of choice
Disciplines
Publication Date
November 30, 2016
Editor
Peter J. Boettke and Virgil Henry Storr
Publisher
Emerald
Series
Advances in Austrian Economics
ISBN
9781785609879
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-213420160000021002
Citation Information
Mario J Rizzo. "F. A. Hayek and the Rationality of Individual Choice" Bingley, uKRevisiting Hayek's Political Economy Vol. 21 (2016) p. 21 - 39 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mario_rizzo/44/