Hayek on mind and anti-foundationalism

Francesco Di Iorio^* 

 Hayek’s The Sensory Order provided a proto-connectionist theory of mind that is linked to a fallibilist and evolutionary concept of knowledge. According to Hayek’s cognitive psychology, human knowledge presupposes what Gadamer calls a «shifting horizon», i.e. a selective standpoint that is conditioned temporally. Because of his theory of the historical finitude of mankind that is linked to his cognitive psychology, Hayek rejects any kind of foundationalism. His criticism of foundationalism, which has not been studied extensively, matches well the view developed by enactivist cognitive scientists such as Varela, Maturana and Thompson.