Evolutionary Liberalism

Although this blog is named "The Radical Liberal," my thinking has taken a decidedly evolutionary turn. In a sense that turn is even more radical, but I think that it is time for me to attach a more descriptive term than "radical" to this liberalism—"evolutionary."

The characteristics of evolutionary liberalism are that it embraces universal Darwinism and takes trial-and-error, evolutionary learning as the only way forward for humanity. It argues that the pursuit of such learning is inhibited by what people call "government" or "the state"—that the state is itself a failed experiment.

The social embodiment of this learning process is what is generally called "the market," discussed previously in my paper "Let Go and Let the Market," referenced in another post on this blog. The ideas in that paper have been developed further, and money profit identified as the selection mechanism for societal evolution.

The philosophy of evolutionary liberalism is heavily influenced by the scientific philosophy of Karl R. Popper (not his generally-flawed political and economic thinking) and the economics of the Austrian school, as elucidated by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. These thinkers are influences and there is no argument that they would agree with or support evolutionary liberalism. This is not a project to argue about what they thought, but to use their work as inspiration for ever bolder conjectures.

I am quite sure that many people are circling around these ideas, including Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett. Although they are far more well known and knowledgeable than I, they seem to have missed the basic problem of the state and its "solution." When it comes to them, or other widely-read thinkers, we might have a renaissance of true liberalism.

Contra Hayek, Cultural Evolution IS Darwinian

In Hayek's The Fatal Conceit (1988) there is a section titled "The Mechanism of Cultural Evolution Is Not
Darwinian." Within the section Hayek takes the position that Darwinian theory applies only to biological and not cultural evolution. He writes that "cultural evolution simulates Lamarkism" (25).

However, when we take an abstract view of Darwinism—variation, selection, and retention—we see that Hayek is mistaken. The problem of Lamarkism is not that characteristics are acquired, as characteristics resulting from mutations are also acquired; but that there is no mechanism of retention. Rather than DNA, it is the institutions of society that pass on the mutations of society—the new ideas, technologies, and customs. The mechanism of cultural retention is what Karl Popper called World 3 (1972).

The mention of World 3 prompts the suggestion that DNA is also a World 3 phenomenon created by processes in the cell for purposes of retention. Where this suggestion leads is anybody's guess.

Bibliography

Hayek, F.A., 1988, The Fatal Conceit, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Popper, K.R., 1972, "On the Theory of the Objective Mind" in Objective Knowledge, London, Oxford University Press, 153-190.