 I don't want to go into long lengthy introductions, mostly because I don't have any notes here to read a long lengthy introduction, so I'll just briefly say how honored we are to have Professor Hayek with us. Last year, he treated us to an account of his controversies with Keynes at the LSE in the 1930s, and just to show the versatility of Professor Hayek and the wide-ranging interests that he has. This year he's going to talk on an entirely different subject. This year he's going to be talking about some work he has been doing over the last couple of years on the problem of cultural, broadly conceived as the problem of cultural evolution and the emergence of the rules by which societies function. Today the specific topic that he's going to talk to us about, and I'm going to have to read this title here, is the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason, and he's going to explain to us what he means by this. I now give you Professor Friedrich Hayek. Madam, ladies and gentlemen, against all my habits I propose today to read a paper to you. The reason is that this particular lecture is built up around so many quotations that I shouldn't remember them properly at their proper place, and I'm really dependent on my manuscript. The lecture was actually written to be given at the Heritage Foundation in Washington a few days ago, but then announced on the title, the origins and effects of our molds, a problem for science. Now I've chosen this rather clumsy title to defend myself in advance against making it the unforgivable mistake of introducing value judgments into a scientific argument. Now that, of course, has been shown to be inappropriate by David Hume, long before Max Weber, who made it popular in recent times, and I'm sure they have much better taken from the very passage in which David Hume concludes that science can never justify value judgments. This states really my main topic I want to discuss and the best title, which the chairman has already read, is a quotation from David Hume, to which I shall refer several times, namely the contention that the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason. I hope to show you that the significance of this concise statement has over the years become very much greater than even David Hume could have foreseen. Although they are not the conclusions of our reason, the traditional rules of morality are nevertheless an indispensable condition of the very existence of present mankind, which we cannot alter at will to please our wishes, which we can at most hope, gradually, to develop or to improve within a framework which is given to us as a necessary condition. Now it must now be a quarter of a century ago that I first recognized what I then called the twin concepts of evolution and spontaneous order, which had provided the key to the explanation of those complex phenomena that had not yielded to the endeavour of a causal or sometimes called nomothetic or nomological approach which had been so successful in the study of the more simple phenomena of mechanics and related subject. We call those things which are explainable by nomotheticals to physical world and within it our power of prediction and control have reached a height which had led man to the fatal conceit that his powers of construction may enable him also in the same manner to construct his human surroundings as he has succeeded in constructing his material surroundings. It became then clear to me that although Charles Darwin's successful application of his ideas of evolution through the account for the origin of the different organic species, although this was the first grandiose success of this line of thought due to an industrious empirical research which you cannot enough admire, the intellectual source of the idea of evolution lay not in the study of nature but in the study of the even more complex phenomena of human interaction. But in the study of this even more complex phenomena of the formation of language and law, already the scholars of ancient Rome fully aware of the kinship of the efforts had first developed ideas of evolution. And it was again the students of law of nature and of the common law who in modern times returned to the conception of evolution with then Bernard Mandeville and the Scottish philosophers of the 18th century extended to an explanation of morals and of such economic phenomena as money, exchange and to market. The dominant figure in this development was undoubtedly David Hume with his most profound insight at which he arrived and which I have made the title of this lecture that the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason. Now this assertion at once raises in the acutious form the question of to what else then our morals are at you. Particularly in the case of Hume who had made it so obviously clear that he did not believe in some supernatural origin of the affairs. But it was also a clear misunderstanding of Hume by modern scholars to assume a utilitarian explanation which of course is explicitly excluded by the assertion that the morals are not the conclusions of our reason. Now the answer to this problem was indeed given some 20 years ago in a work which has not been sufficiently honoured by a gentleman called C. B. B. A. Y. called the Structure of Freedom who justly maintained that Hume may be called a precursor of Darwin in the field of ethics. Indeed he was that not only in the field of ethics. The suggestion of a general theory of evolution is to be found in his posthumous Dialogues on Natural Religion which lays a foundation not only for the theory of social evolution which then his Scottish successors Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and Ducal Stuart fully developed. It is clearly also a new accident that has now been established from the study of the notebooks of Charles Darwin that the idea of biological evolution occurred to him at the very time when he was reading not mortals but the vouchers of nations. I've recently come across yet another piece of evidence confirming my old contention that the concept of evolution derived from the study of society which I might just briefly mention here is that the term genetics which only 70 years ago by William Bateson was made the technical term for biological evolution actually derived from literature and the study of language. It derived from the German literary usage in the 18th century by Herder, Wieland and Friedrich Schiller and beginning of the 19th century Wilhelm von Humboldt who speak of the genetic problems of evolution of language. The word was then brought or introduced into English by Thomas Carly. But even after Darwin we still find an economist like Charles Menner speaking about the genetic origin of money and similar phenomena without any reference to biological phenomena. So I think this development of language shows clearly how the whole idea of evolution comes from the study of society and therefore it's not a misapplication to use it again to account for the development of social phenomena and particularly the development of our morals. Now I accept that in both fields we have to rely on the concept of evolution. Most however not they make a mistake which is so called social Darwinism the last century made of taking over the description of the technique of evolution. Social evolution, cultural evolution as I shall call it and biological evolution have two things but only two things in common. They operate by the same principle of selection in the first instance and that principle of selection is that those attributes characteristics habits or whatever they are which assisted the multiplication of the species were selected as the price of others. And they have a second fact in common neither biological evolution nor cultural evolution knew such things as laws of evolution. The laws of evolution which we find in Hegel, in Marx, in Comte and most modern sociologists have nothing at all to do with the theory of evolution. In fact in the theory of evolution is an account of how we or how structures adapt themselves to unforeseen events. It includes a predictive law of evolution which tells us in advance where evolution must lead. But now to the points where cultural evolution and biological evolution differ. The first I want to enumerate them all a list of six or seven but we pick out the really important ones. The first and most obvious one is of course that while modern theory of biological evolution explicitly excludes the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, cultural evolution rests solely on the transmission of acquired characteristics. Secondly, while biological evolution rests solely on the transmission of physiological attributes from parents to children, we can inherit intellectual and moral qualities from a large number of ancestors not in the physiological sense but just predecessors. Now apart from several other differences I will concentrate on one which is of crucial importance for me and that is this. I think cultural evolution rests chiefly on what is called group selection in contrast to biological evolution which both biologists just at this moment believe does not operate by group selection. I'm not convinced that they are really right. I don't believe it's impossible even to get through biological evolution without taking account of the possibility of group selection. But that's a matter for the biologists to decide and not for me. For my purpose the important point on which everything turns is that cultural evolution operates entirely by group selection and this is the account. This is the reason why we do not know what it has done. If the preservation of new habits is based on effects not on the person who practices the habits but the shown itself on the group as a whole and the group is selected because these habits are practiced within it nobody need know about it nobody need be aware of this effect and that explains why some traditions can go up without ever having been deliberately designed without ever having been understood by the people without ever having even in retrospect being understood by the people who are here and practiced them. Now this is also the reason why traditional moral rules have always and consistently been the target of all rationalists and utilitarianism all that regard that only that is valid which can be rationally justified and that we must discard all other beliefs. Now let me illustrate this by some definition which you find in contemporary works of the chief concepts of the philosophical attitudes which reject tradition or traditional beliefs as legitimate and even essential guides of our action. They are essentially rationalism, positivism and utilitarian ethics. Now I take my quotations from what I find a very useful handbook I think called the dictionary of modern thought in England where it first appeared called the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought in America republished as a harper dictionary of modern thought where most of the important philosophical articles are published by a distinguished Oxford philosopher of the name of Anthony Quinton now Lord Quinton and I will give you briefly his definitions of rationalism positivism and utilitarian ethics. Now according to rationalism according to the definition I'm not coming to these quotations which I need but I haven't got to them yet so forgive me, I will keep to my manuscript and postpone this for a moment. What I say in my manuscript that I may continue with it is that because of what I have been discussing is that the philosophy of rationalism which dominates modern thought since the 17th century has succeeded progressively to discredit all beliefs which are not based on intellectual insight including that moral tradition which if I may repeat the phrase the rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason make our inheritance an autonomous endowment I call it autonomous in the sense of a creation of human reason. I mean by it that the value of its own independent or partly independent on the intellectual support or justification can give for it. It's a treasure distinct from and some respects even superior to reason because it allows us to take account of effects of our action of which our senses and therefore our individual reason could not take account of. In short it was an ununderstood moral tradition and not a rational knowledge of fact which enabled mankind to form the extended orbit of individual interaction which makes it possible for us to sustain today something like 200 times the population of the humanity which existed 5,000 years ago. I am convinced that this expansion of humanity and of what we call civilization which made it possible became possible at least as much if not more than by our growing intelligence by certain moral beliefs which man has never invented because of four known effects but which were preserved without his understanding and it was the adherence to these moral beliefs which enabled man to be fruitful and multiply and to explain the words and subdue it as already stated the first part of the Bible in the book of Genesis. Now there's two fundamental moral principles for which those human groups who practice them were selected for progressive multiplication by cultural evolution is against which both the human intellect and our sentiments constantly revolt where the rules which define the institutions of private was I prefer to call it several property and the rules of the family. I shall if neither time nor am I competent to discuss the very real problems which changes of knowledge have in modern times raised with regard to the institution of the family and I must confine myself here entirely to the institution around which of course the present political discussion present political divisions chiefly turn the institution of private or several property especially the property means of production or more fully to quote again David Hume when I speak about the institution of property what I mean the institution of the stability of possessions of his transference by consent and of the performance of promises that's why I abbreviated form I shall refer to as the institution of property when we look for it we find the significance of these basic conceptions for the formation of an extended order of human interaction all clearly stated in the work of Adam Smith and for the purpose of this particular exposition I've chosen to describe some main steps by quoting Adam Smith in a few passages which are so familiar at least also the so familiar it was almost a shame to quote them but I think in the context they assume rather a new significance I think you all will remember Smith that I shall raise a finger when I quote to distinguish between what I my own nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signified to another this is mine that is yours I'm willing to give this for that in other words it was proper than the exchange that the distinction the distinctly human aspects begin to guide cultural evolution and again the division of labor is not originally the effect of any human wisdom and this is a power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labor so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of this power or in other words the extent of the market and the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any people is the increase of the number of its inhabitants and then one at first apparently unconnected but really most profound statement religion even its crudest form gave a sanction to the rules of morality long before the age of artificial reasoning and morality what Adam Smith he evidently clearly saw was that man had never adopted the morals of property in exchange because he foresaw the benefits he would derive from them this had been mystical or supernatural beliefs that make groups stick to traditions of certain practical or ceremonial practices or ceremonials long enough to give natural selection a chance to pick out those groups who practice the truth which led to their multiplication and make them displace others who practice different what now this is really the answer what i might call Hume's problem how did morals arise if they did not arise from human invention if as he says the rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason what are they due to the humane answer given to it by Smith is selective evolution and the result is a decisive recognition that most of humanity wrote their very lives with traditional observation of rules which they did not like because it constituted restraints on their innate instincts nor were they able intellectually to justify them now if morals has a distinct power which lies between the power of instincts and the power of reason even with an endowment is equivalent or in some respects perhaps even superior to reason so it is because it enabled man to take account of circumstances beyond or outside the range of his perception and by practices which were accepted by religious men who believed in a superior power like the human mind but of greater penetration that does arrange things but this belief became unacceptable to the 17th century rationalists and their descendants the enlightenment was intended precisely to free us from all such traditional beliefs in the truth not to speak about the possible superior wisdom of moral rules which man could not intellectually justify this was wholly irreconcilable to the rationalism Thomas Hobbes or René Descartes down to the beliefs of the French Enlightenment and Jean Chacousse or even Hegel, Marx and Kant and it turns out that it is still necessarily unacceptable to their contemporary followers and I now coming to a point I wanted to make before to show that this in conflict with the basic tenets of such influential philosophical traditions as rationalism, positivism and utilitarian ethics and for this purpose I use these quotations that I've mentioned before when I thought I already come to that stage taken from the dictionary of modern thought by contributions under respective headings by Anthony Quinton of Oxford now again I shall mark my quotations by raising my finger to make quite clear what is quotation for a rationalist who denies the acceptability of beliefs founded on anything but experience or reasoning the definition of a rationalist or for a positivist believing that all true knowledge is scientific in the sense of describing the coexistence and succession of observable phenomenon or even for a believer in the usual form of hedonist ethics utilitarianism which takes pleasure and pain for everyone affected affected by it to be the criterion of the actions rightness traditional morals must be rejected as irrational they do not satisfy the conditions of truth which rationalism which positivism or which even hedonistic ethics utilitarianism makes a condition of the acceptability of any statement it would not be possible to produce generations of it would uh whatever saying we say these beliefs could not but produce generations of intellectuals of whom we might well regard Lord King's as a prototype since he told us explicitly that I remain and always will remain an immoralist traditional morals were unbelievable and unacceptable by this generation of these intellectuals who imagine that they can invent for us a better moral which will secure for us a more pleasant more beautiful and more just world of course not only ignore how much we owed to traditional morals as guides of how to form an extended order at all which far extends beyond the local and temple boundaries of your perception what one has to make clear is that only group selection that means a process or which the individual could not aware which he could not explain could produce habits and lead to the extension which lead to the formation of the extended society which was beyond the comprehension of of the individual it is true that institutions which we have not deliberately created or which we have not desired or approved are the basis of the multiplication of mankind I think the best illustration is if I say that I entirely agree in this respect with Karl Marx's contention that it was capitalism which has created the proletariat of course not by expropriating anybody or taking from any one procession they had but simply by enabling those to survive who had no processions in that sense the capital proletariat is a creation of polytheism capitalism has given life to the proletariat in the same sense in which practices which we intensely dislike and have not wished are the creation of the extended society as a whole it is perhaps significant and worth mentioning at least some modern philosophers of a rationalist and positivist band find David Hume's theory of morals wholly unintelligible to Hume of course the institution of property was a prototype of moral institutions and the greater part of his treatise which is devoted by morals is wholly devoted to the theory of property Hume still believed that no one can doubt that the convention for the distinction of property and for the stability of procession is of all circumstances the most necessary for the establishment of human society that after the agreement for the fixing and observing this rule there remains little or nothing to be done just a settling of perfect harmony and concord now compare the comments of a modern Oxford philosopher on this Mr. B. M. Barrie some 20 years ago comments on this that although Hume uses the expression rules of conduct to cover such things as property rules justice is now analytically tied to desert and need that one could quite properly say that some of what Hume calls rules of justice were unjust what happened by redefining moral concepts moral intellect does succeed that makes them appear as tools for the satisfaction of our desires but at the same time the private yes us of the power to guide us through the reach to reach our conscious aims what this attitude of modern rationalist philosophers makes explicit is however nothing less and that private or several property is one of the chief moral foundations of evolved ethics and modern civilization is in their view to be replaced by constructivistic ethics which demands common ownership and direction of the use of the means of production to agreed aims now this however is a conflict which is no longer simply a moral conflict in the sense of a conflict within a coherent system of morals it is a conflict between two wholly different system of morals which because of their different aim origins and aims have very little in common on the one hand a system of grown traditional morals formed by the group selection of cultural evolution and serving the mood effects of human action of which our reason cannot be aware but the adaptation to which is necessary for you to preserve the existing numbers of humanity and on the other side and invented or constructivistic morals intended to serve the pleasures of the individuals that is which promises to satisfy primitive instincts yet is incapable of achieving even this we encounter here but on an earlier occasion I have called the atavistic roots of all socialist designs I believe I'm not exaggerating when I claim that this is a general I would say defining characteristic of the contemporary intellectual that he refuses to concede to traditional morals or conventional wisdom as they like to call it an independent and autonomous standing side by side with reasoning and certainly to deny to it any superiority to reason or that it adds anything to what reason can recognize so modern intellectual believes that it was man's intellect which enabled him to enable him to design his morals and therefore also puts them in a position as the results of the existing morals are not satisfactory to replace them by better invented ones this belief neatly expressed in the famous title of a book by a socialist anthropologist that man made himself which expresses why some socialist economists accept this idea as their guideline and this seems to me ultimately the fatal conceit that the larger part of the intellectuals to socialism now what I've said so far amounts to the assertion that socialism is in the last resort the product of a demonstrable philosophical error which has dominated the intellectuals of the last two or three hundred years into which only practical sense but little rational argument has resisted if you want to test this assertion try to find a positivist who is not a socialist I've tried and almost always failed or the mitten fridman may be an exception indeed socialism is a logical consequence if you assume learning that is true which you can rationally prove but the recognition that is tradition or heritage which has some group selection has equipped mankind with morals which enable them to adapt to circumstances our senses cannot perceive they in states these morals as is what I've called the second autonomous power which we are as dependent as we are on our reason the fact that the socialism is a logical result of rationalism does therefore not prove that socialism is right but rather that rationalism is off to recognize that there were limits to the power of individual knowledge was of course at all times the result of the meditation of the profoundest thinkers the insight that there are other indispensable sources of guidance which made man's success as possible was long confined to religious beliefs through this often came these often came into conflict with current scientific beliefs it seems to me that the real scientific analysis of the evolutionary process of group selection forces us to recognize that religious beliefs have preserved for us invaluable rules of conduct which have enabled mankind to achieve its present size and powers into significant science and particularly economics can only now retrospectively discover and thereby show that human reason could never have invented a society of the present extent and now can must attempt to explain it to defend and preserve its existence what has equipped us to form the astounding world of human cooperation far extending our perception our capacity of direction was in effect the system of restraints restraints on our animal instincts which in consequence we sentimentally dislike and whose functions transcend our intellectual comprehension it has prevailed only by its success but man's concede now threatens to restore his support through these beliefs which philosophy describes as superstitions the consequence of this will probably be not only a progressive steadily accelerating decline of our civilization but even literally a decimation of humanity to a size in which all its scientific knowledge would be of little use to it that's why it seems to me ever more important to make it clear to people at large that the seductive theories for socialism are intellectually not even half right but all Professor Hayek has graciously consented to take a few questions from the audience may I add to adwarming at once my difficulty this is my hearing is very defective if you speak very clearly and very loud I shall make every effort to understand your questions and try to answer it but it's also very tiring for me so don't carry on too long as a professor has both been published yet no no I'm afraid I ought to tell you the story it's part of the story of how this particular version was written the first part at least of the book was read in the after a year ago I've since been working on the revision I revised chapter one in three weeks I've worked on the revision of chapter two for nine months and text has at first grown into a size or another little book and I'm not trying hard to reduce it I hope now to make the angle of the explanation this idea of group selection will enable me to bring it down to reasonable size and I'm experimenting with you to find out whether this idea of group selection really gives an adequate explanation of the sample point certainly yes have you rejected that as a possibility for your it's below the level of individual and therefore probably not conscious oh well it's a general problem which I think is all the social biologists mean Dawkins of course accounts for a gradual adaptation of instincts to a different world now the time in which this has happened is far too short I mean the kind of process which Dawkins speak is a process which can work over hundreds of thousands of years but what has happened the last 50,000 years cannot be accounted for any kind of biological evolution you have to resort to what I've called cultural evolution to a tradition and then you have to take it account that cultural evolution operates on different principles Dawkins are pure the same principles of the biologists which are not applicable this is just a comment I I think that your group selection is not what the biologists have objected to that is there what they're thinking about a group selection is something different from what you are thinking about it is it is the the brave baboon who goes to the baboon tribe that had brave some people well defended and they get negative selection of individuals from that which I don't think is what I don't think in other words it happens I'm I can argue against your group selection too but I don't think you need to worry about the biologists not it's not as simple as this you're not right means so far as biologists argue that the changes in instinctive reactions cannot be due to group selection they are very persuasive even there I have some doubts but I would grant them this what they mean is that changes in instincts are not sufficient and only changes in instincts can be explained biologically and that the other which they completely disregard that there is a distinct process of cultural evolution if we'll take since I mentioned EO Wilson before this social biology their tendency is to reduce it all to biological evolution and that can't be done if for no other reason the reason I just mentioned the time has been far too short nor possibly produce the thing by way of biological evolution we have to find a parallel but distinct process and the chapter in the book which precedes this is mainly the words of poem to bring out much more clearly than I could do in my introductory words the distinction between the mechanism of biological and cultural evolution once you have made this clear that the operate on different principles becomes very important to distinguish because by the different mechanism you can produce different things and amongst the distinctions I left out one perhaps ought to be the most important just precisely that while biological evolution operates extremely slowly cultural evolution can operate extremely fast they're all very concerned about tiring you out professor hi actually very kind of you we want to thank you so much for giving us a preview of your book and helping you window it down to chapter size there'll be those doors will open miraculously in a few moments and there'll be a reception uh with with soft drinks coffee and tea and we that we're about five minutes sooner than they had expected us but we kindly automatized we want to thank you all for coming and please stay around for the reception friend